No matter how good the equipment there are certain immutable laws in hi fi, and one of them is that you can't get a workable stereo effect unless your left and right speakers have a decent amount of separation between them. When a pair of Kef's LS50 wireless speakers arrived for road test I was dismayed to discover that the cable joining the left one with the right was just 1.1 metres long. I set them up with my couch about four metres away and the sound I got was essentially monaural. Except for the odd violin or piccolo flute stretching out I would have got much the same effect with just one speaker.

I emailed the importer and asked him if he was serious, and heard back about five seconds later telling me there should have been a three-metre Cat-6 cable in the box and that I was obviously using the one-metre LAN cable as the interconnect. (Also supplied is a two-metre USB to mini-USB.) There was no Cat-6 – ah, the joys of test equipment –  but I found just the thing in my own stash. With two-and-a-half metres between right and left I started again. Suddenly the double basses were on the right and the violins were over on the left, the flutes dead centre.

Get at least a couple of metres between two LS50 wireless speakers and you have a terrific sound system for an apartment, even a big one. At 30 x 20 x 31cm these are on the large side for wireless offerings, and they're certainly heavy at 10kg each, but you won't need much more. They carry their own internal amplification – a 30-watt Class A/B for the 13cm mid/bass, and a 200-watt Class D for the 2.5cm tweeter nestled inside it – and they pump out very fine sound indeed.

And heaps of it. Turn them up loud and there's more than enough grunt for a party, and the best thing about this is that even at full stretch they sound great. There's no horrible distortion, they're clean as a whistle, and they don't lose their cool to big musical transients either.

You'll seldom, if ever, listen at these levels – well, not if you have neighbours anyway – but even down low you'll get sound quality that will have you stopping what you're doing just for the pure pleasure of listening to beautiful, clearly defined and full-bodied music.

There's more. These speakers will take up to eight Bluetooth connections and they operate with the aptX codec for the best Bluetooth sound possible. Or switch between the physical inputs that include a LAN plug, an RCA auxiliary, an optical, and a mini-USB. That's enough for the television, the computer, a disc player and even a turntable if you have a phono pre-amp. And the LS50s hook into your home wireless network, too.

They'll fit in most bookshelves, and there are selectable equaliser parameters to cover the great bulk of placements, be it on stands, against a wall or on a tabletop with lots of space behind them. This may sound complex, but it's as easy as pushing a couple of set-and-forget buttons. The LS50s generate quite generous bass but if you want more there's a subwoofer output.

Finally, there are three colours: titanium grey with red speaker cones, black with blue cones, and white with copper cones.

Which brings us to the elephant in to room. $3799. It may be a lot for a pair of bookshelf speakers but not so much for a high-quality, ultra-flexible sound system.