Ladies/Gents

Interested to see what made people decided to purchase their speakers...?

What did you look for when choosing your speaker, frequency response, resolution, imaging, the ability to disappear, voices, bass, cost, etc. ?

What made you buy them & keep them... ?

Enjoy your music....🎼

Edited January 13Jan 13 by Bass13

Voicing, FFR, WAF are probably the top 3. A lot of the other stuff is down to set-up and room (IMESHO).

Think;- the type of music you play at what volume and room size. Small book shelf speakers to play loud rock/pop in a large open room won’t cut it. Huge multi-driver towers in a small room for female jazz singers played at moderate levels, will never work.

I don't care about imaging, never have. What matters to me are tonal balance, dynamics, and transparency.

Imaging is extremely important to me, I love to 'watch' the sound-stage before me and look for the positioning of the instruments in space. It's up there with mid-range clarity and deep integrated bass. Dynamism in the rhythm section is essential to enjoying music but matched by a sparkling top end that doesn't grate on the ears. Crikey!, that doesn't leave much room for error or faults but if you want to fend off endless upgraditus (upgradeitis??) that's a minimum combination.

Trouble is, all of those assets and attributes are there to quantified and qualified by the listener, so what's 'good enough' for the music lover and hi-fi enthusiast may be derisory to the hi-end audiophile.

Perhaps financial constraints help the ears to be more forgiving. (With me it's also my wife's financial constraint) 😏

SNA approval in the forums has to count for something 😉

But I do think a degree of non-sonic criteria play a part, like the philosophy n intent of the brand or in my case I wanted a Oz owned/built brand

23 hours ago, Keith_W said:

I don't care about imaging, never have. What matters to me are tonal balance, dynamics, and transparency.

I concur.

A great pair of speakers should have my three must haves in any part of a decent audio system..................texture, timbre and tonality

23 hours ago, Keith_W said:

I don't care about imaging, never have. What matters to me are tonal balance, dynamics, and transparency.

27 minutes ago, rantan said:

A great pair of speakers should have my three must haves in any part of a decent audio system..................texture, timbre and tonality

These all matter to us (my wife and I ) as well.

Our speakers (Linkwitz LX521s) also image beautifully, if the sound/recording engineers have done a great job.

We have recordings where we can hear all of the things that @Keith_W and @rantan mention and where the imaging is extraordinary, bur we also have recordings where all/most of the other elements are present, but the imaging is less "good", so our "conclusion" is that the imaging, where excellent is down to the engineers as much/more so than the speakers.

"WAF"? Some people hate the appearance of the LX521s, but the music which they can portray can be extraordinary, and my lovely wife isn't troubled for a moment by their appearance.

1 hour ago, rantan said:

I concur.

A great pair of speakers should have my three must haves in any part of a decent audio system..................texture, timbre and tonality

I don't get it, I want it all that plus the imaging, why not?
Even just the basic criteria should be what all audiophiles expect and that is a locked in centre phantom image as if there was another speaker between the left and right.

On 14/01/2026 at 12:33 PM, mwhouston said:

Think;- the type of music you play at what volume and room size. Small book shelf speakers to play loud rock/pop in a large open room won’t cut it. Huge multi-driver towers in a small room for female jazz singers played at moderate levels, will never work.

So its headphones ?

31 minutes ago, stereo coffee said:

So its headphones ?

Only if you listen in the toilet.

15 hours ago, Grimmie said:

Imaging is extremely important to me, I love to 'watch' the sound-stage before me and look for the positioning of the instruments in space. It's up there with mid-range clarity and deep integrated bass. Dynamism in the rhythm section is essential to enjoying music but matched by a sparkling top end that doesn't grate on the ears. Crikey!, that doesn't leave much room for error or faults but if you want to fend off endless upgraditus (upgradeitis??) that's a minimum combination.

Trouble is, all of those assets and attributes are there to quantified and qualified by the listener, so what's 'good enough' for the music lover and hi-fi enthusiast may be derisory to the hi-end audiophile.

Perhaps financial constraints help the ears to be more forgiving. (With me it's also my wife's financial constraint) 😏

6 hours ago, rantan said:

I concur.

A great pair of speakers should have my three must haves in any part of a decent audio system..................texture, timbre and tonality

I concur.

I think my list of characteristics has developed and probably changed as I experienced better equipment. I know its supposed to be all about the music..

With my very first very rudimentary system I wanted bass and clear high frequencies. I had discovered the phantom centre and that was cool.

As things progressed it became clear that there were things like tonality, decay and dynamic range.

Through all of this, in my mind, it was the pursuit of total transparency.  

There was point where with my Monitor Audio Silver 300s, I thought things were about as good as I was going to experience in my listening room with my available funds. Tight bass, good detail resolution, transparency, good tonality and musicality of instruments and a fair degree of imaging and soundstage. Then in went the PMCs and blew them out of the water. So like @Grimmie I want it all!

ps interesting to read how others have quite different priorities.

it's a reductive question, but just for fun:

There is a certain "effortlessness" about great speakers (speakers+systems) that is very listenable.

