Slingshot has brought up an good suggestion with the B&W's, and I have owned both 601 S2's and CDM1 NT's for a very short period. I think B&W is currently putting out excellent speakers for the money, that should please the widest range of people. They do just about everything well, especially dynamics and high frequencies. Their patented tweeter creates a unique "airiness" that is very hard to define. Although, after extended listening I found it to be overly bright and fatiquing. I switched cd players, interconnects, and speaker cables multiple times with varying effect, but alas the high freq's were not to my liking (very subjective and personal opinion).
Now, the JMR Twins and Trente are in a whole different leaque than the CDM series and quite possibly 805's. In fairness to both companies, the type of sound they reproduce is so entirely different, that comparison is almost impossible. B&W's have the tendency to highlight (not exaggerate or color) certain aspects of music more than others, while JMR's are astonishigly balanced. First quick impressions while A/B between them would be that:
1) Vocals and Piano's are so strikingly reproduced on the JMR's that you will be left breathless. Artists like Cassandra Wilson, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Sinatra, etc. are reproduced in perfect glory.
2) The soundstage of JMR's is so incredibly deep and wide that the speakers simply vanish in the musical landscape. And they are not the least bit postion sensitive. You will spend absolutley no time finding the "sweet spot" - just 6.5-8 ft. apart and a few feet from the back wall and you are done! Unlike the B&W's which I spent an entire night fine tuning their positioning.
3) the JMR's lack high frequency clarity and "zing". But after a while it becomes clear that they have just as much definition as the B&W's, it's that every part of the sonic spectrum is perfectly in proportion to others, so highs are beautiful, but not at the expense of overshadowing midrange, etc.
4) the JMR's have far less bass than the B&W's. In fact, this is partly, and, definetly true(?). The B&W's front firing port produces amazingly tight "punch" in music which the JMR's were never intended to deliver. All the B&W 600 series and CDM's can rock your tits off, no problem. But, the JMR's have this incredible low frequency defintion that (once again in my opinion) blows the B&W's away(figuratively). Their bass is much more refined, it rolls across the carpet and up through your furniture. A much more subtle style. While A/B'ing between the two on Cassandra Wilson's "Blue Light 'Till Dawn" (Blue Note, 1993), on the JMR's I could clearly hear the "twang-snap" and resonance of a stand-up bass string that was not present on the B&W's. And the notes are so real sounding it is scary.
4) The JMR's take a solid 200+ hours to breakin - No Joke. Mid's and highs will sound great out of the box, but they devop a whole different richness and texture after 200 hours. A simple and primitive way of telling if they are still breaking in is power handling. When I first got mine used w/ 125 hours on them, they sounded terrific but a) I couldn't turn them up past 8:30 on the dial w/o the sound quality deteriating, and b) on vocals if one of before mentioned singers sustained a long note, I could hear minor fluctuations in the timber. After 200 hours I now can turn the speakers up past 12:00 (w/o sound degradation) and there is nolonger any tone variances. Also, everything is much more rich.
Enough rambling for now. I don't want anyone to think that I am putting down B&W's, they are excellent. Especially for Rock, Pop, techno, and Dance - if you need driving, tight,bass you can't beat them. But, for my taste (Jazz, vocals, acoustic, classical), the JMR's are so much more musical and rich that are are in a whole different leaque even if I may have to add a subwoofer. What they do right, and the fact that they do nothing wrong, by far outweighs any benefits other speakers may have. Unfortunately, they aren't many dealers (in LA) where you can A/B them. If there were, I think that there would be far less B&Ws sold and far more JMR's.
