When I was in electronics school, our consensus was that the best material to build speaker cabinets out of was concrete. 
And why do the Google adserver give me “Learn Why Men Leave Women”, “Why Won’t He Commit?” and “Asian Girls For Marriage” on this thread?
Actually, I think the third ad is a kind of answer for the first two…
Still using a pair of Marantz 6-G that I got in high school.
My home theater system is rather primitive by modern standards.
- Amp: NAD (can’t think of the model number), two channel, from the late 1980s. 400+ watts, I think.
- CD player: NAD, same vintage as the amp
- Speakers: Big honkin Dahlquists, made in Canada sometime in the early 1990s.
- Cassette deck: SAE, looks like it came out of a recording studio in the mid-1980s.
- Tuner: Carver
- DVD player: cheap Magnavox, probably plays CDs as well as the NAD
I’m on big-ass speaker hiatus until I’m confident my little girls won’t spill smoothie down the grille or otherwise lay waste to them. These days I make do with my studio monitors in my basement studio/HT, bookshelf B&Ws and a sub in kid zone 1 and a cheapie RCA home theater in kid zone 2. Actually the girls have invaded my basement sanctuary but the monitors are set up so they can’t do any damage. Unless they throw something.
Unfortunately my speakers don’t have grilles so I’ll have to do something about it when our baby-in-the-making get’s large enough to poke holes in the cones.
Professional studio monitors, Dynaudio acoustics, the basses aren’t that large, but they do move air. I’ve never taken my amp up past “3.”
Designed to be used also in post recording, they’re shielded, while isn’t a concern in the plasma world.
I have a pair of big-ass Tannoy speakers, circa 1990. For a long time they were stood on corner shelves mounted high up in the corners of my room. One was directly above my head when I was in bed, and I was always slightly worried that my amateur shelf-fixing would lead to 15 pounds of black-ash-effect loudspeaker caving my skull in the middle of the night. They’re up in the attic now, but I kind of miss them.
I can’t help but be reminded of Judge Reinhold in Ruthless People.
I’m still using some old Pioneer speakers from the early 90s. I think the woofers are 15".
It’s all about movin’ air-there’s no substitute for square inches.
I was thinking more of Seth Green in The Italian Job.
My speakers are five and a half feet tall. Here are another owner’s pictures. A 5 foot ribbon and 4 12" woofers per side.
Is that big-ass enough?
I knew you were talking about Carver Amazings before I moused over your link. 
I don’t know if they qualify as ‘big-ass’ speakers, but I’ve got a pair of Polk RTI8 towers (fed by a Carver amp) in my home theater setup, along with a CSI3 center channel speaker. The towers came with a PSW-10 powered sub and I’m planning on buying a pair of RTI6 bookshelfs for surrounds with some of my stimulus package money (would someone please explain how stimulating China’s economy is supposed to help the U.S.?).
I’ve been salivating over a pair of used Klipsch Heresy’s for a while now, since up until this point, I’m only partially deaf. Those fuckers weigh a TON with the folded horns and all…
I think the 5.1 Dolby surround sound packages with the itty bitty speakers and subwoofer are the way to go these days. In college though, every did have the receiver/CD player/amp pumping through two massive speakers and a big subwoofer. That shit was like furniture.
Yeah, those HTIB (Home Theater In a Box) things are usually good enough for people raised on lossy MP3 files. But, for the rest of us that grew up listening to uncompressed analog sources, not so much.
I just have to giggle when they refer to a wee little box with a 2" diameter port as a “subwoofer” especially when the whole thing is smaller than the amplifier that drives my sub.
11? Why not just make 10 louder?
thank you, thank you 
Most people don’t want to hear what comes through my big ass-speaker.
My 7.1 home theater, on the other hand, has two somewhat big (8") left and right Bose speakers. The other 5 are little bookshelf speakers. Some of the bass goes to the two Bose speakers, but most goes to the subwoofer.
They’re definitely out there for the true audiophiles, if they’re willing to pay the price.
I got my father a pair of these for Christmas this year. It was the best reviewed, readily available floorstanding speaker I could find in the less than $1000 per range.
They were to go with the previous year’s gift, which proved to be too much for his old ones.
Gosh yes, it’s the only way to fry.
A college buddy had those or their equivalent which, along with the old man’s Klipschorns, initiated my decision 12 years ago to get the Klipsch Chorus ll, which I’ve since built the rest of my system around. Yeah, at near 90 pounds each I don’t move 'em around much. For over a decade now I’ve pushed them to the limit with extensive rock, jazz and H.E. demands and they’ve consistently blown me away with their performance.
I’ve given the small speaker systems a demo and they do nothing for me. It’s not just that my wife has pulled into the detached garage in her car with the windows up, air and stereo running and has been able to identify what song I was pulverizing the walls with in our house. It’s that these speakers do it so purely, so effortlessly, that the sound is so rich. They insure music will be the religious experience it was intended to be.
I grew up with a big pair of Sonys, they were definitely furniture, and for a long time I felt like a lot of guys here, that these new-fangled little-bitties can’t be as good, but I’ve since concluded the best would actually be a combination. I remember the first time I heard a friend’s new PC speaker set, that was one of the early generation Cambridge satellite sets, and was really impressed with the punch it delivered. Later I got my own mid-range Logitech 5.1 system and was more than happy with it. The sub is a big difference.