B & W speaker upgrade suggestions

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.

AV123, the Onix/Rocket manufacturer, is about 10 minutes away from where I live, so getting repair/replacement speakers would not be a problem. Also, I am interested in their Onix Reference line, not their Rocket line.

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.

That rather dismays me, Jkalman. I will need to do a search here to see if I can find some of these posts.

I actually belong to the AV123 forum; I joined when I was considering buying the Rocket UFW-10 subwoofer. Though there is great enthusiasm for the AV123 products, I haven't read any posts there that disparage or bash non-AV123 products. I hope the people here that were doing so weren't "real" Onix/Rocket owners. Just because I own a certain piece of equipment, I would never consider telling others that it is the best in the land and whatever else they were considering is crap! Like most people, I very much dislike that sort of arogance and ignorance.

I hope to be able to audition some Reference 3 speakers as there are some local owners. There is only one place in Colorado that sells B&W speakers. Their web site doesn't list the higher end series but I'm hoping they have them anyway so that I can audition them.

It will be a while before I can buy new speakers, anyway, so I'm hoping that I can hear some other good speakers, too. There is actually a place here in Colorado not too far from me that sells the Cain & Cain speakers. They look wonderful, Arkprof, and their lower end offerings are in my price range so I will definetly take a trip there to audtion them.

Holly

The posts were on AVS Forum and Audioholic forum. Not sure if there are others, but when I researched the company those were the sites I found them on.