There’s a great article on Audioholics today, the budget bookshelf speaker shootout.  I love to see real world affordable gear get highlighted and compared.  As an average consumer I could easily see myself adding one of these speakers to my kit as rear surrounds or to a second room as primary speakers. 

The competitors in the Battle of the Budget Bookshelf Face Off: 

Axiom M3Ti

$275 pr

BIC DV-62

$275 pr

Klipsch RB-15

$299 pr

Unisound DAC 1.5s

$160 pr

The only ones I’d had any experience with are Axiom, a fine fine speaker manufacturer and Klipsch of course are something of an acquired taste, known for their bright sound with emphasis on mid-highs they’re well suited for rock music.  In fact most guitar oriented sounds will benefit from most Klipsch speakers by being incredibly detailed and dynamic.  Obviously these are my favs of the bunch.  I’ve heard of the BIC and read where there is a cult following for these speakers.  What many users do is take these bookshelf speakers and make a few simple modifications to them that apparently bring out huge sound.  But no such mods are included in the tested speakers so consequently they didn’t fare so well in the battle.

In build quality they take these speakers apart and highlight each of them and judge them for how well constructed they are.  No surprise that Klipsch has the best build of all with Axiom very close behind.  The BIC’s must be screaming for these mods because they were last in build quality.   

Using this receiver by Yamaha (a fine reference for the testing of any mid-fi speaker system) they compared the lot of the speakers with a variety of music and movie soundtracks.  The article makes a great read and definitely follow the link and check out the details if you’re interested in any of these speakers or just want to know who makes some nice budget bookshelfs today.  Of course the top speakers (surprise - surprise) follows closely to the tops in build quality.  Klipsch and Axiom get a tie for first.  Klipsch get the first place for rock and movie soundtracks for their aggressive in – yo – face sound quality.  The Axiom’s are more refined.