Objects of Lust: See-Through Speakers

Nick and I have been locked in a years-long battle over, of all things, stereo speakers.

We're both hardcore music lovers (in fact, we met at a record store). And between us, we have hundreds upon hundreds of CDs -- not to mention all the rare and collectible LPs we spent the better part of our twenties (and most of our record-store wages) amassing, plus all the music we've downloaded during the last few years.

Given that, would you believe that we don't have so much as a boom box on which to play any of it? The reason: Speakers (or, more specifically, lack thereof).

I find most of them really, really ugly -- or just too techy and guy-like to consider letting them ruin the looks of my pretty living room. I'd like to transfer our entire music library to digital, then simply get a sweet little white iHome (above) or maybe a retro-style SpeckTone MP3 player (below) for the top of our credenza and call it a day. I'd even be OK with a set of small, inconspicuous bookshelf speakers, as long as we could hide the rest of the stereo equipment behind cabinet doors.

Just as I object on aesthetic grounds to the sort of ginormous faux-woodgrain floor speakers we used to have, though, Nick objects on the grounds of sound quality to my proposed music devices. (This is a man, after all, who reads magazines like Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, and Ultra High Fidelity for fun.)

But he just sent me a link to some high-end speakers that even I might be able to love. Designed by the UK's Ferguson Hill company, these clear acrylic speakers feature all the audiophile bells and whistles that make Nick hyperventilate (don't ask me to renumerate them, since words like "Hz" and "sub-base" mean absolutely nothing to me).

Of course, they don't come cheap: Ferguson Hill's Mini Speaker System -- available Stateside at Ultimate Audio Video -- costs about a thousand bucks, a price that makes me cringe (and that makes that $85 SpeckTone look better and better).

Still, could it be worth it to maintain marital harmony and keep music a part of our daily lives?

Check out Ferguson Hill's speaker line right here.