To power the speakers, I used a Sony STR-ZA5000ES AV receiver. Although it’s a relatively high-end model that’s more expensive than the receivers that people would likely use with these speaker systems, I wanted to make sure that any flaws we heard during testing were the fault of the speakers, not the receiver. Given the STR-ZA5000ES’s 130 watts per channel of rated power (into two channels at 8 ohms), I knew it would have enough power to get the best performance from these systems. The STR-ZA5000ES has many features intended to optimize the sound of the speaker system it’s connected to, but I turned all of those off because we wanted to hear what the speakers could do on their own.

I set up all of the speakers in my listening room (here are the dimensions and layout), which I’ve used since 2002 to test hundreds of audio systems. Countless manufacturers have set up their speaker systems in this room, and I’ve performed many measurements in it over the years, so I know its properties well. I designed the room’s acoustic treatments with the help of Floyd Toole, the scientist whose research at the Canadian National Research Council and Harman International has practically defined the generally accepted rules of good speaker design. (Read more about Toole’s work in his book, Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms.)

Before we did any formal testing, I ran each system in my home for several days to familiarize myself with it and make sure all the speakers were well broken-in. For the systems in the $1,000 to $1,500 price range, I set up blind evaluations for two of my Wirecutter colleagues: senior staff writer and headphone reviewer Lauren Dragan and editor-at-large Geoffrey Morrison.

For the systems in the $1,501 to $2,500 price range, I had to do all the testing myself because of the shelter-in-place order then in effect, but I made the testing as rigorous and unbiased as possible. After evaluating each system as a whole, I did separate blind tests comparing the bookshelf and center speakers. I included the speakers from our runner-up pick, the ELAC Debut 2.0 system, in this comparison to see how much of an improvement (if any) I’d get with a more costly system.

In every blind test, I placed all of the speakers behind thin black fabric to conceal their identities. For all the systems, I used an RSL Speedwoofer 10S subwoofer.

I used a selection of movie and music clips that I’ve found to be revealing of speaker sound quality—most notably, the opening chapters of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the opera scene from The Fifth Element, and Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” (video). I started with the smaller systems and moved up gradually to the larger ones, telling the panelists nothing about the models’ identities. For the panelists, I played the movies at a volume 6 decibels down from Dolby reference level, which means each channel could hit a maximum of 99 decibels. This is as loud as most home theater enthusiasts would want to play their systems, and louder than most families would be likely to listen. For music, I turned the level down an additional 3 decibels. For my longer listening sessions, I played the systems both louder and softer to see how they’d sound at a range of levels.

Each time I changed systems, I used the Sony receiver’s internal test tones to calibrate the channel balance and listening level so that we would experience every speaker system under the same conditions. For smaller systems, I set the receiver’s crossover frequency (the frequency at which the receiver sends the sounds to the subwoofer instead of to the speakers) to 120 Hz to ensure that the smaller speakers weren’t unduly stressed. For larger systems (those with at least 5.25-inch woofers in the satellite speakers), I set the crossover frequency to 80 Hz.

During the blind testing, I asked each panelist to judge the speakers based purely on sound quality, including these characteristics:

How natural did the system (especially the center speaker) sound when playing movie dialogue?

How clear and undistorted did the system sound when playing loud movie soundtracks?

What sense of envelopment did the system produce when playing movie soundtracks and stereo music?

How well did the speakers blend with the subwoofer? Did they have enough bass to create the impression that the panelists were hearing full-range speakers rather than separate speakers and a subwoofer, or did it sound as if there was a hole in the lower-midrange/upper-bass region?

After we finished the listening tests, I polled the panelists to get their impressions of each system’s sound quality. Then I showed them the speakers and asked them what they thought of the size and design. This factor is especially important with a surround-sound speaker system because generally you need to place the speakers in a way that makes them readily visible in a room, and because five or more speakers are far more noticeable than two.

Following the listening tests, I ran frequency-response measurements of all the speakers. This served as a check on our tests, to make sure we weren’t picking something that strayed outside of well-established engineering norms. Decades of research (PDF) has shown that listeners consistently prefer speakers that produce a “flat” frequency response—producing all frequencies of sound at approximately even levels—and maintain similar frequency response on- and off-axis. We have included the frequency-response measurement charts for each pick.

Note that all of the speaker systems we tested are of similar configuration, and all are designed along the basic principles outlined in Floyd Toole’s book. Thus, most of them delivered very good sound reproduction in our tests; for the most part, we determined our picks by small margins and after much deliberation.