08-05-13: Schubert
Personally I think B& W are the most over rated speakers ever made.
Sonus Fabers are great, especially for acoustic music.
For me, there's something about most B&Ws I've heard that just don't quite bring it together. I'm always aware that I'm listening to transducers. The one big exception is their little PM1 mini-monitor, but at $2800/pair it's out of range for the OP. Matched up with their PV1D sub it's a killer combo. It comes to about $4800 with stands, but is very competitive at that price. Most other B&Ws don't move me. Sonus Fabers almost always do. Some late '90s Concertos could be a good solution.
Golden Ears are good sounding, very good for large scale orchestra music but the smaller two-ways are not near as good according to my ears.
It could be that they weren't sufficiently broken in or were paired with mediocre electronics (I'm guessing here). I've heard both the GoldenEar Triton Two tower and the Aon 3 larger standmount speaker. Both were factory demos at a high end dealer open house a couple of years apart. I heard the Aon 3's just this past Feb. in a medium-small room and the tonal balance, timbre-correctness, speed, smoothness, dynamic range and bass extension were all remarkable for a $1K/pair speaker regardless of size.
In fact they reminded me very much of the dynamic and frequency range of a good $1500-2000 small tower such as what I listen to at home. Unlike most other speakers in its price range, however, the Aons' motion transformer ribbon tweeter isn't subject to metal dome resonances or dynamic piston overshoot or ringing. That tweeter is smooth, extended, and classy, making the Aons sound like a more expensive speaker.
