Ugly vs Gogeous speakers


I know speakers should be all about sound but I can't help responding to the look as well and this presents me with a dilemma.

I have owned B&W Nautilus 803's for many years and love the sound and value (excellent sound for reasonable cost). I would love to upgrade but I (and wife) think that the retro Star Wars R2D2 looking speaker (802) is nothing we would have in our living space.

What do others think the best looking / sounding speaker is? Do looks matter to you?

128x128jyprez
I've read most of your comments with an open mind.  I realize that beauty is somewhat subjective.  Most people can agree on a pretty woman, beautiful home, nice car, etc, but speakers seem to be not in any of those categories.  
For me, I have always enjoyed (much like cars and women) really nice curves.  If you look at some of the most coveted cars in the world, Shelby cobras, Porsche 911, audi R8, they are well rounded.  So for me, I like the 802 D3s. Really nice curves.

But I also own three of them. 

I am just not into anything I can potentially build in my garage in an afternoon with a table saw and jig.  Not to say I don't appreciate those other speakers, (which I do) I just like something with a little more sex appeal.  
 Beauty certainly is in the eye of the beholder.  James mentioned someone's wife dry-heaving over the look of the MBLs.
The MBLs have always been divisive: as an example of more "way out there" industrial design, I actually find them beautiful.

Probably the most puzzling "WAF" note I've seen was in the Soundstage review of the Joseph Audio Pulsar speakers.  The reviewer swooned over their sound, but could not keep them because apparently his wife hated their looks so much she put her foot down on his ever buying them.  The Pulsars are about as normal-looking a monitor as there is, and even with some nice contemporary lines.  How someone could hate their looks so much truly baffles me (and that line of Joseph speakers usually gets kudos for their good looks).

wspohn mentions the "mistake" of putting grills on the Wilsons.  I'm with his wife on this one: I generally don't care to see the speaker drivers.  While *some* designs do have beautiful looking drivers, most look drab or industrial.  The Wilsons are IMO a perfect example of this: there is nothing pretty about their drivers, and they exhibit one of my pet peeves: the very visible silver screw heads around the drivers.   I get this can make it easy to place and swap the drivers...but jeeze...go the extra yard to make it look nice. You don't see screw heads sticking out of walls and nice furniture for a reason; why anyone wants to look at those, like some unfinished shop project, on their super expensive speakers is a mystery to me.




Both aesthetics and sound are a personal choice for anyone buying a pair of speakers.  That being said, the Lawrence Audio line of speakers not only looks very different and aesthetically pleasing but they are extremely neutral sounding with tight bass, gorgeous mid-range, and extended sweet sounding high-end. Look at some pics on my website at eastendhifi.com
I think it could be said that some speaker designs are quite unusual in appearance.  One either likes it or hates it.  Other designs are quite conservative which equates to boring, the boxy design with a narrow width and longer depth made out of some variety of budget conscious MDF.  But at least with many of these, stains or wood grain laminates are often offered to dress it up.

I still like the curved cabinet variety, with a nice wood grain, but even that is probably seen as conservative by some.  Still, it's usually a lot harder to manufacture, or at least if your doing it to minimize standing waves and resonances.  I'm still surprised that a newish company like Tekton has paid such little attention to looks, with greens, blues and yellows as color options for a 3000+ speaker.  Hideous.


My wife isn't the sort of person who would care what my speakers look like but would certainly have issues if they smelled bad. Speaker design esthetics are so all over the map it's amazing, and that's actually a good thing.