Upgrading front 3 speakers to GoldenEar Triton Reference or B&W Nautilus 800?




I am an avid home theater guy and am looking to upgrade from my Triton Ones. Love movies and concert Blu-rays.

I have the XXL center channel and find it to be not as clean as I would like.

I have 2 choices, one to go from the Ones to the Reference

or

found some used B&W so wish to

Upgrade Mains from Golden Ear Triton One to B&W Nautilus 800

Upgrade Centre from Golden Ear Supercenter XXL to B&W HTM1D


The challenge, in my eyes, with the 2nd choice is that I am using the Classé 5300 and would bi-amp my front L & R but only have 1 channel left to bi-amp the centre, so would have to get another 3-channel amp to run my lower part of the centre + my 2 rears, as I did not bi-amp the GE Ones, but feel that I should do for the Reference.


The B&W may be a little large for my room (14.5' x 23'x8') but I will have front speakers that will be much more clean than the Ones that I have now.


Hope to hear from a few GE or B&W fans very soon so I can make a decision


Steve


128x128eternalcamper
ONLY 300 Watts???  That's a ton of power that should drive almost any speaker available.  Just as an example, back in 2009 Kal Rubinson ran the 802Ds with the lower powered CA-5200 just fine (https://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/music_in_the_round_36/index.html), so I'd be shocked if your 5300 didn't have plenty of juice to fully drive 800s without biamping.  The 800s are 90dB efficient but do drop below 4 Ohms through a good part of the midrange, which does make them more difficult to drive.  But here's a quote from the Classe website regarding your amp:

"* Specifications for output into 4 ohms are omitted because the AC Mains/power supply cannot support all channels driven simultaneously at this level, which would require over 5,000W and only occur under a special test condition. The amplifier easily drives lower impedance loads."

Translation -- your house will run out of juice before your amp does.  Suffice it to say I think you're worrying needlessly over the power issue.  You have a beast of an amp. 
you should never run 2 center channels especially if one of them is in the ceiling.
Hello frostdotcom

I hear you

BUT
WHY do you say that I should not run 2 centre channels if one is in the ceiling?
Steve
'No Matter how you configure it, the center channel should the the anchor for dialogue, and should run 2 centers for a couple reason #1 directionality and #2 phase cancellations, So I would skip it.. As far as the biamping you should use the same amplifiers due to gain structure and level matching...
Ditch the second center, especially moving up
As for your biamping question, I run  monoblocks on front left and right, mains, and a sigma amp5 on my center, surrounds, at one time was biamping my center channel with a Proceed amp5 before my Config Change. Would prefer to run 1 center and biamped mains if I had that option in your case.