Audioholics puts nine bookshelf speakers head-to-head

by Steven Kim posted Jan 29th 2009 at 11:55AM

Generally speaking, loudspeakers should enjoy a relatively long life in your system. That's doubly true for budget bookshelf models -- you can pick up a pair for front channel duty when you start out your HT system, migrate them to rear-channel surround duty on your first speaker upgrade, and then move them to another room when you dive into whole-home audio. Audioholics took seven budget (and a couple of higher-priced) bookshelf speakers and had a showdown based on sound quality alone in a series of head-to-head matchups. We won't spoil the outcome for you, but it turns out that you can score some good performance for not a lot of dollars -- and that's always good news, right?

Filed under: Reviews, Speakers

Tags: audioholics, loudspeakers, review, speakers

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

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FreeRange @ Jan 29th 2009 2:11PM

i don't read a lot of boks so I'm not going to comment on the typo.

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Steven Kim @ Jan 29th 2009 2:14PM

No doubt -- reading all those "boks" hasn't done my literacy any good, either. Maybe I should try these "book" things I keep hearing about instead. Thanks for the catch!

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Andy Sullivan @ Jan 29th 2009 3:05PM

Great information even though I wish you would have checked out more speakers than you did. Actually that is really a very small sampling don't you think?

Highly Ranked

Marshall @ Jan 29th 2009 4:39PM

Well, it was actually Audioholics that did the shootout, not Steve and engadget, so you should comment over there.

As far as the sample size, there are no doubt hundreds of speaker in the market in a $200-$500/pair range, but to test even a couple percent of them is asking a lot. At 9 pair, this is one of the larger shootouts that I've seen. With too many speakers, your head (and ears) start to spin, and it become difficult to make meaningful distinctions between them.

Marshall
The Real HT Info Podcast

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