confused and don't know what to do


We would like to buy a nice audio system and also have this double as a surround sound but listening to music is the priority. We have listened to many speakers but have settled on the B&W 804's. Now the challenge is to select a receiver and all the other accompaniments we require. We have a little challenge in that our home is a condo and the outside wall is all glass. The space is combined kitchen, living room, and dining room all open with hardwood floors and hard tile on the walls of the kitchen and a lot of granite counter tops. It seems that every where we go, the recommendations are different depending on what the store is selling and of course, the sales people would like us to buy the most expensive. What would give great sound without going crazy. We are thinking about 2 tribe sub woofers and space is limited and an in wall center B&W speaker but we don't know what we are doing and don't want to throw our money away. Help! Too many choices and we don't have enough knowledge. Thank you so much.
raw33

Showing 3 responses by mtrot

First of all, that sounds like a very reflective and "live" listening environment, so any bright speaker will tend to be really bright in there, unless you do extensive room treatments.
I will say, I recently compared the B&W 804D3 to the B&W 702S2 at Best Buy.  They had them set up side by side and were able to immediately switch between them.  I actually preferred the 702s, as the 804s are just so bright, really bright.  I feel like I could listen to the 702s for a longer period of time than the 804s. 

With the money you'd save by going with the 702s, you could get into an Anthem or Arcam AVR, which are claimed to produce better sound than the more mainstream AVRs.  I'm not sure that is the case, but it might be worth exploring.
I'm doing what audiotroy advised, i.e, I'm using a Denon AVR for the center and surround speakers, and a pre-amp/DAC fed into a Krell power amp for the front L/R speakers.  The pre-amp is a PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC, which has the home theater bypass feature.  Sounds pretty good on both movies and music.  As suggested above, you can get a nice integrated amp with home theater bypass.  I would have gone with an integrated amp if didn't already have the big Krell.
I have no doubt that audiotroy wants to sell product, but I’ve not found his comments to be "pushy".