You have two choices - believe that you can find a speaker that will immensely please you and produce recordings as best as they can be produced - try to get a speaker that will sound like Live(Recorded music in a recording studio is not the philharmonic and never will be - this is impossible to reproduce recording to recording nor should it be attempted) The Bose 901 tried to make the sound BIG and wide(which it does) but that uis hardly the way most recordings are mastered - most are recorded on two way front firing ONLY bookshelf speakers - so I agree with the others - accurate to what? What is it you are wanting - then you can find a whole pile of different speaker designs and one or two may match up with what you want.

Most speakers treat the cabinet as a necessary evil - so they try and damp them down as much as possible to remove various resonances. It can work well but it's expensive so companies cheap out(not their fault because people refuse to spend $5k+ on speakers. The likes of Magnepan and Martin Logan attempt to remove the issue with almost no cabinet - I guess they're smart in that they know the cabinet is going to create problems - they are trying to compete at $550.00US and figure why make another floorstanding disaster - SO they sacrifice bass and efficiency and dynamics but give the buyer a hint at what the big expensive speakers are all about(Note though that I heard the SMG model). But it's not a bad way to think form a company perspective.

Speaker design IMO is more about trying to get yesterday's well built finely crafted speakers into a cheap budget box. Everything is about damping frequencies with some new space age material that 20 years ago would have required quality woods or stone etc. They tell you it works - to me I don't buy it from the stuff I've been hearing.

I may disagree with Skeptic a lot - but I would far rather buy a 15-20 year old AR or Snell - replace the drivers with superior ones today(but that with which are sonic equivelants) for a song than plunk my $2k down on some new speaker using recycled aluminium cans for tweeters and cheap cabinets/drivers and be told it's good - when it can;t even beat the old stuff of 20-30 years ago.

You can spend all the money int he world on DRIVERS and still get annoying sound - while as Skeptic noted you can have another speaker with a good box design using relativey cheap a$$ drivers and get very good sound - which is why I like the idea of getting such a sepaker and then ALSO using good drivers - Can improive the drivers but the cabinet is the cabinet.

You can also look at some innovative(well more-so than most) ideas from speaker companies like Mirage or the New Rega - while I have never been impressed with the Mirages - at least they are attempting to create some sort of lifelike sound - Unfortunately for me it hasn't worked. But the new Rega, interestingly seems to have lots of good ideas. The Hi-fi CHoice review explains them a bit and while the AN E and the Rega both won the best buy award in the blind listening sessions - they say the two were dramatically different in sonically --- the Rega R9 looks like it would be a very solid and interesting speaker to hear (judging by the reviews it would be more laid back than the E and probably less dynamic - but I would love to hear this rather interesting speaker properly set--up - their tables have always been very good for reasonably money) --- I like Rega for building the entire audio chain from source to speaker. The company has more control IMO of the house sound of their line(for right or wrong - depending why you buy systems). http://hifichoice.co.uk/review_read.asp?ID=2801