Commonly mentioned speaker brands?

people who have the kind of taste that frequent a site like this, or are they generally recognized as superior brands?

Yes and yes.

Not sure of the exact brands.

The greatest performers in my experience are:

Sonus Faber

Magico (you better have really good electronics… or you are going to hear their faults.

Wilson

Yeah, these are exceptional performing speakers.

Also,

Honorable Mention:

Focal

B&W are a bit like MAC electronics… you like mostly rock, they sound great… if you have a much larger pallet… look elsewhere.

Depending on your exposure there a few others folks will mention.

They are the favorites of certain people, for sure. Every speaker has strengths and weaknesses, plus the ol' beauty is in the eye of the beholder thing. 

This site definitely has some esoteric  biases. I would not rely exclusively on what products get the most buzz here at the time. Stick with products that have long successful histories and lots of people all over who like them.

I have found myself gravitating not so much to the brands that get mentioned the most often, but the ones which get mentioned enough that I realized there was something of quality there. Add to that that there is very little debate about these less-mentioned but not obscure brands and that indicates -- to me -- that there is something flying "under the radar." 

Examples:

Salk, Fritz, Silverline in speakers (as opposed to the biggies, such as Focal); Audio Mirror Tubador or Mojo DACs; deHavilland, Herron, Supratek for preamps; Allnic, Atmasphere, Quicksilver for amps. 

These are just examples, but they hit a sweet spot of value -- there's not much chance it's *just* their name getting them touted by people. (Not that, say, Focal fans are only taken in by the name, of course, but some really do get swamped by the marketing/buzz around brands with big distributions.)