Any help is welcome: I live in a small NH town with no home audio stores less than an hour's drive. Visited a couple with sketch and pics of my semi-open floorplan. One guy (seemed very knowledgeable, in biz 20+ years) said Mirage sub-sat. He had nothing else to recommend. They sounded good but far from a thrill. Another guy (also seemed very smart, wasn't on commission, didn't rush at all) showed me 4 different floorstanding pairs. I decided on Thiel CS1.6 with Camb. Audio CD player and Rotel int. amp. He recommended I sleep on it. I emailed him pics of the room (forgot to take when I saw him) and after seeing the pics he said I should reconsider spending so much with such a challenging room. Here's the room: 18' x 15' with speakers in far corners but can't be much more than 18" from back and side walls. The speakers would face across the room to a wall with a 7' opening to an adjoining room 9' deep x 13' wide. Other challenges: the sofa must be off-center and within 4' to 6' of the left speaker, a large upholstered chair is directly between speakers and about 18" to 24" in front, a fireplace sticks out 32" in the middle of one side wall, there's a dining room off to one side and a den to the other, which prob. won't benefit from high end speakers due to angles, etc.
Since it's hard-to-impossible to get consultants here and I may never own a room that fully takes advantage of a $2K to $3K pair of speakers, I'm tempted to get the Thiels and hope for the best (e.g., far better sound than I've ever had and I hopefully won't really know what I'm missing with the furniture and placement problems). I listened to Polks and wasn't interested at any price. I also heard B&W 603 (or 604?) with the 2nd consultant mentioned above and would save $900 with them, but the sound didn't really do it for me at $1200 a pair.
So, that's my story. Any and all advice is welcome. Thanks.
Any help is welcome: I live in a small NH town with no home audio stores less than an hour's drive. Visited a couple with sketch and pics of my semi-open floorplan. One guy (seemed very knowledgeable, in biz 20+ years) said Mirage sub-sat. He had nothing else to recommend. They sounded good but far from a thrill. Another guy (also seemed very smart, wasn't on commission, didn't rush at all) showed me 4 different floorstanding pairs. I decided on Thiel CS1.6 with Camb. Audio CD player and Rotel int. amp. He recommended I sleep on it. I emailed him pics of the room (forgot to take when I saw him) and after seeing the pics he said I should reconsider spending so much with such a challenging room. Here's the room: 18' x 15' with speakers in far corners but can't be much more than 18" from back and side walls. The speakers would face across the room to a wall with a 7' opening to an adjoining room 9' deep x 13' wide. Other challenges: the sofa must be off-center and within 4' to 6' of the left speaker, a large upholstered chair is directly between speakers and about 18" to 24" in front, a fireplace sticks out 32" in the middle of one side wall, there's a dining room off to one side and a den to the other, which prob. won't benefit from high end speakers due to angles, etc.
Since it's hard-to-impossible to get consultants here and I may never own a room that fully takes advantage of a $2K to $3K pair of speakers, I'm tempted to get the Thiels and hope for the best (e.g., far better sound than I've ever had and I hopefully won't really know what I'm missing with the furniture and placement problems). I listened to Polks and wasn't interested at any price. I also heard B&W 603 (or 604?) with the 2nd consultant mentioned above and would save $900 with them, but the sound didn't really do it for me at $1200 a pair.
So, that's my story. Any and all advice is welcome. Thanks.