I come the days of the DQ 10 speakers, my 1st high-end speaker and one I still remember fondly, they were open baffle except for the sealed sub, and they were just so open sounding, based the design on the look of Quad ESL 57 speaker and Jon tried to get a cone speaker to have some the of the positive sound of the ESL so OB midrange on up. Later in this hobby, I purchased a pair of Quad 63 speakers that were totally rebuilt by Electrostatic Solutions, from the power supply up, and it was an OMG moment. I had that 10 years or so and was itching for a change and I could not find a speaker good enough to replace them and I listened to speakers up to 25K. I then came across Spatial Audio and did some research and then I found the New Record Day videos and some interest with Clayton. I spoke with Clayton and he was a straight stand-up guy, told me the upside of changing from Quads and some of the things the Quad did so well, but he thought I be more than happy with the Sapphires M3's than the X series for my room. Been 8 months and I am more than happy I made the change, I no longer miss the Quads, I enjoy what the M3's bring to the reproduction of music, snd keep in mind these are beating other brands that I heard from the $15,000-$25,000 range, and you know the names from the reviews in the audio magazines, the brands they review over and over. So at $5,000 my M3's are a stone-cold bargain. Let them burn-in in good and you will be rewarded with world-class sound, that is open, detailed and with the best bottom octaves reproduction, you will ever hear. Subs really are not needed, and I tried a pair in my system, and out they went, the purity of the M3's as stand-alone speakers is the way to go, and they can really go as low as you would need if the recording has it, rarely have I felt bass in my chest on test CD with bass tones that went down to 20Hz and at 25Hz I still had the bass in my room. Great company, great guy, and a dam good speaker. You can't go wrong.
