I have a coworker who is looking for speakers. She is an older woman and is really interested in her interior decoration. She has seen me browsing here and has asked for my advice, but I'm a bit stumped.
Basically, she cares mostly about the looks, and very little about the sound. At first I thought she might want Gallo or Orb type small speakers. But she is actually really impressed by some of the more exotic looking speakers. She liked various Martin Logans, Onix Strata and X-static, Scandyna Megapod, Gallo Ref 3.1, Urban Fidelity/Duevel Planets, etc. She also liked fancy monitor speakers on stands such as Usher X-718 and B&W 805S. I think she almost wants a conversation piece that will also play background music.
The problem is she doesn't really want to spend much. Certainly not the $1k+ that some of those cost. And frankly I wouldn't feel good knowing that a higher end speaker is being wasted like that. But surely there must be some compromise.
Please suggest any fairly cheap yet high end looking speakers you can think of. So far I've come up with the following:
NHT Classic 3 (probably not visually imposing enough)
Celestion AVF302 (perfect but not available anymore)
HTD level 2 towers (kind of too plain and square)
That's about it.... I'm certain there are some great looking speakers out there, most likely monitors, but I can't think of any that fit this application. Anything with decent veneer or piano black finish would be good. The more curves the better too.
Thanks
