I've had to opportunity to listen to a set of BIC's (don't know the model #)recently. My oldest son's roomate has a BIC front trio with a large center (black wood grain) that looks like it did in fact have 6 inch(ish) sized drivers. He had it hooked up to a Yamaha 657. They put on Queen of the Damned which has some pretty good center channel dialogue. It sounded pretty good, I must admit, however, right after I left, I went home and put the same DVD on my younger son's system, (he's a big gamer) which is comprised of the Athena ASC1's (not the 1.2's) in an LCR setup, and in all honesty, I feltl it sounded clearer, and more articulate. My youngest son has an Onkyo 603x I picked up Circuit City open box. Any ways, when I was at my older son's condo, I also had them play some music in stereo to see how well the Front/L/R sounded like. They had the same finish and the same speaker components, less one woofer. They also sounded pretty good, but again, I did the same with my son's system, and again I thought the Athena's just sound more open and detailed. The music used was Dio's greatest hits (my music) and Disturbed. I will admit that the BIC's can belt it out pretty loud, but so can the Athena's, and I felt that the Athena's weren't losing anything in the high's where I thought, at high volume, they BIC's started to get a little grungy. Alas, this is just subjective on my part. I would have liked to have gotten both of these in one room in a face off type situation. Don't get me wrong, the BIC's from what I heard that day, and what I've see pricewise on the web, are also a hell of a deal.
