Three High-Fidelity Speakers You Must Experience

When it comes to high-fidelity speakers, all the great brands strive to do the same thing – reproduce the sound just the way it was recorded. In reality, all great brands have a certain character they bring to sound reproduction. 

It's not that they change the sound or actively try to do so. It's that they bring different design philosophies and technologies to the speakers they produce. Those design decisions make for different nuances in the sound. But that's what makes hi-fi wonderful – there's tremendous variety in sound presentation. If all speakers of a given size sounded the same, what fun would that be? The right speaker is ultimately the one that just sounds right to your ears.

In this blog, we’ll cover three great speakers from three great speaker companies – Bowers & Wilkins, Klipsch, and MartinLogan. The three that we picked are very close in price and are affordable for the hi-fi audio enthusiast. While not inexpensive, any of these could easily be in your system twenty years from now, because great speakers never go out of style. 

Keep reading to see which of these speakers gets your audio juices flowing in your Dunwoody, GA listening room.

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The Bowers & Wilkins 702 Signature

The 700 Series sits just below the esteemed 800 Diamond Series in the B&W hierarchy. The 702 Signature is the latest incarnation of the series and borrows key innovations from it. One of its signature design features is the Carbon Dome tweeter mounted in its own enclosure milled from a solid block of aluminum atop the cabinet. The midrange driver also borrows from the 800 series, with its proprietary Continuum cone, a composite material developed over eight years that replaced B&W's longtime use of Kevlar. The Aerofoil Profile bass cone with its wing-shaped design rounds out the lower octaves with deep, accurate bass.  

Finished in a gorgeous rosewood finish called Datuk Gloss, this speaker looks like a fine piece of furniture, and no two pairs share the same grain pattern. It is as beautiful to behold as it is to hear. The 702 Signature towers encompass the best of B&W audio know-how in an elegant, sensibly sized high-fidelity tower speaker. 

The Klipsch Cornwall IV

The Klipsch Cornwall IV, revamped in 2019, is part of the company’s Heritage line, with a history dating back to 1959. The Heritage line features the Klipsch trademark horn design that gives these speakers the “live” sound that founder Paul Klipsch strove for in his namesake speakers. The Cornwall IV took everything from the previous iteration and made it better, with a smoother midrange Tractrix horn and port design for deeper, more articulate bass. The Cornwall is still hand-built in the U.S. and Klipsch’s original location in Hope, Arkansas, and features book-matched black ash, cherry, and American walnut finishes. You might need a little more room for this one, as each Cornwall IV weighs 100 pounds. This is a large speaker with big sound to match. If you love a speaker that effortlessly plays big like a live band is in the room with you, you’ll want to hear the Cornwall IV.

The MartinLogan Classic ESL 9

MartinLogan, like Klipsch, is a distinctly American audio company that is also known for a technology they have pioneered and evolved over their history. The company is best known for its electrostatic speakers, a different transducer type that is remarkable for reproducing a wide frequency range with lower distortion than traditional cone drivers. The lack of enclosures and the light weight of the diaphragm allow them to create a very wide and airy soundstage, one prized by many audio enthusiasts.  In the ESL 9, MartinLogan presents an affordable yet high-performing entry point into the world of electrostatic speakers. As electrostatics are not the best at generating prodigious amounts of bass, MartinLogan uses dual opposing woofers in the speaker cabinet's base to augment the low end.

If you love classical music and other genres where instruments and detail matter, you may love the electrostatic design. The ESL 9 makes a statement in any room and shows that its owner is serious about sound.

To learn more about any of these incredible high-fidelity speakers and many more that GHT Group carries, visit our Marietta showroom, contact us here, or click below to quickly connect with one of our audio experts. We look forward to serving you.