There's probably not a single item in the world whereby you are offered so many choices.

I am talking about speakers. To me they're the most important part of a hifi system, but why is it so difficult?

When spending the amount of money, we (hitchiker's forum members) tend to do there are millions of choices that can lead us to audio nirvana.

Every forum member probably has a "goal", something to dream of. I am trying to accomplish this dream, but unfortunately I have nowhere near the cash required to do this in one step.

My "goal" consists of:

7 full range speakers - same all around (that was easy)

But now the tricky part, looking at all the speaker choices Meridian offers I feel that there's a gap in the product line.

The 5000 just doesn't seem up to it. It's not a bad speaker but it doesn't seem to offer what you'd expect from it's price tag. It would not be a speaker that (soundwise) would be the final step towards audio nirvana.

The 5500 is plain and ugly. It also seems way old. Seems a pretty decent speaker but aesthetics suck (same for 5000)

The 6000 - great looking but what a price! Looking at 7 speakers equals 70,000 USD. Sound seems to be top of the bill.

I won't step into the 7000/8000 hemisphere as these prices are just crazy. The speaker might be worth it's money but if someone pays 7 x 25,000 usd = 175,000 usd for a speaker, even to my standards, this person is not sane.

So where does this leave me?

Meridian speakers (that will fit the bill - i.e. 6000 series) are way too expensive.

Let's take the B&W 802. A fine speaker that does 4000 USD a piece. 7 x 4000 = 28000 which is a lot of money but my question is, how does a setup with 7 x 802's stack up to an all Meridian 5500 / 6000 system. What to expect? Surely one needs amplication but this won't be adding megabucks..

Can somebody tell me whether they're strugling with this though as well and how they think about going forward.

By the way, my current setup is:

Meridian 561
Meridian 504
Meridian 506

Sonus Faber Grand Piano, Solo Home, The Wall & Gravis Sub

Amp and DVD are Marantz.

Thanks for sharing you're thoughts and sorry for not being very coherent in my story..

Richard

http://www.hexateq.com