Hello Mr. Moustache,

I suggest a Audiophysic Virgos powered by Conrad-Johnson premier 140 and Jeff Rowland Pre-Amp for control. This set up i'm sure has the caracteristics you described.

Good listenings and test, hope you get the sonic-graal you're loking for.

Aquilino

Legacy Whisper HDs command. Perhaps a pair of used Whispers and gobs of power from a Parasound JC2 and pair of Parasound JC1s.

http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/806legacy/
http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/308para
http://www.stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/774

please audition as to choose you must listen.

This would also power B&W 802Ds nicely.

Parasound JC2 and pair of Parasound JC1s.
http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/806legacy/
http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/308para
http://www.stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/774

I would suggest you look into pair of used pair of JM lab Focal Grand Utopias. Considering the size of your room, I can almost guarantee that you will be completely satisfied especially if you mate them together with a pair of monoblock amps. Tube or solid state, it doesn't matter. I would prefer solid state Levinson amps or VTL tube amps in your particular application.

Good luck :-)

Mark Evans

I know technically all speakers should supposedly reproduce the sound that was recorded, but....! It just does not happen that way. I listened to Fleetwood Mac's opening track for "the Dance", specifically the track "Chains", and right after that I tested the same set of speakers on what I would mostly listen to (classical) with the third movement of Beethoven's violin concerto with Anne Sophie Mutter. The way different speakers reproduced the sound was as varied as you can imagine. Yes, a good speaker will be better than a bad speaker anyway, but for the budget you are referring, you may as well consider these not so unnoticeable nuances.

All speakers sound different. This is one of the main reasons I and many others say "Don't but any speaker unless you have heard and liked its sound".

.

Aquilino Sanona wrote:

Hello Mr. Moustache,

I suggest a Audiophysic Virgos powered by Conrad-Johnson premier 140 and Jeff Rowland Pre-Amp for control. This set up i'm sure has the caracteristics you described.

Good listenings and test, hope you get the sonic-graal you're loking for.

Aquilino

Those components mated together would no doubt produce some righteous sounding music.

Jeff Rowland is another genius in my book.

Mark

sound bigger! ;)

 When you have a large space you should always consider Magnepans with Audio-Research amplification. Nothing sounds better when you can set up correctly. There is a reason why more stereophile readers have Magnepan than any other brand, by a large margin.

To second what jackfish mentioned, the Whispers will sound bigger.

The 802 Diamonds are very good.  The upper mids sound a lot like the smaller Legacy Classic HD , but with deeper bass and a slightly deader cabinet.  They both have the dual 8" drivers that are very well constructed, and both use Rohacell.

At some point, Legacy moved on from their kevlar mids, to their new silver/graphite rohacell driver- the Youtube comparison is pretty interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQjweIamc1U

The Beamers cost three times the price as the entry level Legacy Classic though. The 802 diamond tweeter is definately better than the metal versions, but I think I prefer a good ribbon over it.

I personally think both the Focus SE (the Classic's big brother) and the Whisper easily takes the 802D.  Quicker and deeper bass, and not as rough in the lower treble as the 802D.