I think you have the Heil Bug. Everyone has their own preferences. It’s about what works for you. There is no one universally accepted preference in anything to do with audio (sound reproduction) .

I heard them in the late 1970’s.

More recently l heard the back story from Jill Pass who did the QA at ESS on the Heil drivers.

Back in the day the ESS branded loudspeaker systems were a a west coast sound attention getter when Direct to Disk vinyl was frequently used for listening demos.

Thelma Houston comes to mind.

They sounded impressively loud but the Avid 102’s got my thumbs up compared to the ESS Tempest at the time. I played mainly contemporary jazz at the time. About 18 months later l heard the JBL 4343’s which at the time were in a different league. I subsequently built a pair of 4343 clones in my father’s garage. I don’t think that was a stupid decision.