Von Schweikert has been an odd company ever since they opened in the mid-90's. They've moved their manufacturing around, gone through more product line changes than any company I've ever known, and had several up and down finanical periods.
Their literature & white papers frankly read like a load of BS much of the time. Every couple of years Albert discovers new drivers that are phenomenally better than the old ones. And then two years later this repeats again. And again.
The designs don't seem to have near the same rigorous science behind them as most other high-end speakers.
Yet somehow through all of this, Albert comes up with some truly wonderful sounding speakers. He's got a touch for this, even though his explainations read more like magic than sound audio principles.
I kinda don't want to like VS speakers, because of how much BS is in their literature and how the designs bounce around. A new example of this is how their new center speaker can be timbre-matched to any speaker using their "UTM" circuit:
http://www.vonschweikert.com/zvisiun.htm
All of that said, I've had a chance to audition a number of them over the years and found several of them to be extremely nice. A few months ago I had a chance to compare the VR-5 SE vs Wilson Sophias for a couple of hours in a good listening room, using my own CDs. I came away liking the VR-5's better, even though I wanted to like the Sophias better.
The soundstage, openness, and apparent realism of the VR-5 SEs were amazing. The Sophias were a little tighter & had great resolution, but when we cranked up the VS's, one became immersed in the music.
I'd love to hear the higher end VS speakers, something using a ribbon tweeter.
