Unless you are dealing with a dyed in the wool audiophile, anything from a major speaker manufacturer is going to sound pretty good in this price range, as long as you don’t buy models that are meant to be satellites and require a woofer.

mike, back under the rock. Now.



Be careful of speakers that impress you. Very often these won't be impressive in a year but will sound bad to you, even irritate the hell out of you.

Look (ok, listen) for speakers that don't impress you. That don't sound like speakers. That sound like there's nothing there but the musicians. The nice warm tone on Joan Baez's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a resonance!

All sound is resonance- what was your point?

I never meant they should be sensational but some are, in their realism. Many people are wowed by boom/crash, but grow out of it- some don’t. Speakers must not be irritating. Once that has been accomplished, they need to be free of distortion. The debate about what makes a speaker qualify as ‘great’ will never end.

Nothing there but the musicians? You know most recordings are an assembly of recorded tracks and snippets of sounds, right? I remember you writing that you were involved in some direct to disc recordings, but how do we know how every one of those instruments sound? Most of the reverberant sound WRT instruments and vocals is there because they wanted it, so they used effects to add it. Un-mic’d bass, drum triggers, keyboards and some other instruments go direct to the mixing console.

All we can do is hope to find speakers that reproduce sound in a way that pleases us. We hear different speakers constantly and we may like many for different reasons, but we’ll still prefer something over the rest.

I keep going back to Totem for these kinds of needs. Pretty much every speaker they make is compact in size and have several finish options. The bookshelves image like nobody's business and they generally present a very nice soundstage. Depending on the music taste and the ear, they can lack a bit in bass but setup properly, they can surprise given their stature. I own a pair of Arros, their compact floor standing model.

[Link: totemacoustic.com]

So andrewinboulder, what did you go with?

I love Totem as well but we got the boot as a dealer. We don't install many bookshelf or freestanding speakers so they gave us the axe. Which was inconvenient because we had 2 media rooms with Totem spec'd that were going out the next month. Totem gave me a lame excuse and told me they would consider if we had another sale. F that. We are no drain on their resources and sell a handful of pairs a year. Silly.

Moved bookshelf speakers back to Monitor Audio which are very good as well. Silver 100's are just over $1000 and would impress anyone.