OK, if me with this new info, I’d do some fresh testing on positioning my KEFs to better address this “directional” issue. Fine adjustments to position and angle can make a difference. Audio is not like laser beams. It is spreading out from the source as soon as it leaves the cabinet. It doesn’t matter so much if the housing is flat plane or cylinder if there is enough distance from it. Perhaps try them facing a bit more towards each other? Or right at each other? Or not as widely separated? Or even facing away from your general location (to “bounce back” to you)? It’s easy enough to try… and costs nothing but a little time.
I’d prob never rationalize less good over “too good.” The latter is more the ultimate
goal with speakers: best possible audio quality. Our want to talk to our speakers is likely to be a tiny fraction of time in how we use them. The vast rest of that time is
listening to them. Quality of sound seems paramount.
Again if me, I’d use the budget I’m thinking of spending on HPs to buy myself a good sub since you feel like that is a key part of what is missing. Pricing for one HP won’t be enough to cover a good sub but it will be a chunk of it. Give yourself a gift of the rest and enjoy the deep bass you’ll probably never match from any HP (because Apple may never offer a HP sub).
However, if my “directional” positioning experiments don’t yield to my satisfaction, before I buy that sub, I might add either a center channel speaker which would fill in between left & right even for music playback and/or surround speakers which would also fill in your sense of directional “holes.” The budget of HPs could chip in well towards either.
Since audio quality is important to you, both you and your girlfriends setup are sacrificing fuller sound if they are leaning on bluetooth's limited bandwidth. If yours or hers have an option to connect via wire (and both do), go wired and you'll likely hear an audio quality upgrade. Bluetooth just doesn't have the bandwidth, so quality of sound is being compressed to fit within what it can handle. That's basically throwing out some of the audio. Yes, her woofer will add to the sound but you can easily address that (and then some) by spending your new HP budget towards a great sub. If hers happens to be a wired connection while you lean on wireless, you can likely improve yours by adding the wire to let the
whole audio signal reach and play on your speakers.
Lastly, if only “smarts” married to a speaker can do, I’d choose
Sonos Move 2 over HP. It’s fully compatible with
Apple Music and
already offers pretty much
all other services (vs. waiting for "deals" to be struck between Corp and each service).
AirPlay works as well.
You can use Siri through HomeKit (though this leans on your other Apple tech doing the listening). And if you still have the other Sonos stuff, fill in any gaps with whatever can be dusted off. Bonus: since there's a good battery in it, you can easily take it with you on the go and not even need a socket to enjoy great sound "there" too.
What one already has- if good or even “too good”- is generally better than spending more money to replicate core functionality with something not as good.
Nothing against HPs at all… just encouraging you to give what you already have a better try… and or add anything missing to what you already have by applying the same budget. “Too good” is a great “problem” to have in speakers.
