What's more important; sound or brand name?

Kool39, I like mine to, great tuner. I have the au717 also but have not used it for a while.

Sony is not well known as a speaker builder in the U.S., so their first thought is (sony speakers?). It's not just sony, the same thing can happen with any of the big mass market companys. I saw a Denon amp for sale the other day ($17,000 used), you don't see many of those for sale in the U.S., these companys build high end products, most people on this side of the world just don't know it and look down their nose and figure it must be mid-fi if it's a sony. Sony has built speaker systems that sold for around $8,000 at one time, I did not get a chance to listen to them but did read a review on them that stated they were very good speakers. A lot of audiophiles start out as music lovers and then transform into gear lovers, when this happens all the fun goes out of it, they wake up and go to sleep thinking about cables, power cords, tubes, tweaks, ect. ect., you have to beware while they are in this state of mind, never tell them you have sony speakers, If they ask or if you must tell, change the letters around (noys) so you won't have to lie, they will want to hear these noys speakers so invite them over and help them get back to listening to music for a change. I always hide my krell amps before they come over so that they don't know how brite my system sounds. Before I started this practice, they would always run out of the house with their hands over their ears, works every time.

With the mid-bass bump and the lack of much output above 15K the 901 is a good rock speaker for a young guy who wants to play loud, they can make some of the poor quality rock recordings sound pretty good. You can find the old 901's cheap.