The problem is the drivers are NOT the most important aspect of a loudspeaker. This is a reason why very ordinary driver technologies (silk and dome) that have been around forever find themselves in serious speaker company line-ups while fashion design speakers like to point to Be, Diamond, Kevlar, etc.

It's also not terribly surprising that many of the speakers I like even at $3k and $5k beat $20k+ designs - even if those speakers are using woofers that are TEN times the price it has to be implemented well. Certainly a better driver could help assuming you can also mate it to the tweeter and cabinet reactions. As noted - you can't buy AN's woofers from SEAS or any of their resellers - if you can show me the link to the SEAS 8 inch Hemp woofers I'd be interested to see them.

Tube-fan - I would like to hear the Fulton J modulars as they seem interesting and Peter Q greatly respected the designer (indeed they very much resemble in design the Snell Type A which Peter uses as his reference). I was less enthused by the Dunlavey IV floorstanders - I like the big power and dynamics and scale but didn't like them as much at medium low levels which is the level I would listen to them at 95% of the time nor was I big fan of the treble. I remember back then that I preferred a similarly priced speaker from a company called Hales (not sure where they went).