for a moment. I hear Jeffery Archer's very entertaining.

a few years ago that sit snugly against my living room wall. They were a bit more expensive than what you want to spend... maybe £500, I can't remember exactly. But they're great. A faithful, pleasant sound that is good to listen to.

Sorry, I'm not a hi-fi geek so I can't get all technical, but I would listen to some. I imagine they come in different price brackets.*

* I just looked online and they might start at around £600 now. But perhaps you could investigate a used pair. They really are very good.

I've been looking on and off but eventually had to give up on this for a while as my partner has these [1998 model]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21793313@N08/2102704250/

and I have these [must be mid-late 80s, bought 2nd hand in 91ish]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Freedom_Loudspeaker

and nothing new I have yet heard appeals to me as much.

I have heard people enthuse, like Patrick, about Dynaudios (and Proacs) but haven't heard them. On design/size grounds was quite taken with these:

http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/display.aspx?infid=1065

which are about in the price range you are looking at.

I am still intrigued by these (at £400)

http://www.avihifi.co.uk/neutron.html

though, as they offer the possibility of replacing my amp by adding an active sub later on and the size looks ideal-I plan to try and borrow some eventually. Their bigger, also active, brother, the ADM9 was v impressive on audition but at about double your budget.

I'm rejigging the front room as we speak and the hi-fi will be messed about with. I'm very tempted to retire my enormous Eltax floorstandy whatsits but I'm reluctant to sacrifice sound quality. And they do sound glorious.

Should I?

I've got the Wharfedale Diamonds 9.1 but I've just heard the 10.1 this week.
There £200 but sound about £4-500 worth.
I use Cambridge amps and CD so can recommend them highly.
Other than that The Dali Lektor 2 are very good as well.
Although I'd save the £100 and put it towards the new Cambridge 650 CD player it's a peach

http://whathifi.com/Review/Wharfedale-Diamond-101/

I've always liked Monitor Audio's - they are not the bass heavy like Mission's can be, but have a very clean mid-range which is what I like. I don't think they are overly expensive (although I've had mine 10 yrs now so I'm way out of touch....)

At the end of the day, speakers are the one area of HiFi that really does come down to personal preference and so you really have to amble along to the nearest HiFi emporium and have a listen.....

that the advent of digital media is further developing a trend that I as far as I know started with Meridian and recording studios, and is threatening the traditional division of boxes between source(s), amp, and speakers.

The current division of roles made perfect sense when you had to have a pre-amp, because you had a phono stage, because you had a weak analogue signal from a record deck. This was quite logically kept as near the power amps as possible and typically in one box.

Now that sources do (or will in future) nearly all have a digital output, and the phono stage is an enthusiast's option it is interesting that more designers are combining the power amps with the woofer, and minimising the size of the tweeters for flexibility. This has been around in computer speakers for ages of course, e.g.

http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/store/category.cgi?category=mul_spk_c...

and by high end companies like Meridian, but now it when applied more widely in hi-fi it is starting to result in interesting designs like the one I mentioned:

http://www.avihifi.co.uk/neutron.html

, where you can locate the speakers pretty much anywhere, and hide the sub as long as you have a way of ensuring its control eye is in view. Crucially the products are also starting to have enough analogue inputs as anybody who goes this way is probably going to need to interface FM tuners, turntables or even VCRs (!) for a while.

Makes me wonder quite how long we will be using traditional stereo amps for now, and what Richer Sounds' balance of products will be in 10 years time-the Cambridge Audio brand has been very good for them but the crustal plates are moving again .... In fact it would be interesting to know how much of their revenue comes form audio versus Av, insofar as one can actually separate them. Arcam, Linn and Naim seem to be responding in very different ways to this world, the most dramatic example for me being the dropping of Arcam's budget separates (the DiVA range) entirely, leaving only the one box Solo range and the expensive FMJ range-quite a turn up for a company founded on this amp

http://www.retrohifi.co.uk/ar_cambrige.html

(I had one for about 15 years)

I spent half a day listening to the Mordaunt Short Mezzo 2s, which were presented to me as 'neutral' speakers, which is what I want. I was reasonably pleased I suppose, but not overwhelmingly so. They just don't have the ability of the Missions to go from quiet to LOUD without any perceptible change in their voicing. I can't see myself settling for them, to be honest.

The Dali Lecktor 2s will probably get a listen next, though their tiny woofers don't hold out much hope.

I might spend some time with the Dali Ikon 1s instead - at least they have two reflex bass ports. Of the speakers I've found that are in the price range and size range I want, they probably offer the best likelihood of meeting my wants, if the blurb can be believed.

Does anyone have some of them, or listen to some regularly?

Overall I've been sadly unimpressed with what's out there in the £400 range at the moment, and my faithful Mission 700's once re-foamed might triumphantly continue to occupy their position in the living room after all.

speakers are still a mechanical device and can't be computerised, miniaturised, put on a chip etc.

They will always be 'machines' and, as such, won't necessarily be subject to the incessant price reductions of electronic kit.

Good speakers will always be expensive, relative to the rest of the chain.

The Revel Concerta M12 is about £400, I believe. Good, crap-free bookshelf design, but I think it might need to be placed a foot or so from the back wall. It uses a 6.5" bass driver to knock out good bass (about two octaves below middle C) for a relatively small box, too.

The Revel has more bass than the Missions, but at first you might think otherwise. The Mission 700s had a deliberate 'lift' around 80-120Hz (low E to low A on a guitar) to make any three-chord rock sound larger than life; it might take you a little while to get used to a less 'enhanced' sound, but the end result is worth it.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to my thought processes in this thread.

I am pleased to say that I've now found myself some new speakers; in the end I went for the Spendor S5E. I won't tell you how much I paid for them, as you will weep if I do. Suffice it to say that I got a bargain, and kept within budget.

Unless you want to count an inability to reproduce the very bottom octave (20-40Hz) with as much weight and impact as, say, a 10' Klangfilm horn, I couldn't find any significant flaws in the Spendor S5e's performance. Sure, other speakers imbue solo instruments and voices with a little more presence, and others go just a bit further down the road of clarity of sound (and utter transparency of the sound around the sound), and still other speakers can do some or all of those nice things under the heady influence of less power than the mid-efficiency Spendor requires. But I've never heard anything near this price and size that has the Spendor S5e's combination of strengths.

The S5e is an uncolored speaker that gets the notes and beats so essentially right, and is so emotionally direct and honest, that, for once, exceptional sound enhanced the music-making rather than distracted from it, howsoever prettily. The Spendor S5e has what I consider a virtually perfect amount of bass in proportion with its clean, open, and pleasantly airy top end. I can't imagine an honest listener who would consider this speaker to be too bright, too dull, or lacking in any other such way.

Over the years, I've owned a few Classic Spendor loudspeakers that have been classics—I mean that both colloquially and in the literal, trade-name sense—and I've loved them for what they were. Yet the new S5e has things that simply weren't part of the earlier Spendor recipe, including scale, drama, and utterly faultless pacing. That the S5e does all that for $1649/pair is remarkable. I can't recommended it strongly enough.

so you really are a big Spendor (owner) ... ;-) My guess is you'll be as attached to those in 20yrs time as I am to my Missions, and you'll feel they would have been cheap at the list price