Speaker recommendation please, please, please

There are a pair of the Gaallo 3.5s WITH the sub amp going for $2,999 right now here:

http://app.audiogon.com/listings/full-range-gallo-nucleus-reference-3-5-package-speakers-plus-sa-subwoofer-amp-2012-10-23-speakers-11561-long-beach-ny

I doubt you can do any better than that for the money....

-RW-

You will find many people recommending he speakers that they eventually settled on or that they aspire to own. But make sure you find out what their own listening peers are and what qualities led them to choose those speakers. If you want to listen to Butthole Surfers and an A'goner is recommending a speaker based on its ability to play chamber music then you may not be so happy with it.

To take an example, Mountain High enthusiastically recommends those speakers in a number of threads here. Nothing wrong with that but it would be good to know what music he listens to on them and what he has compared them to.

But ultimately I endorse the advice to listen to as many flavors of speakers as possible on music that you are very familiar with.

There is actually a pair of the dc10 audio's for sale here that I was looking at. They sure look the part anyway. The Gallos sure are well reviewed. I've actually been using their little A'Divas with their smallest sub in a secondary listening room in my house and I think they sound great for that application.

As for what aspects I want to sound better, I frankly don't have the vernacular to answer the question. I hear terms like musicality bandied about and frankly I don't have any idea what the hell that means. Sounds like something from one of my guitar forums - one of those ill defined terms that describes something that we all know it when we hear it but defies explicit definition when pressed to offer one. Like the "chime" of a Vox AC30.

With my new speakers, I mostly want them to sound more realistic relative to the source material than my current ones do. My B&W's sound like I'm listening to a speaker. I want that perception to melt away. I guess transparency is the word. I like a sense of depth or dimension. Like some guitar amps will have a 3-D like quality vs. some are just flat. I also am clearly looking at smaller speakers but I really don't want something that sounds small and certainly not beamy (like I've read the VMPS speakers can).

The Gallo's are probably the only ones on my list I can audition but I'll. The Eficion F300 are bit pricey.

I actually have a lead on the Evolution Acoustics MMMIcroOne's. Seems to be the last pair available at this point and with a significant price hike looming, I might just go for it. The demand is high enough so in the event that I just can't live with them, I should be able to move them along. I'll likely be upgrading the rest of my system in the near future also, so I'm not too bogged down with how the speakers sound with my current gear. The speakers are my jumping off point.

Thanks to all so far for helping me out with this. I know I have a lot to learn. Be patient with me.

This is interesting, since I've been considering some of the same speakers myself. There was a pair of Joseph Pulsars on eBay today that wound up selling for about $3500, which seemed like a good deal. However, I didn't bid on them since I'm auditioning the EA MMMicroOnes tomorrow. If those don't work out, I'm considering Merln TSMs or Gallo Stradas with a sub. I also noticed that Gallo 3.5 with the sub amp for sale.

I'll try to post my impressions of the MMMicroOne after I hear them tomorrow.

Something nowone has mentioned, integrating any new speakers with your existing BandW speakers. That will be a problem in the meantime.

One suggestion, take advantage of a lot of experience at Rocky Mountain this month. There are pages of reviews on dozens of rooms, mainly concentrating on the speakers, on the Audiocircle show review circle. There is no obvious commercial pressure there, which might lead a paper magazine to favour an advertiser. A lot of very good ideas I have picked up on, that I will try to follow up on, DC10, as already mentioned, Vapor, Odyssey audio. I personally use Daedalus and would very much recommend them, but as Roscoeiii says, people tend to recommend their current speakers, it's second nature.