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
Sorry about the empty posts above. I fell in love with the esthetics of the Legacy Focus.  I bought them in 95.  I think you might describe them as Art Deco and still love the looks and the music that flows from these beautiful 7way gems 22 years later. The new Focus do not look as good. 
Certainly tastes differ, but I can't see why anyone would want a speaker whose looks they don't like in their place--any more than they'd like an ugly chair or picture. 
I personally love the understated elegance of my B/W cm9s. Rosewood and plain black grills. Slender. Lovely. But much as I love their sound, if I were going up I wouldn't listen to their 800 series, b/c I find them really ugly--like British letterboxes. 
Tidal is gorgeous--not too cheap. Raidho is slender, which I like. Wilson is blah. Magico at least has simple, clean lines. I quite like the Monitor audio pl II--and their sound is out of this world.
Aerial are well done. I'd like to see the new Paradigm Persona line in person.
And there are some European lines that are all beautiful wood--Penaudio and Arthos (something like that) I think are great.
One other issue someone might have mentioned: size and weight. I mean, having a 200 or 200+ pound thing in your living room might be a bit much unless your a really strong person. Kind of hard to move if you need to.
that's one advantage of Vivid Giya--less than 100 pounds--and only $40k!
best to all,


A used pair of 
Merlin VSM black magic
Speakers.  You will need 1 extra interconnect. Very sexy speaker.    If you have a sub sitting around 
  Its a great value. Only look at  Black magic VSM 
I actually enjoy some of the B&W loudspeakers and I own the Nautilus 804's in a home theater setup.  For my recent 2 channel system I selected a Wilson-Benesch Vertex.  Extremely pleased with this 2-way and it isn't weird to look at.  Check them out.
Best of luck!
Wolfe_g, my wife is the same.  Although when I switched from towers to standmounts in my theater, she didn't quite care for that.  Her hearing is quite sensitive, but she just doesn't care about audio whatsoever. 
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