Warm Rich Lush Speakers...Recommendations?

The warm lush sound that ultimately emanates from your speakers is often as much, if not more so, a function of your CD player or pre-amp than it is your speakers. To get that lushness that you want, you might seriously take a look at your electronics... are they (your CD player & amp/pre-amp) somewhat bright or thin sounding? What do you have in terms of electronics? SS or tube? If tube, what tubes do you have?

I am an older listener, I so not like any brightness at all (older ears seem more sensitive to brightness than younger ones...why? not sure ... but it is the case)... and I myself went on a quest for lush, rich but not bright sound in my system --- but it meant completely and systematically changing the whole line-up of components. Actually, at 4-8K for speakers, most speakers in that range will be, generally, whatever the signal fed to them will have them be.

The point? You may be looking in the wrong place for what you want... the electronics may be more critical than the speakers (or, at least, as critical).

another thought. Lush fullness in a stereo system is very volume dependent. As the volume goes up, fullness, palpable presence, and richness also goes up. So... to get that richness, you want to play louder. But... as volume goes up, if there is any harshness or brightness, that too is accentuated. So... we are limited to how loud we play based upon harshness and brightness. Remove the harshness and brightness, and the volume can go louder and fullness and richness goes up.

What am I saying? You get rich, lush sound by removing brightness and harshness --- simply by playing louder. So... the quest for richness and lushness is really more often a quest to remove harsh, bright components from your sonic chain of components (again, check that CD player and the amplification ... they are more often the culprit in harshness than are the speakers)

As Hopat21 says --- Vandersteen makes pretty warm sounding speakers --- all across the spectrum of their line. I own some lower end Vandersteens (in a secondary system) and they are warm sounding.

That said, every one of the speakers listed by those posting answers to your questions --- every one of them (Vandersteens included) can be made to sound bright and/or harsh (read not lush/smooth/fatigue-free) if the electronics feeding them are provide the speakers a harsh/strident signal.

So... again, if you want a system that sounds full/rich and not bright, or thin, or strident --- then every component in the system (speakers and electronics) need to assesses for their contribution to the overall sound.

A "lush" sounding speaker will convey bright/non-lush sound if fed such a signal.

I'll define warm, rich and lush... from my perspective. It is recorded piano sound that is not thin, and has the body and size and heft of sound that approaches the real thing (as opposed to a miniaturized sound like that of a wraith, w/o the body texture of the real thing)--- and gives this w/o ever making you cringe from harsh, strident transients (that is the warm as opposed to strident part). Same with recorded clarinet, solo violin, or any instrument --- including human voice. The absence of grating, metallic, mechanical sounding harshness and/or sibilance is what enables one to play the recorded music at volumes that approximate the live music event --- without accompanying harshness. As volume goes up, fullness and body goes up.

There are people who really like the lively, vibrant sound that --- to them is exciting and more engaging --- and to me is harsh. It is, of course, in the ears of the listener. Though there are "camps" so to speak. I assume our original poster --- since they are seeking warm, lush sound (in their own words) is likely to have in view what I have in view. Some would say that the warm, lush sound I like is "rounded-off and missing something" .. in fact several of my friends who hear my system say this --- again, it is very subjective.

But yes... for me, I do find warm, lush desirable.