I have 2805's (after half a life with the ESL 57's) because I could not accommodate the 2905's. If you can, my advise would be to go for the 2905's. However, with a good subwoofer the bass of the 2805's can be remedied to a large extent. I recently bought the new and reputedly ultra clean and fast B&W PV1d (connected at speaker level), and after a bit of tinkering the sound is well integrated. B&W's default suggestion to match the Quads was too overpowering, however. I lowered crossover to 34 HZ (rather than 37 HZ), set the slope of the low pass filter to 24 db, and lowered sensitivity to 82 db (rather than the recommended 86 db). This maintains the integrity of the glorious 2805's without any smearing or woolliness, and yet it adds a new dimension to music with deep bass, such as organ. My biggest remaining concern is not the integration with the Quad's, but on the one hand the match with the room (even though large, with a high ceiling and a mostly concrete construction), and on the other hand the varying quality of recordings. I now discover that unlike most classical recordings quite a few rock and some jazz recordings have artificial bass boost to make them sound better on indifferent systems. For best room integration I also auditioned the Velodyne Ultra series, but these did not integrate quite so well with the 2805's, at least when I heard them.
