Florian

I was not comparing the AN E to Apogee and nor do I want to start a list of who owns what because in fact you can be sure that both AN and Apogee will lose. I mentioned reviewers because reviewers generally listen to more equipment than do most consumers and they usually hear them under good conditions.

The large Soundlab that E-Stat shows for example is made for a very very large room - quite obviously the AN E is not and would as you note flounder in a large listening room like that. They were not built for rooms much bigger than 25 X 25 so obviously would not be suitable for the very big room customer.

Like I said I am no longer going to try and convince people what they should like. But as a note Kondo-San died several years ago. He made very few Audio Note components and most who have auditioned both like Martin Colloms have said that the AN UK stuff is superior - he reviewed both Ongaku's. AN UK created all the digital and analog front ends with Guy Adams of Voyd - not the new TT3 but the old one.

You are correct that the front end helps but all of their front ends since the mid 1980s were designed "through" the AN E in that that was the speaker they tested everything on and the little brothers - and the Snell Type A. So whatever anyone hears in any AN amp DAC etc was very likely designed through the E.

In the end from a practical sense what you say is true. There is no point in comparing a speaker maker today making speakers people can buy with a speaker maker that went out of business many years ago and managed to sell only a handful of loudspeakers.

I am not sure of the point you are making but you may want to consider that your intended point may be perceived as the exact opposite because when I read
that a a speaker maker who can only sell a few speakers and then goes out of business because they can't sell them does not make me think they're exclusive but makes me think that "if they were any good they would have been able to 1) sell them and 2) sell enough of the rest of their speakers to stay in business. Since they could do neither that doesn't make me think they're terrific.

I am not saying anything about their sound directly - I am just saying that you might want to consider that your argument for your support of them might need a second look because rightly or wrongly that is how that argument will likely be perceived.