At the risk of being commercial here, you should be aware of a couple of facts:
1. Kit speakers can be as good or better than commercial offerings costing up to five times more.
2. Three way speakers often sacrifice some sound staging in order to better utilize the driver bandwidth, often simply to get higher sound pressure. Aspen's kit speaker, the AKSonic, is two way, and this is a very good compromise if you use a subwoofer.
3. Construction is often quite difficult for a furniture grade quality. Joins are critical; butt joints are easiest but often don't look the best. Routed composite joins are very strong and elegant, but not everyone has a competent router and appropriate tool. Check the difficulty of construction; it's very important.
4. Box design, driver choice and crossover - especially crossover - are absolutely critical. Try to find testimonials of people's experience; buying a speaker without listening tests is risky, and you are up against different tastes with different listeners.
5. Impedance control is a huge issue, particularly for SS amplifiers using global negative feedback. It must be within reasonable limits, say 6 to 15 ohms. This has implications for imaging and amp stability.
6. Room placement is an issue. Most speaks are sensitive to position, and in a small room you don't want something which must be located five feet out from the wall. Top or bottom firing reflex speaks are a great idea; less fussy about proximity to walls.
7. A speaker is a piece of furniture. WAF is understandably very important.
8. Don't buy solely on cost. The quality is remembered long after price is forgotten, and most of the quality is in the design, NOT the materials. (With apologies to Henry Ford...!)
Cheers,
Hugh
