Over the last two weeks I’ve been trying to buy some speakers for (2 channel) music listening.  I’ve listened to a lot of speakers: 

• Aurum Cantus V3M  
• Kef XQ20
• Dynaudio Focus 140 
• Krix Phoenix 
• B&W 684  
• B&W 683
• B&W CM1 

I’ve finally chosen some Jamo c803′s.

The best floorstanding speaker I listened to was the Krix Phoenix – it was also the cheapest (and locally made). 

The best bookshelf was maybe V3M or the XQ20 or the Focus 140′s. They weren’t enough better to justify more than 2x the price though and since I didn’t listen to them in the same session or location – it’s possible they weren’t even better. 

Anyway – it’s been interesting. It turns out that the HiFi/AV/Audiophile world is another planet. A planet where:

• Freezing a “mp4″ player can improve the quality of the files stored on it
• $500 ethernet cables improve sound quality
• Wooden ball’s put under a CD player can “improve the sound stage by 20%”

Best of all – many of these “subjectivists” claim that double blind testing interferes with the results. 

Which is to say that after this – arguments about ORM’s seem welcome.