Otherwise, let me know your price range and size constraints, and I’ll refer you to the best engineered (with subjective impressions that back it up) speaker you can get. Note that generally to get good bass response you need larger speakers due to the laws of physics, but more exotic construction can push these boundaries, albeit at the expense of greater cost and electrical power demands.
If you want to know what is objectively far better (and subjectively according to most, as the science predicts), look to the Revel F328Be, Genelec 8351B + Genelec W371A, Kii Three + BXT, Dutch and Dutch 8C. These are very expensive, but even in the worst case they are half the price of the B&W Nautilus and perform far better according to what the state-of-the-art science tells us. And subjectively, this is easily confirmed.
I'm totally ignorant in this area, what would you recommend for general use speakers for a living room that can be sync'd to an iPhone or TV for <=$2k? Thank you.
For speakers, I’d recommend a pair of Revel M106 (or M105) for ~$1500 new (on sale price, which you can negotiate with dealers usually) plus a ~$500 AVR or integrated amplifier capable of wifi music streaming and HDMI ARC support for TV connectivity, like a Sonos Amp or any of Denon’s AVR products (more on this below).
There are possibly better quality speakers to pick from in this price range (e.g. Genelec 8330A, however this trades off some bass power which you probably don't want unless you have a subwoofer), but to connect these to your TV and streaming music simultaneously requires a more expensive AVR (Audio Video Receiver) that supports unamplified audio outputs, costing around $1K (e.g. Denon AVR-X3700H). It’s ironic because the Genelec 8330A have built-in amplification and digital inputs but don’t accept power-amplified signals, which is significantly more advanced in many ways, yet this advanced nature makes it harder to integrate with TVs and streaming audio simultaneously simply because most AVR products for TV-speaker integration are geared towards “passive” style speakers like the Revel’s for complex and historical reasons. (For some strange reason buying an AVR that allows you to bypass its amplifiers via preamp outputs ends up costing more than AVRs where the amplifiers are always on.)
So for best connectivity in this price range, I’d recommend the Revel M106 along with a Sonos Amp. The Sonos software experience is by far the best at seamlessly and automatically transitioning between wifi streaming music and TV use modes, works natively with Spotify and almost every other music app, as well as having a good app of its own.
However the Sonos Amp (and Sonos Port product which produces unamplified outputs, but for some strange reason omits the HDMI audio input the Amp has, unfortunately, so doesn’t integrate with a TV well) both lack the ability to calibrate bass to your room, which is very important if you plan to upgrade to speakers and/or subwoofers with deep bass, where EQ calibration to the room’s resonant frequencies is essential for best results.
If you want to be a little more future-proof and feature rich, and also be open to multichannel home theater in the future, a modern Denon AVR receiver with Audessy room calibration capability and “HEOS” Music streaming is also really good, but it gets complex as there are a lot of choices and depends on how “future proof” you want to be. And they tend to be fairly bulky.
Note that I’m assuming you want to be able to use the same pair of speakers for both TV output, and for music streaming when the TV is off. This significantly complicates the electronics, and few products get the user experience here right. If you’re willing to manually use a remote or buttons to switch modes, or dedicate the speakers to either exclusively streaming music (controllable from your phone of course), OR TV audio output (which via Spotify TV app can sometimes be sufficient for music too), then much simpler and cheaper options are available.
Otherwise, let me know your price range and size constraints, and I’ll refer you to the best engineered (with subjective impressions that back it up) speaker you can get. Note that generally to get good bass response you need larger speakers due to the laws of physics, but more exotic construction can push these boundaries, albeit at the expense of greater cost and electrical power demands.
If you want to know what is objectively far better (and subjectively according to most, as the science predicts), look to the Revel F328Be, Genelec 8351B + Genelec W371A, Kii Three + BXT, Dutch and Dutch 8C. These are very expensive, but even in the worst case they are half the price of the B&W Nautilus and perform far better according to what the state-of-the-art science tells us. And subjectively, this is easily confirmed.