Speaker types- your preference and your journey?

Boring story: Back in 1995, while searching for a CD player on line, I happened upon the world of "high end" audio. Never knew such a world existed. I ended up purchasing a pair of EgglestonWorks Fontaines for my first audiophile speakers. Fell in love with their beautiful sound. Added a pair of subs, and I was in heaven. Had them for many years, during which time I’d been to a few shows, brick and mortars, and experienced other personal set ups, but never heard any speaker that sounded better to me (for less than $10k, double the retail of my Fontaines). UNTIL I finagled a kind, local gentleman, into letting me hear his Pure Audio Project Trio15 Horn1s, as I was curious about OBs and horns. SNAP! I immediately preferred their sound to my ported box speakers - SO much more natural, open, and free-flowing. Fortunately, within a year or so, that pair went up for sale and I jumped on them. Being only my second pair of ’phile speakers, I’ll be holding onto them for life, or until we move into a tiny place with tiny rooms and I’ll be forced to sell them.

Definitely floor-standers with dual-concentric (pseudo-point source) drivers. With one hell of a tube amp to drive them. For headphones - electrostats by far, also with one hell of a tube amp to drive them. For some reason my ears can no longer tolerate dynamic coil headphones slapping about atop my ears - but it doesn't even matter since e-stats sound way better anyways. 

I own two pairs of IMF full range transmission line speakers.

my favorite type of bass response design.

No one seems to use this design today.  

Like many here, it's been a long journey.   I had the good fortune to work at a few moderately high-end audio retailers when I was in college.   That experience really fed the audio beast.

My journey started in high school with the typical box speakers, by Tenna Corp; they were pretty bad even at the time, but they were what I could afford.  Then while working in audio, I progressed through Chartwell, Byers, M&K, & Ohm.  By my 3rd year in college, I'd moved up to Klipsch La Scala powered by Audio Research D76A amp (all in my dorm room).  I moved to a diffrent hifi store that carried Acoustat and I fell in love with boxless dipoles.  My journey started with the Acoustat 1, then the 1+1.   I moved to Magnepan with the IIa and the Tympany 3d.  I had a brief fling with the Dahlquist DQ10.

I got married and my wife bought me the XStatic EC/X and that ha been my speaker of choice for the last 35 years.  I toyed with the Totem Element Metal V2, but sold that off.  Now I just acquired the ML Renaissance 15a and I'm looking to play with that for a bit.

All in, I went from box, to horn, to panels and really never looked back.  Every time I go and listen to a system somewhere, I can always hear the box, and that bothers me.  If I wanted to spend big dollars, there are some very nice box speakers out there, but dollar for value, I'll stick with the open-baffle/dipole/panel approach as it suits me well.

Always had floor standers & until recently, went for decades with the same stuff. 

1974: Rectilinear 3a’s driven by a Marantz 2270. Sold the 2270 recently for a hefty profit. Rectilinear’s are now in a buddies garage in his second home in Pinehurst. We still blast them while playing ping pong. 

1993: Created a basement system with Klipsch Epic’s driven by a Yamaha RX-V870. Still had the Rectilinear’s upstairs. 

2023: KEF R5’s driven by Marantz 7015

2024: KEF R11’s driven by Rogue RP-1/Moon 320A

2026: KEF Ref 3’s driven by PS Audio BHK pre/Moon 760A