B & W speaker upgrade suggestions

Oakiris,

Ignore what judy426 has to say. I have listened to the jmlabs utopia and consider it to be comparable with with the B&W Nautilus series. That said there is nothing wrong with staying with B&W. I recomend going up the B&W line but I am a devout B&W fan. The N803 can be had used for around $3600.00 here on audiogon.

Look for speakers that don't require gobs of power and also sound like music. Not something arid, cold, and lacking dynamics.

I think any poster that sums up an entire speaker company's speaker lines in such generalized (obviously negatively prejudiced) terms, is likely not worth listening to. You don't see anyone else in here knocking anyone else's speaker choices... I don't see any of the professional reviewers out there saying anything of the sort about B&W speakers, and I wager they have much more experience than Judy. I think Judy may be trash talking to sell what he/she stocks.

I love my 7 series speakers and I listened to different stuff in the same range at a few different stores (Boston Acoustics, Sonus Fabers, etc). If I could go back, I would probably go with the 8 series now though, so the 803Ds or 802Ds would fit in a little better with the rest of my setup when I buy a pair. It was more a price consideration at the time. I doubt it will make a huge difference since I choose to play things in stereo even when playing High Def formats. I doubt I will notice incongruity when playing movies... though I may have to upgrade the center channel to an 8 series. From what I have heard, it is best to stick with the same company than to mix and match companies with speaker sets, even if you do go one line up or down in quality.

Aren't the Rocket speakers reviewed as a litle "rolled off the top"? I would be careful with mail order direct speakers. I don't trust items I can't go to a store and hear next to other well-received speakers. I suppose you could ask your local dealer if it would be ok to bring them in and compare them to another speaker. They give you 30 days or something to try them I think. I personally don't trust that kind of thing, especially since a bunch of people were running around other fora awhile ago acting like hooligans trying to coerce people into buying those speakers, and bashing anyone who said anything negative about those speakers.

IMO nothing can replace a local dealer whom you can drop your speaker (or other component) off with if something goes wrong, and who will give you a replacement to use while it is being fixed.

Also, Rotel is now owned by B&W, so they are supposed to be well mated. Not sure if this is true, but it would seem to hold to some degree that the company would want to insure that their products would mate well. I almost bought those same Rotels, but ended up going with the Bryston SP1.7 and Bryston 9B SST. The 20 year warranty and send-in hardware upgrading was too much of a good deal to pass up. Upgradeability is also the same reason I decided to go with a Wadia 302 over a Meridian G08. Still playing around with the G08 while I wait for my 302.

I had some 804Ns, light cherry, and loved them ... simply magnificent build and able to produce an ever-larger soundscape without breaking apart. I drove them with a class A Musical Fidelity A2 integrated ... 20 watts. I got rid of them only because volume would let the speakers show what they could do very well, but low-volume listening was very disappointing ... to me. Never tried the S or D series. That was a lifetime ago, maybe in '99 or '00. I've been through several other speakers since then, though fairly certain I'll be keeping my Cains for many years.