Own many mid-game speakers or a few end-game speakers.

Peter Walker of Quad fame said: "We don't think our speakers are the best. Just that all the rest are worse". Get yourself a pair or two of the 57's and throw away all the rest! 

Hi,

 I have had over 450 sets of speakers through my listening room. I once had a gentleman that lived not too far from me trade-in over 50 sets of small speakers that he had accumulated from going to many audio shows and purchasing a set of speakers at the end of each show. Great person but at the end of the day he decided he just wanted to have one great set of speakers and trade-in all his sets of speakers that he had purchased over the years for 1 set of high efficient horn speakers.

For myself I think speakers are personal preference and need to be carefully matched to your favorite amplifier based on the following criteria. Size of your room, type of music you prefer and volume you play your music at in your home. There are many other factors to take into account but I have seen many people purchase a very large set of speakers that will never work in their smaller rooms and this can be a very big mistake. I also prefer high efficient speakers with quality tube gear. The fun thing with high efficient speakers is that just changing a tube or even a power cord can be immediately heard.

One of my favorite speakers is made by a company called hORNS. These speakers are built in Poland and they are called Symphonies.

Here is a recent review;

http://v2.stereotimes.com/post/horns-symphony-loudspeakers-by-mike-wright/ 

This is a wonderful sounding, highly efficient, super will built speaker that we have been importing from Poland for 3 years.

Cheers,

All tweeked out "Burmester 961"s floor standers.
Every time my front-end improves, e.g. amp bias readjustment, cable differences, x-over Mundorf bypass caps, pair selected new carbon AUDAX 5½" midrange drivers..., they do play along and show the difference / improvement - and this since their 1996 purchase!
It still always amazes me how they can do this!?! 
To this end I'm now too scared to even consider any replacements.
M. 🇿🇦 

This is a tough call.  I have two pairs of speakers I am perpetually swapping between.  I just had a blogger over to discuss systems and he is in sort of the same place.  

He is looking at upgrading to MBLs which are such cool speakers but would miss "cone and dome" sound on occasion.  His view was one big time speaker (like MBLs) and some less expensive speakers that deliver different sound.  

It's an approach.  One comment he made was that with two large speakers (MBL and say Magico) he would never swap because they are just too heavy.  

no right or wrong approach. it’s a hobby and there are no rules........except being true to the music reference in your mind.

personally i view optimizing my music playback reference efforts start with getting the best single speaker system i can that is properly sized for the room i have, and then working to get that speaker system to be it’s best.

i happen to purchase a twin tower fairly expensive speaker system. this was after 17-18 years of serious listening in a dedicated room, and visits to many rooms and audio shows. so it was not a casual decision. i’m not techie enough to attempt a DIY approach, and have no reason to doubt it’s validity to attain high performance. i'm skeptical but open minded that a much less expensive speaker system could compete head to head. it could happen.

my personal view is that the room<->speaker relationship is so intertwined and synergistic that having multiple speaker systems used in the same room would be an anchor holding you back, and in no way a positive. unless it’s a test or trial period. but not as a permanent approach. but that is just my own opinion.

if you want to have multiples of things to play around with in a single room, then it should be amps or turntables or something not as set-up critical as speakers. it can take years to get speakers to be their best. and until the room<->speaker room synergy reaches maturity you have no way to really know what the speaker can do.