sonus faber auditor vs 804


Last week I saw some sonus faber speakers on display and decided to give them a listen. The sonus faber cermona auditor simply blew me away and now I am one confused soul :D having almost decided on the 804's. The mids of the auditor was AMAZING. What clarity! Only downside is the bass. Well, what can I expect from a 2 way book shelf right.

Now here is my problem...

1) Do I get the cremona auditor or the 804's? I know I know its ultimately my ears that will decide but can some people share some thoughts.
2) How can I increase the bass for the auditor? I am getting a velodyne sub too but will that match?
3) I am setting up an HT and I do not think the cremona auditor can be good front speakers because I cannot afford the sonus surrounds and center. So my plan is to use cheaper PSB speakers set for my HT and sonus for stereo. Does it make sense or would an 804, HTM and 600 surrounds do a better job for movies + music.
4) How is the sonus grand piano compared to the 804? That might be another option if the auditor becomes too complicated to set-up or too expensive.
5) how about the cremona floorstand? havent heard it since they do not have it in stock. How is it vs the auditor?

As you can see from my questions... I am one confused person ha ha ha.

Hope you can shed some light... BTW I will be using rotel 1080 200watt amp and 1055 as pre/pro.

Thanks
doodleboytoyb266

Showing 2 responses by loki7177

1) I have owned a pair of 805's, sf concertos (original not home) and auditioned the auditor and grand piano. In my mind the sf's are better for stereo and the b&w kick a$$ in ht. It basically comes down to which do you spent more time listening to. Or you can get both like I did. During my quest to get the best system I can afford for both 2 channel and ht use I ultimately decided that the best way to acheive it was to have two seperate systems. I now have a jbl speaker system for ht and a pair of green mountain europas for stereo. I had to deal with the WAF too. So I had to wall mount my jbls so i did not have to have two pairs of speakers on the floor in the front. I know of another person who has a ht setup in a room with a two channel setup in the same room on the side wall. I couldn't do that myself because of the size of my room but if you have the space it is a great idea.

2) Though I have never owned one, I have been told by the distributer and my local dealers that REL subs integrate will with sf. Which velodyne were you thinking about getting?

3) I wouldn't recommend mixing and matching center and surround speakers with sf, trust me I have tried. The sf's are voiced so differently from any other speaker in world, which is what makes them so special, that it is impossible to get a speaker that is timbre match with them. How about a cremona speakers for stereo listening and b&w cdm nt or 600 series for ht?

4) The grand piano home is in another league compared to the cremona auditor. To me the orginal grand piano was much better then the new home series and was more comprable to the auditor. But at the same price would you want to sacrafice the magic of the cremona?

5) The cremona is just the auditor with more bass. But is it is still not quite full range. You might still need a sub. If you are going to get a sub anyway just save yourself 4k.

Just my 2 cents. Hope it helps. Good luck.
my room is 12x18 with 8 ft ceilings but one of the sides is completely opended to the rest of the house which is about 50 ft long. i am using set of jbl northridge series speakers for ht. they come with wall mount hardware. they are amazing for the money.

if you are really considering the grand pianos, look for the original the ones that came out about 1995. they are much better then the current home version that came out around 2000. the original was much more refined and neutral. take a look at this review of the concertino home. the review compared it to the original, http://www.videohifi.com/Concertino_eng.htm. sf wanted to optimize the speakers for ht during the boom. that is probably why they named it the home series. they changed the drivers and made the speakers more efficient but sacrifaced a lot of the sf magic.

good luck.