If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

@trumpetman48  — The Ron Bernay suggestion is  really good! It would be the most direct way to settle the sonic question.

I'd push back on the distortion point. The video's challenge to Danny's methodology was precisely that his measurement tools lack the resolution and rigor for this level of work. Pointing to Danny's own v2 distortion measurements as a rebuttal doesn't escape that problem — it's the same coarse tools producing the reassuring numbers. That's circular.

The "off the charts" framing isn't a presentation quirk either. 6% distortion in a tweeter, in the frequency range where our hearing is most sensitive, is a substantive finding regardless of how you scale the axis.

What a great discussion. I like upgrading with quality parts. I also like dsp and electronic crossovers but some don't and that's ok. Looks like amir is highly trained.  I would like that 150k device but I'll have to just  use my ears until then. Looks like the speaker manufacture took the critism and invested Capitol to improve his design and that's impressive. Keep up the pros and cons cuz this is where we learn.until then enjoy the music don't let pro and con get you down.

Hardly anyone will care because relatively few in this country respect science anymore, flat-earth Danny included. 

I’m sure you are aware of Ron Bernay and his sound shed, designed and equipped for controlled listening comparisons. If the parties involved were willing to provide Ron with 2 sets of speakers, original and modified, we could get a better take on the sonic comparison. However, they would need to commit considerable time and resources, and I don’t know how high a priority this would have.

Ron and Danny are good friends and have designed speakers together, so you might say Ron has a significant bias. Plus, Ron has a long record of believing considerably more egregious nonsense than crossover part quality. 

Somewhere in these discussions, cost benefit ratio gets lost. I own a pair of KEF R3 Meta speakers that Danny reviewed (not mine to be clear). He found very little fault in them but still came up with a kit to replace the "Cheesy" crossover components. 

My response to this is that KEF is obviously trying to build a very fine speaker that many can afford. They can and do build better, The Reference series equivalent is much like the R3 but costs almost 4 times as much. I'm sure the parts complement would be far more to Danny's liking. But then there is this cost/benefit issue.