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In Reply to: RE: Would the KEF 7 or 7.2 be a step up from B&W posted by gonzo on May 17, 2015 at 06:15:14
Throwing Money at a troublesome room can be a major problem. The B&W Matrix 801 series I have enjoyed - but what I found really interesting with them and with the Nautilus versions is that they actually sounded much better with Single Ended Triode amplifiers. The clinical sound it coule be argued is from SS amps you've added.
It is highly counter intuitive to recommend tubes - especially a SET with something like B&W but the Wyatech Labs 211 might surprise you - or other higher power 845 based or 211 based tube amplifiers. Indeed, a dealer in Hong Kong was running some Me Xing(formerly Ming Da) tube amps on the 801 and it was really quite excellent sounding - a little bass bloom was noticeable but it was pretty excellent musically and by far better than when you hear B&W with Classe, Rotel, Krell or Bryston, Levinson etc. But you will be volume limited obviously with 20 ish watts.
If that doesn't appeal to you then I would explore speakers not to be known for sounding clinical - (KEF doesn't exactly spring to mind).
You could go the DeVore Oranguan, Audio Note E, Teresonic Ingenium kind of stuff that I generally prefer - and get a SET amplifier on those - but will they fill a bigger room(I'm assuming you have) satisfactorily might be the tougher question. You might also consider a Horn that with being a bit more directional can sometimes avoid pitfalls of being in a poor room because you can face them directly where you want them. Good Higher efficiency speakers (and horns) also tend to escape room pitfalls and indeed their own cabinet pitfalls a but more - sounding more open and alive and present.
I don't think it's fair to say the 801 is a poor speaker - because you can get quite a lot of excellent sound from them - but I think certain speakers may simply be easier to get right across a larger number of rooms and a I'd look at something that may be easier to position, and generally higher efficiency - might not be a bad idea to look at the High Efficiency forum - the trouble is most of those are horns and some find horns to blare or shout and then that's kind of clinical sounding as well.
Follow Ups:
You won't be average volume limited much but short term peaks will be clipped messing up some dynamics and unless the small amp is super stable there will be short term oscillation fouling up sound a short time after the peaks.
Yeah this is the big problem - the quality of sound is high but if you listen to music with big dynamic swings of 15+dB and you like it loud the combo will likely stink - BUT if you are mostly a lower volume listener and listen to "girl at a piano" kind of stuff then you can turn those B&W's into something a lot more special.
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