That's wise advice, John. My problem is v4 has introduced me to the wide, deep, layered and nuanced soundstage I've been looking for since around 2012. I can't see how this experience can be further improved with passive cross-overs. I maintain Axiom has taken the current architecture as far as it can. I want to believe active speakers will heighten the experience and LFRs more so.

My experience with omni-directional speakers from Bose, Mirage and KEF has not been good though. I don't want the so-called "stereo everywhere" effect but I can see how certain applications benefit from it. I want stereo at my MLP only and I want that stereo stage to be as wide, deep and layered as it can possibly be with sharply defined images and blackness (silence) in between with audibly invisible speakers. I get that with all my v4 and find that both my M3 and M5 disappear. The M100 disappears less well but it has the advantage of higher fidelity (instrument and voice realism).

This disappearing act is vastly important to me as is the soundstage I described. Power handling and dynamics are secondary. I would gladly take an M3, with its lower fidelity, over an active LFR, if that M3 was better in the disappearing act and soundstage departments.

I also have some emotional concerns about even trying LFRs or active LFRs. I hold both Ian and Andrew in very high regard. I have very private reasons for feeling this way about them but let's just say you'd have to be in product design, like me, to fully understand why. If I listen to the active LFRs and they offer no or only a minor improvement in the features I really care about, I will be shattered. Shattered because this journey with the Family of Curves, the LFRs, and now the active LFRs, was a long and painful one and most likely not over. For it to lead to a dead end with active LFRs would be too much for me.

I can take the blue pill and happily live with my passive v4. I can take the red pill, go down the rabbit hole and emerge in some warped space-time that will scramble my emotions. I suppose maybe there's a green pill that will lead me into active but not LFR land.