High-End Speakers

A loudspeaker is the only component you hear directly. Everything else is upstream of it.

The speakers below span four approaches that rarely sit in one showroom: Wilson's sealed-enclosure precision, Sonus faber's Italian cabinetry and voicing, Magnepan's full-range planar magnetic panels, Martin Logan's electrostatics, and MBL's omnidirectional Radialstrahler. They do not sound alike, and that is the point.

Specifications will not tell you which one belongs in your room. Placement, room acoustics and the amplification in front of them change the answer more than any measurement does. That is what the listening rooms in Scottsdale and Tempe are for — hear them against each other, with your own recordings, before deciding.

The right loudspeaker is the one that disappears in your room — not the one that measured best in someone else's.

How to choose a floorstander

Two questions come before the shortlist. How far can the speakers come off the front wall — three feet opens up most of the range, less than that narrows it sharply. And can your amplifier hold the load: minimum impedance and phase angle decide that, not the wattage figure.

Choosing a floorstander, in detail

Start with the room, not the shortlist. A large floorstander in a small room, pushed near a wall because there is nowhere else for it to go, will sound worse than a smaller model given space to breathe. If the speakers can come three feet off the front wall you have real options. If they cannot, that constraint should shape the list before price does.

Then look at the load rather than the wattage. Sensitivity tells you how much output a speaker gives for a given input, and nominal impedance tells you how hard it is to drive — but the number that matters is the minimum impedance and how far the phase angle swings with it. A nominal eight-ohm speaker that dips to three ohms in the bass will humble an amplifier that looked adequate on paper. This is the single most common mismatch we correct.

Finally, be honest about how you listen. A speaker voiced for low-level detail rewards late-night listening at conversational volume. One voiced for scale and dynamics wants to be driven. Both are legitimate; they are different instruments. Telling us which you are saves a great deal of time.

Hear these in Scottsdale and Tempe

Loudspeakers are the component where auditioning matters most and where showroom conditions mislead most easily. We set pairs up in a treated room, positioned properly, on amplification that suits them — and we will happily run the same pair on two very different amplifiers so you can hear how much of the character belongs to which. Bring your own recordings and allow an hour.