Stay W/B&W 805's or goto a bigger speaker

What are your problems?

In a system that wasn't even as good as your's, I felt that the highpass crossover in an HGS-12 (should be at least as good as the FSR-12) just mucked up the midrange a little too much. I'd hook the Classe up directly with balanced cables and run unbalanced cables to the Velodyne (assuming the Proceed has both outputs). You'll have to set the Velodyne crossover at about 40 to 45 Hz to come in under the 805s. I think that you'd have to spend ALOT more to get speakers with the quality of sound of the 805s along with significantly more bass. If you can properly dial in the Velodyne, you should be very happy. Note that you shouldn't have to spend an arm and a leg for cables for the Velodyne. Start out with Radio Shaft gold series and put the rest of your budget for the balanced cables. By the way, if you have the cash and a large room, by all means go for the larger speakers!

"I think that you'd have to spend ALOT more to get speakers with the quality of sound of the 805s along with significantly more bass."...sorry, have to disagree here.

jim, you'd be well served to look into Vandy 2ce, maggie 1.6, paradigm 100. all of these have greater range and IMHO sound better than the overpriced B&Ws.

FWIW: i own none of these speakers. i've spent time listening to all however.

My B&W 805's paired with a REL Strata III sub sound awesome, and compete favorably with the best of the large speakers I have heard. Most speakers I have heard that really don't need a sub are in the $10,000 plus price range such as the Avalon Eidelon's and the B&W 800's. No matter how good the speaker is, after long and careful listening you will not get the bass right until you get up to the level of those speakers, so why not keep the 805's and be happy. Rhyno, with all due respect, Paradigm just doesn't cut it on so many levels, and Maggies with good bass, without sub? I don't think so. Haven't heard the Vandy. Gretchen, don't skimp on the cables. They made my nice sounding system become a superb sounding system after careful and tedious experimentaion. Acoustic Zen and Harmonic Tech blend really well with the 805's, but Cardas makes a particularly good match with Classe` amps, so I suggest you try auditioning some of these manufacturers first, given your present gear. If you have to keep the budget lower, try Tributaries and XLO, but you have very nice gear, and they will only give you their best if you use a very good cable. Better to buy one good cable at a time, than many so-so cables at the same time.

Maggie's 1.6's are an absolutely AMAZING speaker, even more so at their ridiculously cheap price, however, I must disagree with Rhyno and Bmpnyc. The Maggies DO have good bass (down to 34 Hz if I remember correctly). Yeah, they're missing the bottom 2/3 octave, but then again, standing waves and room tuning are less of a problem. However, they do require OODLES of power to sound their best! I was pushing 500 wpc (through their 4 ohm impedence)! With a kilowatt of total power, I NEVER fond the bass to be lacking! For those of you who do have the Maggies, might I suggest the Spectron 1 (or the later version) with its digital switching power supply as a great choice for a matching amp.

Just want to thank everyone. Here's another thing to throw into the picture. The speaker cables I'm using are Monster cable 2.4 biwire. And the interconnects are a Monster M1000i between the pre and amp. And a Monster 850 from the cd player to the pre. Maybe this is part of the problem. The soundstage is wide but not everything in it is precise.And what is the best way to hook up the sub. Mrowlands,I think is on the right track.
Thanks Jim

Jim, you could use the Monster ICs (it sounds like they're RCA) for the Velodyne and get decent cables for CD to Pre to Power. Your system is worthy of cables as per bmpnyc, but if you're new to this, you need to be aware that cables in this league can sound significantly different from each other and, if you're accoustics/hearing is good enough, cables like the Harmonic Tech can sound horrible until they're broken in. Which reminds me, although cables can help here, if you're having problems with soundstage and image, make sure your speaker and listening positions are optimized and then check into some accoustic treatments (plenty of info on the net and in books for this). Check out the Cable Company for renting cables to compare. Good luck and have fun.

Jim, M Rowlands is on the money with his advice. It does take patience and perserverence to break in cables, as they don't usually sound very good for 85-200 hours, although of course some can occasionally sound good right away. Try to optimize speaker position first. Monster 2.4's are a very nice introduction to the improvements good cables can bring, but your ability to discern details in sound reproduction will keep evolving and you will definitely hear significant improvements when you upgrade. Recently I added two 5X3 pieces of acoustic foam($80) to the spot where the first reflections of sound hits my wall, and now all dialogue and vocals are much easier to decipher, best $80 I ever spent on audio.