Nope - I love tubes, but I will stick to a tube preamp and SS power amp in my rig - much better overall ststem design in my particular case.

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skylab said:

Nope - I love tubes, but I will stick to a tube preamp and SS power amp in my rig - much better overall ststem design in my particular case.

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You may like the CAT preamp with the phonostage since you listen to vinyl. Ken makes great preamps be it very expensive now but can be had for a reasonable price on the used market. No remote as Stevens believes they degrade the sound. A great solid state I heard was the Spectral solid state amps. Heard those with the Revel Salon, very impressive.

Anyone heard Nola Vipers?  Sealed box bass unit and open baffle section for mid and treble..... could be interesting.... any experiences?

I own a pair of Neat Motive 3s.   They are the smallest ones, monitor types with 5 1/2" woofers and an inverted JMLabs tweeter.  This monitors I had them imported as a demo from Spain couple of years ago.  They are incredibly dynamic, very robust sounding for the size and beat many other larger monitors with larger woofers in the sound and purity department.  I ran them with Naim Naits, as well as a large McCormack DNA-225 200+ watts/channel.  They sound excellent.  
 
Nevertheless, my latest monitor type of speaker is a Brines Acoustics BR-20s with 8" fullrange Fostex high efficiency driver matted with a pair of the most affordable bullet Fostex Alnico tweeters, the two drivers have 1 pair of L-pads, one to control the low frequency/qts and another to increase/decrease the output of the tweeters.  This monitor is rather large, it is forceful and the bass is incredible....Mid 30s.  The beauty about this monitor is that it can take both SET type of amplifiers as well as large SS monsters well.  

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skylab said:

Nope - I love tubes, but I will stick to a tube preamp and SS power amp in my rig - much better overall ststem design in my particular case.

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And you would need a super powerful tube amp to drive those B&W's properly.... with those speakers SS makes more sense....

I own a pair of Dynaudio Contours and love them.  They have transparency, neutrality, clean and controlled bass, detailed yet not harsh.  

Personally i heard the B&W 803 and i compared to Quad 12L2 but in the end i bought the Quad. B&W 803 is a waste of money even for a second hand.it is more of a home theater speaker and not even worth paying for it too. I always like the Dynaudio but if you have the budget, you should go for it. Quad 12L2 will be best buy for audiophile fanatics like me. Bright speakers with good treble, very clear mids, especially if your play Camomile, Josh Groban, personal favorite Aaron neville and Carpenters. Quad 12L2 is half the price of B&W 803 if you buy it new.

There is also another brand i imported from HongKong. Not sure if they would sell just the front speakers, as they package it with their hometheater systems 7.1 channels. I got the entire set for about US$1.7k for the entire 7.1 speakers with active subwoofer. The model is Force. You can check with them at Allensmithaudio.com. The front speakers sounded better than my Quad12L2 without any burn-in. I was amaze at the sound quality, clarity, wideness and soundstage. Though it is an unknown brand but the company is from Australia and they custom made their own drivers. Probably if you talked to them. They may sell it to you for 600-700 with shipping included.

Sorry, i thought it was the B&w 600. Yup the B&W 803 is awesome.

oh well...  I got a demo of Active ATC SCM50 yesterday.   And have since been staring at bank accounts and stuff I've got to sell to see of there is any way I can afford them....

I know Audio Vector as i am in DK.  They are good at redproducing dynamic swings (fast), and they are "forward", perhaps also tilted up a bit to accentuate the trebble, but the bass reproduction on their larger speakers is (used to be) pretty good.  I would characterize them as being like Naim with an attitude.   I don't keep up with them.  I owned a pair of used 2-ways 4-5 years ago and my step son has their latest monitors, but I am not sure how far up the scale.  They are sold widely in DK and many people own them. 

Hi Frihed89
 
lol - I love you signature  (Living in Søborg my self.)
"Greetings from the sunny Brønshøj Riveria on the banks of the lovely Utterslev Mose"
 
Back on topic. The Audio Vector speakers comes in modules, so they can be upgraded later if needed.
They were are good speakers, but I ended up with Zu Druid instead.
 
 
 

In my humble opinion, none of the speakers that require external amp are worth buying these days. Consider active speakers, like the ones here: http://www.adam-audio.com/en/home-audio/products.
 
If you don't care about the cosmetics, you can buy less expensive professional monitor versions of essentially same hardware: http://www.adam-audio.com/en/pro-audio/products.
 
Look at their specs in the user manuals you can download from the site. Frequency response curve and THD are in entirely different league compared to the speakers with passive crossovers at a similar price point. And their multiple transducers are perfectly phase-aligned. 
 
Adam has competitors who also produce excellent active monitors. So I'm not promoting Adams, I'm simply pointing out that the professional musicians and sound engineers moved on from the passive crossovers to active monitors, and so should we.
 
I use Adam-A7s in combination with a Velodyne 18" sub and this combo utterly demolishes all speakers with passive crossovers I ever heard in my life, irregardless of price, and I heard quite a few. My previous setup used Maggies.
 
The A7 is a relatively low end in Adam's lineup. With unlimited budget, I'd buy something like this: http://www.adam-audio.com/en/pro-audio/products/s7a-mk2/description, which is used as "the" main reference monitor in the major recording studios worldwide.

hmm~~Great match for the big B+W's, which ned a LOT of power. 200 wpc was not even close to enough.

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I have read the correspondance with interest, and you may have chosen new speakers long time ago already. I write you, because in my point of wiew the High End Audiovector speakers having ribbon tweeter is awesome precise, extremely fast and the dynamics is great. The bass is never unprecise, but bass fanatics might need some more, but quite frankly, my own play at 29 hz and they delivers lots of low frequent sound. My own speakers are Audiovector Mi3 Avantgarde Arrete, that I have bought used. Yoy may compare these speakers with Dynaudio Contour 3.4s that is slightly more precise, but they cost a lot more, even used.
The dynamics at the Audiovector speakers are splendid and I would not consider to use other speakers. I have Arcam FMJ gear to play with and listens to a wide sortiment of music and films at this gear.

I completely disagree about Actives being better than passives. Went from $1.2k Mackie Hr824 (and previously Mackie MR8s to Adam A5s) to $600 B&W 685s and the B&W blew the mackies out of the park in terms of their overall presentation. Imaging and soundstaging really out did any active speaker I have ever heard. Detail is probably better, but I'm not in a position to compare because I don't have the Mackie's with me anymore.
 
A decent amp, e.g. Onkyo A-9555, can be had for under $400 used, so you really don't save any money with Actives.