Speaker Suggestions

To be fair, anytime you get a speaker maker to talk to you directly that’s a pretty responsive person! Try getting the head of B&W or Bose on the phone, or to answer your e-mail.

Still, Frits is a brand in the 2-way speakers that you should consider. Amazing value, and a setup with 5 of them won’t set you back far.

Have a look at the GoldenEar Triton Reference.  Well within you price range and a very nice speaker.  And if you call the company in the early morning there's a very good chance you will get the head designer answering the phone.  

My suggestion would be to contact Greg Belman from Bache Audio and arrange a demo. I have been living with the Tribeca’s for just over 2 years and I’m enjoying my music more than ever. It’s a big, holographic, smooth sound that’s very coherent and not analytical. I have had great success with both tubes and solid state. They are easy to drive and fairly efficient.

Ohm Walsh's for front and rears! 3-D room-filling sound regardless of listening spot!

If you like the sound of the Pulsars, with good reason IMHO, I think going with a Pulsar for a center speaker would be pretty optimal.  I think using Pulsars for surrounds is complete overkill unless you have $$$ to burn.  You could use Prisms, but I think you could get by fine with budget monitors from Silverline or other decent  monitor with a silk-dome tweeter.  Frankly, I’d do that and add two good subs that’ll probably do more than anything else to up your enjoyment of both music and movies.  I don’t think you’d like the B&Ws — if you like JA they’ll sound a little sterile and lifeless by comparison, kinda like Revel.  Just my $0.02 FWIW. 

Jeff Joseph's Pearls blew me away at RMAF years ago and I've totally loved the wonderful sound, detailed with tone and body, that he gets from all his speakers. I also like Borresen, TAD, Tidal and Rockport. I just got dumb-lucky to buy two used Raidho D2s for mains in my audio room. I'd be happy with any of the others above as well.

Before the Raidhos I owned Dynaudio Sapphires for five years but the D2s bested them in every single way except sheer volume output. I remember loving the Pulsars as well the first time I hear them, very exceptional!

There are some very great speakers lower priced that serve up a bit more value for the dollar, but there seems to be some magic hiding in the diminishing returns...