Emotiva T1 Towers - Audiophile Quality or Just Home Theatre Towers?

If you had $1,000 to spend you could step up to the T2s and get the 8" woofers.  I've heard good things about the Emotiva Airmotiv speakers, they seem to offer a lot of bang for the buck.  

I wasn't very impressed with the Triton 1s when I auditioned them.  They had tons of bass, but it felt like it was all bottom end and very aggressive treble, not much in the middle.  Of course, it was only one audition and not in the best room, so that may have played a part.  For the same $5,000 the Paradigm Prestige 95Fs I heard at the same store were heads and tails over the Goldenears.  

213runnin -

The Goldenears are engineered in the US and built in China just like the Emotiva speakers.  Being built in China isn't necessarily a bad thing if proper quality control is in place, a lot of very nice speakers are manufactured there.

As far as the Goldenear specs go, Sandy Gross seems to have brought  the extremely optimistic frequency response quotes with him from Definitive Tech.  According to anechoic measurements the Triton Ones have peak bass output around 40hz and are down nearly 20db by 20hz.  They probably have some sort of output at 16hz, and room gain will help, but they're not deep sub-bass monsters.  

For under the $5,000/pair of the Triton Ones a pair of Emotiva T2s paired with one or two very nice subwoofers would offer much better bass performance, greater flexibility in placement for optimizing bass response to the room, and likely better midrange and midbass response.