I insinuated no such thing; I totally believe in Clayton's motives in bringing out new models. They're obviously drastically different in many ways from the old ones and are so refreshingly opposed to the run-of-the-mill designs clogging the catalogues that I think everybody remotely interested in sound reproduction should be auditioning them. My goal in fact is free discussion of SA's offerings. If you wish to turn this Forum into an SA lovefest I think it loses the rationale for its existence. While my experience of the SA line is limited, I have been extremely enthusiastic ("astonishing", "remarkable", etc) over what I have heard. However, I really don't believe that they do everything perfectly and I don't think it does anyone any favours in the long run by proclaiming the perfection of the current models. I mean, where would that leave Clayton's room to move? I bet even now he's thinking about improvements to his designs, improvements that some of the owners of these models are insisting would be unnecessary.
I must have misread your intentions. I saw someone with few posts on AC suddenly show up with a flurry of posts in the Spatial Audio forum promoting pro-audio powered speakers and denigrating the bass performance of home audio designs in general, including those of Spatial Audio. And these claims were backed up by your personal perceptions of the bass performance of the M4, which I thought was a rather poor reference point relative to the current Spatial offerings.
But I'm no Spatial fanboy. Yes, I used to own the M1 (equivalent of the M3), and have heard a friend's M4 on many occasions, including borrowing for a full weekend at my own home. But I sold the M1 after hearing the Daedalus DA-RMa V2 speakers in my system. They were just at a different level of detail and realism, while retaining a very natural sound. Like you, I loved the performance of the earlier M-series of Spatial, but did not find they were "perfect" speakers. But also like you, I am very curious about the new Sapphire and X-Series by Spatial, especially since it sounds like the X-Series has a very minimal crossover system which can have upgraded capacitors, and the Sapphire has a crossover box that is not integrated into the baffle and may afford enough space for upgrades there too. With my current Zu Omen Dirty Weekends, which use only a single capacitor to roll off the supertweeter and nothing at all on the main driver, the quality of that single capacitor makes quite a bit of difference in the overall sound. Doing one's best to design minimal crossovers and then use top quality crossover parts is, IMO, crucial to hearing what speakers are truly capable of.
