I recently told a friend I would do him a favor and let one of his customers come and listen to the pair of subs he sold me. He was a really nice guy, came over and I played a few songs, he played a few from his Ipod, and he was impressed with the subs and intends on buying a pair to put with his Martin logan aerius towers...
So after we talked a while and I showed him my other systems, and while we were talking he told me about a set of monitor audio silver towers he has for sale, so I told him I may be interested and he invited me by to see them and check out his equipment... He lived about a half hour away and offered to drive me back and forth but I said I would follow him, no sense him making the trip 3 times...
So I bought the silver towers for $200 {he said he used the about 30 hours, they look brand new, and were in the boxes when I got there...
Well, He gave me the tour of his house, he has beautiful set of Mark Levinson mono blocks pushing his logan towers, {and he was rite he needs a set of subs, the room is kind of large and the bass from the martins is borderline lost in there... Still sounds really clean, just some of the lows are not there and what is could use the support...
Anyway that's not what impressed me, he has a home theater system that blew me away... He said to me "if you like budget systems , your going to love this, and brought me into his theater...
Now first the room treatments were really nice, all hand made by him and covered by his artist son... And the TV was a projector and solid screen, he fired it up, it looked like at east 100"'s..... But the systems sound was what really impressed me, he put a gun fight scene from Open range on, and it sounded really good... Here's what he has...
a Dayton sub-woofer that he had to built himself, it has 2 12" subs, and was so deep and powerful, but when you touched it didn't vibrate at all!!!
5 Dayton speakers, 3 large ones in the front, and 2 small surrounds, they were all the same shape and color, looked like a red oakish, rosewood, cherry color and had a similar shape to my wharfedale speakers... I dont know exactly which ones or if they are still made, but he said he had to build the xovers and install the drivers...
Now pushing everything was an older looking AVR and 4 Dayton apa150's!!!! He had one bridged on each of the front 3 and 1 split powering the rears... He said they were rated at 150watts but really 200watts bridged at 8 ohms... I told him I had a couple of them in the past.. He said he bought them on sale for $125 each... I never thought of doing that before, but the system in a whole sounded awesome, he obviously had a lot of work in placement and room treatments, but it sounded way better than my living room..
He did give me some pointers on my room with room treatments and placement but my wife would flip out if I did any of them... I told him at least I can hear it now, if I pull the speakers 3 ft off the walls I wont be able to hear them over my wife complaining...