Not to nitpick, but "audiophile" sound can mean different things to different people. But to keep things
very simple, here are the two most common types of sound I see decribed as something an audiophile would like:
1) extremely accurate. Studio monitors fit this description & they allow you to hear everything....good AND bad. So if you're watching a movie from the 70s with a soundtrack made on substandard gear, you'll be able to hear the analog tape hiss just as clearly as the actors' voices. Crunchy/staticky distortion from overloaded mics at a 90s grunge band recording session? That too!
2) realistic sounding.
Not the same as above. Such speakers can add their own "sonic spices" to everything they reproduce and this can be a good thing for all those recordings - movies and music - that weren't recorded all that well (despite being in the age of digital with all *its* inherent accuracy, the human element still ends up asserting itself in various ways and can chip away at that accuracy ---> interestingly enough, many times something is recorded badly
on purpose to generate a specific feeling in the listener's head). But when playing back well recorded music/movies these same speakers can reduce their playback quality (or "dumb it down" in some people's opinions) to almost the same level as the worse recordings. The positive side of this situation is that the owner gets to hear the sound he enjoys pretty much with everything he listens to i.e. if his ears are particularly sensitive to treble frequencies and he bought a speaker with a softened hi-end, well, he's all set!*
BTW: some of those speakers in your list have wildly different sonic personalities but since that opinion is based on what I've read here and elsewhere, rather than personal experience, I'll let their owners talk about that.
A bookshelf that was on the cover of The Absolute Sound recently from a company I admire:
the NHT Classic 3.
They also sell a cheaper 2-way version.
Here's a gi-normous
thread (149 pages!) at another forum about this series of speakers.
Boston Acoustics VRB (large-ish bookshelf w/7" woofer along with BA's best tweeter)
Boston Acoustics CR77 (6.5" woofer + their soft-dome tweeter)
Publicly BA gets little respect for some reason (I STILL don't know why either, despite repeated direct requests) but when asked who owns them and likes them, many members here and on other forums will pipe up and say so. Same with Infinity, older Advents and other good brands. BTW, I own BAs myself.
Relatively speaking, IMO they don't cost much for all the technology you're getting though to do this, they usually leave out real wood veneers and other non-sound related features.
*
not trying to piss off anyone, but electrostatic speakers - the ones with no separate conventional "helper" tweeter - are a design that is like this as far as upper treble is concerned. Listening to most rock & pop music on them is rather a disappointing experience for me, since the top end is so muted and soft.
