Loudspeakers

Loudspeakers are the component that decides what your system sounds like. Everything upstream of them matters, but nothing upstream can rescue a speaker that is wrong for the room it is standing in — and in over twenty-five years of installing high-end audio, room mismatch is far and away the most common and most expensive mistake we are asked to fix.

This page carries our full loudspeaker range: floorstanders, standmounts, in-wall and on-wall models, and active designs, from around £600 a pair to £120,000. What follows is how we would actually help you choose.

Start with the room, not the budget

The single most useful number is the room’s floor area, and the second is how far the speakers can come away from the wall behind them. A cabinet has to be proportional to the volume of air it is asked to move. Put a large floorstander in a small room and it will overload it: bass that arrives late and blurs everything above it, a sound most people describe as “thick” or “boomy” and then blame on the amplifier.

As a rough working guide, and assuming a normal domestic ceiling height:

Under about 20 square metres — standmounts, or a compact floorstander. A good standmount with a subwoofer will nearly always beat a too-large floorstander in this space.
20 to 35 square metres — the typical British sitting room, and the sweet spot for mid-sized floorstanders. Most of this catalogue is designed for exactly this.
Over 35 square metres, or a dedicated room — the reference cabinets earn their keep. Below that size they are simply an expensive way to overdrive a room.

If the speakers cannot come at least 30 centimetres off the rear wall, tell us before you shortlist anything. It rules out a good proportion of rear-ported designs and rules in sealed cabinets, on-wall models and in-walls.

What each price tier actually buys you

Around £600 to £2,000 a pair. A genuinely good first serious system. At this level you are buying competent drivers in a well-braced cabinet and a crossover that has been listened to as well as measured. The honest limits are ultimate bass extension and how loudly the speaker will play before it starts to compress.

£2,000 to £7,000. The largest and, for most homes, the most sensible band. Better cabinet damping, better drivers, and a meaningful step in how much detail survives at low listening levels — which matters far more in real life than how loud a speaker will go. This is where most of our clients end up, and there is no shame in stopping here.

£7,000 to £20,000. Reference territory. The gains are real but they are conditional: they only appear if the room, the amplification and the setup are all up to it. Buying into this tier with a compromised room is money spent on something you will not hear.

Above £20,000. These are room-scale projects, not purchases. We would want to see the space before quoting.

Passive, active, or in-wall?

Passive — the conventional arrangement: your amplifier drives the speaker. Maximum flexibility, maximum choice, and the option to upgrade either half later.

Active and DSP-corrected — amplification and crossover built in and matched by the designer, often with room correction. Fewer variables, less to go wrong, and unusually good results in difficult rooms. Increasingly what we specify where the room is imperfect and cannot be changed.

In-wall and on-wall — for rooms where the loudspeaker must not be seen. Done properly this is not a compromise; the wall becomes the enclosure. Done casually it is the worst-sounding option on this page. Our designer’s guide to invisible speakers in the UK sets out honestly where each approach works.

The brands we carry, and what each is for

Bowers & Wilkins — the broadest ladder in the catalogue, from the 600 S3 series to the 800 Series Diamond D4 and the Nautilus. Consistent in character across every tier, which makes it the easiest range to grow into.
Sonus Faber — Italian, hand-finished, warm and forgiving through the midrange. The range for a room somebody has decorated, and for the listener who wants to be seduced rather than analysed.
Wisdom Audio — planar-magnetic in-wall and on-wall systems for reference cinemas and listening rooms where nothing may be visible. Quoted per project.
Lyngdorf — active, room-corrected systems where the electronics and speakers are engineered as one. Very strong in rooms that cannot be acoustically treated.
Grimm Audio — Dutch studio-derived actives, for the listener who wants the recording reported without commentary.
Ø Audio — horn-loaded designs at the specialist end of the range.

What we would actually do next

Send us the room dimensions, where the speakers can physically go, what you will drive them with, and roughly what you listen to. We will come back with two or three genuine options and, where relevant, tell you that the money is better spent on the room than the speakers — which is true more often than anyone in this trade likes to admit. See room acoustics, browse amplifiers and subwoofers, or get in touch to arrange a listen at our Bath showroom.

All prices shown include VAT. Hidden Home Technology is a family-run, CEDIA Professional Member business based in Bath, supplying and installing across Bath, Bristol, the Cotswolds, the wider South West, South Wales, London and the Home Counties.