[bart]

Originally Posted by kfr01

Douglax:

Thanks for checking in. The selection process is going slowly as I'm contemplating where I want to take my system in the long term.

I know that eventually I want to replace my DIY towers with something better. They use very capable 7" XBL^2 long throw woofers, a nice 4.5" XBL^2 paper cone midrange, and a pretty good soft done tweeter. In room, I've got real response down to 30hz, but I have some "port bloat" that goes along with using 7" woofers, a port, and no high pass crossover. I also have no bass correction, so there are necessarily a few room-related nodes (suck-outs and peaks) that are impossible to fully treat with passive treatment. While the soft dome tweeter (still used by Usher Audio in some of its commercial speakers) and the paper midrange measure well and are fairly low in distortion relative to many midranges and tweeters in commercial speakers, I know that more performance in the mids and highs are available. Particularly, I know that I could gain faster decay, lower harmonic distortion, and higher resolution up and down the frequency spectrum.

I'm very happy with my Wyred4Sound DAC-2 and MA6600.

Long story short, er, long, I'm looking at some level of speaker/sub change within the next year or so. It probably makes sense to start with the subwoofer, as it will work with my current speakers and new speakers.

Subwoofers are between the JL and the Velodyne, and I'm currently leaning toward a 15" Velodyne.

Speakers being considered include:
KEF Reference (considering the 201/2 monitors through 205/2 speakers)
BW 802D
PMC EB2i, IB2i
Wilson Sophia 3

The KEF Reference 201/2 or 203/2 speakers plus the Velodyne subwoofer is where I am leaning currently. As a guy that has read his share of DIY speaker building literature and measured a few speakers, I have great respect for John Atkinson's reviews and measurements in Stereophile. The latest KEF Reference line seems to be one of the best measuring lines that Stereophile reviews for the price. I like the design philosophy of a sealed midrange that is coaxial and coincident with the tweeter. Further, I like that I could not build the KEF Reference speakers due to this feature.

Ik think the KEF Ref is a very fine choice.
But do give the PMC's a listen!