Agreed that demoing or auditioning at Magnolia/Best Buy is far from ideal. I wouldn’t go to Magnolia/Best Buy to demo or audition to anything. Even in their reference 2ch room they use Sonos streamer as a digital front end source for their high end setups/systems eg B&W 802 D3, 803 D3, some huge Martin Logan electrostats paired with some McIntosh monoblock and stereo amps.
Come on, you could do better than Sonos streamer to stream music from to feed digital front end source signal to these expensive setups/systems.
And their speaker placements are awful and they have too many setups & systems (too many large footprint speakers) in that somewhat small to medium size listening room. They literally have 4 different setups & systems cramped together in that reference 2ch listening room (somewhat small to mid size listening room). They also place a tall audio racks right in the middle of the speakers and won’t even bother pulling the speakers out cause that kind of placement will ruin the imaging and soundstage depth.
I have heard the B&W 802 D3 and IMO they weren’t bright or harsh at all but forward yes and are definite improvements from their prodecessors (802 D2) however I prefer other brands such as Sonus Faber, Vienna Acoustics, Harbeth, PMC, etc that are in similar price range as these B&W 802 D3 or even cheaper and found them to be more musically engaging and involving than these 802 D3. However, these B&W truly shine when used for high end HT system and their matching HTML1 D3 center channel speaker is very good.
I still think these 802 D3 are pretty good and will pair well with your McIntosh MC 1.2kw monoblock amps.
You will have to listen to them yourself.
Come on, you could do better than Sonos streamer to stream music from to feed digital front end source signal to these expensive setups/systems.
And their speaker placements are awful and they have too many setups & systems (too many large footprint speakers) in that somewhat small to medium size listening room. They literally have 4 different setups & systems cramped together in that reference 2ch listening room (somewhat small to mid size listening room). They also place a tall audio racks right in the middle of the speakers and won’t even bother pulling the speakers out cause that kind of placement will ruin the imaging and soundstage depth.
I have heard the B&W 802 D3 and IMO they weren’t bright or harsh at all but forward yes and are definite improvements from their prodecessors (802 D2) however I prefer other brands such as Sonus Faber, Vienna Acoustics, Harbeth, PMC, etc that are in similar price range as these B&W 802 D3 or even cheaper and found them to be more musically engaging and involving than these 802 D3. However, these B&W truly shine when used for high end HT system and their matching HTML1 D3 center channel speaker is very good.
I still think these 802 D3 are pretty good and will pair well with your McIntosh MC 1.2kw monoblock amps.
You will have to listen to them yourself.