<font color='#000000'>Several months ago we decided to start putting together a nice home theater system. We are starting essentially from scratch, which means every HT item will be needed.
I had decided to start by getting the speakers first, with the idea that they'd likely never be replaced. After much research and several listening sessions, I decided to go with RBH which I thought were noticeably better sounding to me than other brands I listened to (including Klipsch, B&W and others). Further, I was fortunate to get hooked up with some RBH Limited Edition Signature Series speakers which are better yet than RBH's excellent Signature Series. Specifically, I am now the proud owner of three 661-LSE (L/R/C), two 44-SE surrounds and a 1010-SEP powered sub, all in beautiful rosewood.
I should mention that we still have not upgraded our receiver, which we plan to do eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later). It's currently an Onkyo TS-575x, for the record. The DVD/CD player is a Pioneer DV-563A (single disc).
So how do the speakers sound? My first impression is, "as good as you want them to". They initially struck me as very detailed especially in the highs ("bright"?) but with a subdued midrange. Then, with the help of a more experienced AV friend, I started playing around with different interconnects. What a revelation. We hooked up some $30 cables (DVD/CD to receiver) and surprisingly (to me), the highs softened somewhat but retained detail, and the midrange came forward a little more (more balanced with the rest of the sound) and the stage depth increased somewhat. Then we hooked up Alpha Core's Goertzmi cables, and further improvements to stage depth were noticed. Further "smoothness" ("warmness"?) across the spectrum was also noticed, with no loss of (or even an increase in) detail. Then just for fun we hooked my buddy's Audio Quest Audio Truth diamondback cable and an even further improvement in overall depth and smoothness was noticed. I never thought cables would make any difference to me, honestly, but even my audio-cynical wife noticed the difference and asked me when we were going to upgrade our cable!
This is all two-channel listening, by the way.
So, even with a less than stellar receiver, the speakers sound fantastic with the better cables especially. And they're not even broken in yet, really.
Being quite new to the higher-end arena, I have much to learn, but I've learned much so far and I've enjoyed it immensely. I'm looking forward to joining the "update bug" crowd and improve our system as we go forward.</font>
