I've heard them and I own the older floor standing BP7004's with the built in powered subs. There is a lot of ignorance about speakers of this type and here's why:
1) Most people only hear them at a "Best Buy" type store with a receiver in a poor setup.
2) Many people expect mass produced speakers of this type to be automatically undeserving of serious auditions.
My "high end" audio system is Merlin TSM-MXr speakers powered by a Manley Stingray II tube amp along with a Rega DAC and Cardas cables. The Def Tech system is part of my large dedicated theater room.
As an experiment I connected my Manley Stingray II amp to the Def Tech speakers and guess what? They sounded pretty darn good. No, they could not match the Merlins, but the Def Techs were lively, engaging and presented a full range sound that was very pleasing. The expensive tube amp reined in the metal tweeters and the sound was quite "high end."
I've heard other Def Tech speakers pull this off and I generally think they're underrated. You do give up a certain degree of resolution, continuousness and tonality, but the gain is major impact and scale.
As for your speakers, they don't have the power of the big floorstanders, but they do well with scale. Mated with good amps and sources they can sound much better than many golden eared audiophiles would care to admit! They play loud and are capable of great dynamics. Todays speaker technology is pretty good with good sound found in systems and price points previously experienced only among the more elite designers. A lot of good speaker technology has trickled down to your Def Techs to be sure.
With a good Denon or Marantz HT reciever you can get "good" sound from your Def Techs, but a serious two channel amp will easily elevate them to a higher level. Don't worry too much about it an enjoy the music and movies!
Cheers,
Robert
