I think Peter brings up a very useful point. On the one hand, the installers who handled Stone's system would have only "offered" it to manufacturers that they trusted would be satisfactory to their client, so whatever ends up there should be good equipment. On the other hand, Stone saying that it's good is somewhat diminished in my mind by the fact that it was a fairly significant freebie and the fact that he didn't do the research himself - sure, it's good, because his installers didn't want to get the irritated phone call from their high profile client after the system screened its first movie, but the kudos are of a lessened value in my mind. We are actually hearing him evaluate a system assembled for someone by others, with the final selection process based on the client's needs and the deals that could be swung with different manufacturers.

Here's my two cents: any review source has built-in biases, and you have to keep them in mind when reading them and determining how much weight to apply to their conclusions. Take my own sig for example - there are a number of reviews there, with more on my site and one more in the pipeline (got to finish writing my my review of URC's MX-900 remote when work and life permit), and they all include my personal biases, tastes, preferences, and notions (good or hairbrained). In the case of feedback from Oliver Stone on speakers that he got for free and that someone else picked out for him, here are the questions that I would have to ask when determining how to filter the information. (1) Are they good speakers? Yes, I would wager so - if they weren't, I doubt they would have made it into the system or remained there long, even at the eye-catching price of zilch. (2) Are they the best he found for his budget? We don't have any way to know for certain, since he didn't shop around for them and he didn't pay for them. (3) Are they the best in their price range? (Not necessarily the same as his budget, after all.) We have to look elsewhere to find any answer to this question, because Stone's use of them in this case tells us nothing. (4) What are his preferences in speaker voicing and design, and how to they compare to mine? This is the one that can really trip things up when talking about speakers, no matter who is offering the comments or under what circumstances the comments were made. In the most general terms, you can have differences between British, Canadian, and US designs as well as differences in driver type (silk dome tweeter vs. metal dome, cone vs. horn vs. electrostatic), speaker configuration (sealed vs. ported, line arrays, full-range towers vs. bookshelves and a subwoofer, and so on). If you have a real fondness for electrostatic speakers but you are looking at comments from someone who doesn't, that person's comments are less useful to you than they might be to others. Reviews, user feedback, and online forums are all useful resources, but they must always be taken with a grain of salt - whether they are positive, negative, or indifferent.

Please be clear on this - I'm not invalidating the approach you used to build your system, as I suspect you've put together a very sweet system. Instead, I'm just tossing out some personal thoughts on reading and evaluating reviews, forum comments, or even recommendations from sales people. Take these comments with as little or as much salt as appropriate.