My thinking was that I was not going to be comparing these things side by side … so if it put the equivalent smile on my face at a fraction of the cost … that was the speaker for me!
Floyd Toole skewers the B&W Matrix 802N as a deeply flawed loudspeaker in his book. I remember being extremely impressed with the Thiel CS 3.6 back in the mid-90's, and Sean Olive mentioning that loudspeaker as normcore average. My favorite demo was a KEF Model 4 with its bottomless bass, something I routinely achieve with a sub from the same era.
It almost feels like a downer that my current and secondary 2022 setups are more neutral and likely outperform my 90's heroes.
