<font color='#000000'>Towers vs. Towers and Bookshelves vs. Bookshelves makes sense to me. People often move up from bookshelf to tower (or even back) during the purchasing process, but generally you're looking at one or the other. It's too "apples to oranges" if you compare towers to bookshelves. I hear what you're saying about price, but really, those value decisions may be best left to readers. I really like the way Audioholics does it, where they rate the speakers on quality independent of price, and then come in and rate them on value. That seems like a fair way to get over the cost differential. Readers can draw their own inferences on quality then, and decide where they fall on the quality vs. value spectrum. After all, many would gladly spend an extra $150 to get the BEST bookshelf in the shootout, while many others would more gladly save $150 to get the second or third best speaker but the one that won for value. So separating quality and value makes sense.
I have one other thought I'd like to add -- how about scrapping the under $500 floorstander part of the shootout, and doing centers or surrounds instead? I'd rather see a shootout on each company's best speakers, not their entry-level mediocre ones. At under $500, you can see some great bookshelves, but not such great floorstanders. But the under $500 threshold lends itself well to a center-channel or surround shootout. Then in the under $1000 group do just the premiere floorstanders for those same companies. Not sure if under $1000 is the right threshold ... How about around $1000?
Just my .02 based on what I'd want to read.
Birdman</font>
