Of course the reviewer loved them: "Right now, these are the speakers I'd consider most if 20 grand were burning a hole in my pocket."
That is a wry qualification that the reviewer offers, as I reflect on it.
It could be argued as tantamount to saying, "...these are the speakers I'd consider most if I had just drunk a half-dozen shots of tequila and still had enough coordination to find and extract my wallet from my pocket".
Actually, it kind of reminds me of what "Randy" wrote about the redoubtable
Kenwood KA-3500 integrated amp in a
Warehouse Sound catalog many years ago (ca. 1976).
Wrote Randy:
“Right off, I’m in big trouble. My dilemma is that this Kenwood amp is far better than $160 should decently buy. So how do I go about describing how great this mother really is without sounding like some whacked-out record reviewer who’s just had his nose packed by some record company PR man and consequently is just bown away by this hot new act…”
I.e., in the current context: "... these are the speakers I'd consider most if I were coked out of my gourd, on somebody else's dime..."
I guess the editors made the review change the wording a wee bit for the published review.
Randy and his
intoxicating $313 hifi buy, for posterity...
You probably can't see it clearly in my medium-res scan
below above, but
Randy was apparently quaffing a Bud during the photoshoot. Maybe washing down a snootful of Peruvian marching powder... who knows?