What's the Collective Opion of American Speakers?

... erm

regards

I'm not sure if there is a collective view and opinions would probably vary according to brand.

 Personally, I don't like the look of many US loudspeakers eg Wilson Audio, Martin-Logan & Magnepan, even if they do sound very good.

 However, I do own a pair of Joseph Audio Pulsars, which are among the finest sounding (and finest looking) bookshelves I've ever encountered.

My overall preference though, is for British  brands like Spendor, Harbeth & ProAc.

Altec, Bozak, Electro Voice, JBL, Klipsch all made some great speakers. I think their heyday was from the 1950's to the 1980's. Since then they've either stopped making speakers or have gone down market or have concentrated on the professional market. Altec and Klipsch still make some of their heritage speakers.

In the modern era Magnepan, Wilson and a few others make good speakers. In the case of Wilson at breath-taking prices when new.

I like Bozak and vintage Electro Voice speakers a lot. Prefering them to the British speakers I've compared them against.

I own a pair of Avalon Acendent an I love them.

In the mean time if I didn't find them in ex demo I would have ended up with a pair of Proarc d40 provebly...so it's npo mather of AMerican or British but those are 2 brands that impressed me during my speaker hund an they dont have a stange futuristish look like some, altrueth that's really personal.

But comming to american brands I also listen to a fiew models of JBL as my uncle still have a paire from the early 80's witch still sound amazing connected to an old Yamaha amp But all the new one's I auditioned sounded artificial an way to agressive to my tast.

I also had in home demo a pair Klipsch RF83 for a fiew month's an that was a nightmare fore me only boom an nothing else voices came from behind a big curtain an well I even don't want to stard about the separation of the instrumens. But I'm shure it a good speaker for HT.

Heard some Aerial Acoustics 7T that sounded fantastic.   Problem as always is the price of North American products here. $10k in the US, and they would be great competition for PMC PB1i and Proac D40.  But they're £10k here.  

i decided to break the trend and went for jbl's and they do just what i expected them to do with my sort of music..yeah,probably a bit aggressive but otherwise why bother listening to metal..

There are many US speaker makers that produce the goods sonically but as has been pointed out it is the cost that lets them down, with dollars normally ending up as the same in pounds as, and when, they arrive in the UK.

I must say that it took me a long while tracking down a second-hand pair of my Acoustic Zen Adagios ..... but boy was it worth it!