I’m looking into possibly changing my front 3 speakers of my home theater and I can not find anything online for people comparing the KEF Reference3 and the b&w 804 d3 speakers. No retailers that I have found in the Minneapolis Minnesota area have the KEF Reference3 on display so I’m interested in seeing if anyone out there has heard these side by side. Another option would be the KEF R900 but I have heard from only 1 salesman that the bass drops out at high volumes. They will be ran off of a marantz 8012 and biamped with a rotel-1585. I use it for 90% movies and it will be in a large living room with 9’ ceilings and is open to the kitchen and dining area. I’m using a svs ultra 16sb sub and a svs 4000sb sub. My listening volume tends to be around reference level or 0 if that makes a difference. I know there might be a lot of other options out there that might be considered better but my hands are kind of tied on these options in particular (or anything that is sold by magnolia). Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Again if you want reference levels in that space, you will blow those speakers up as well. You again have 6.5" woofers and a not highly efficient speaker.
If you want a high powered and high quality speaker to fill that space then you are going to have to outlay a massive amount of cash.
Realistically you options are: -
Maintain good quality with the speakers you have, but play at a lower level.
Buy lower quality cruder but more robust speakers.
Buy high quality speakers built for the job. I have been designing speakers for over 60 years, and a high performance and high power speaker is a formidable costly affair.
The third option, which has always been mine is to design and build you won speakers equal to the task at hand.