If they sound like they aren't even trying, if the music is just "there" in space, that's really lovely.

Tone for me. I like the warmer side of neutral so I can have long, relaxing listening sessions. Good detail and the ability to play loud clearly is also important as I'm quite a rock/metal fan.

My Focal Aria 936's do a nice all round job in these areas. I have other standmount speakers to shine in other areas/genre's. Too many speakers.

I tend to disagree with a number of previous statements, however,,,

A good pair of speakers should disappear in an accurate image soundstage of height, width and depth.

The magic of stereo can produce music that can hang right in front of you, instruments and singers that can be placed in or move through this sound plane pending on how the producer "saw" their creation in the stereo sonic sound field..

The speakers should interact within their installed space in a minimalistic way and in the case of constant directivity Point Source Elliptical Horn by Red Spade Audio are surprisingly non fatiguing to listen to as a result. This non fatiguing nature tends to invite the listener to engage in longer more in depth listening sessions where details of particular performances can be studied at length and depth.

The speakers will disappear command their own space in time.

I tend to choose speakers by two metrics, their ability to produce this sound plane image (directional sound) and bass tonality (non directional sound) the second of which will be calibrated and tonality correct, the wider the frequency response into these bass (low frequency) regions the better.

The stereo loudspeaker set in my honest opinion is only part of a wider synergistical installation of it in a space designed to maximise the above traits of my choice. Dynamics tend to come naturally to speakers of these natural characteristics.

I could go on :)

playdough.

Edited January 17Jan 17 by playdough

into the fifth dimension?

30 minutes ago, will robinson said:

into the fifth dimension?

I'll guess this post is an extension of my description, Will.

No, just 3 dimensions.

Height width and depth, of the sound stage.

Speaker set above is a 2012 era JBL Theatre Screen (missing the center speaker which I have) requisitioned from the 500 seat previewing Theatre in Sydney, in a smaller area, the sound stage was somewhat stretched in the vertical plane, but ticked every other box I can think of with regard to a great speaker.

Dynamic, accurate, engaging as the JBL Pro Theatre Engineering section would have spent thousands of hours perfecting,,,, the PSE144, brings it all together into a point source, for the small lounge, most of us are used to.

Ladies/Gents

Thanks all for your inputs, to be honest I expected such a diverse range of views, on what people want or like to hear in their speakers.

Enjoy your systems, however you want to enjoy, listening to them...🎼

Edited January 18Jan 18 by Bass13

On 17/01/2026 at 5:29 PM, playdough said:

I could go on :)

You already did 🤣

Looking at your pic, I bet your neighbours love you 🔊

15 minutes ago, blakey72 said:

Looking at your pic, I bet your neighbours love you 🔊

Maybe the point I was making was missed.

On 17/01/2026 at 5:29 PM, playdough said:

The stereo loudspeaker set in my honest opinion is only part of a wider synergistical installation of it in a space designed to maximise the above traits of my choice. Dynamics tend to come naturally to speakers of these characteristics.

An extra sensitive, potentially (+120dB) ear bleedingly loud system's performance at 80/90dB operates at vanishingly low distortion levels. The larger drivers barely move and operate within half a mm of excursion at normal listening levels within that space, another benefit is the 8 channel amplifier array is normally running within 1w per channel.

Yes the same system has been trotted out tp perform to 300 people on the odd occasion ,,,,,,, :)

Vanishingly low distortion is a main goal, it maximizes dynamic performance.

That lounge itself is partially soundproof, it has double layer plaster walls/ceiling, double glazing, internal wall treatments, custom double blinds of heavy drapes and the walls inside are adorned with 14m2 single and double layer limp weighted membrane bass traps, probably much more than meets the eye, to be sure.

The room treatment goes a long way to limit reflections, comb filtering and does go a little way to improve bass nodes and room pumping.

At normal listening levels, I cannot hear the system 8 meters from the outside wall and both my neighbors have both commented that they have never heard it after the fairly recent renovation.

I guess I missed a trait in a speaker that means a lot to me, sensitivity.

Now, there might be some that suggest that a low sensitivity speaker is excellent and I will not disagree, but it has to be powered correctly, or power compression can result and the more a bass driver is excursing, the more it is distorting,,,

I like active digital filtering and use 8 channels of up to 100w per channel, so not a great deal of power there, but at 1 to 10w they operate nicely, and do not take up a mountain of space.

Anyone else want to chip in to the discussion about the speakers ,,,, happy to help.

THe PSE144/Twin 21's my favorite speaker system to date.

Edited January 19Jan 19 by playdough

Timbral accuracy. I want a clarinet to sound like a clarinet. If your speakers can reproduce instruments accurately then I think all the other goodies like soundstaging should follow. In my experience the viol family is the hardest to reproduce - I put that down to the fact they produce the most complex waveforms.

No characteristic

Great responses here. For me it’s neutrality.

I need a speaker with a house sound that works for music and home theater with a reasonable cost to performance ratio.

Nah, just having a joke 👍

It sounds and looks like an amazing setup. You've put some work into that!

@blakey72 more than a weekend ☠️