Hi Fi, why fi?

So with the visuals having been taken care of (mostly...), the audio had been sadly lacking(non existent), but that has been sorted out for the most part by some wise ( I feel) purchases.

First off I needed speakers and I had thought I'd settled on B&W for that. Well after an audition at an local retailer, I found was wrong. The models I looked at were for the sound quality heard, somewhat overblown and overpriced and given the room I heard them in I was not at all impressed and not interested in spending any money with them for anything at all. So I went looking... I found too many options to keep up with but then a friend offered up a pair of older Boston Acoustics needing a woofer. Easy fix, ordered those up from MCM and now I needed an amp to power them up once the parts arrived.

I was prepared to spend 700 bucks or so and it's easy, if one desires to spend well beyond this amount, so I needed to keep it where I planned. Looking around town yielded little results, but one Friday after work I made my way to a shop close by home and found what I'd seen online. So I dropped the coin on a decent integrated from NAD and some speaker wire (under budget by $300) and sped home to hook it all up. Of course I didn't have anything yet that worked, so I just looked at it and waited...

The following Monday the woofers arrived and without too much ado I installed one of them and AB'd the 2 speakers (stock and modified). Interesting comparison, but in the end useless because I only had one stock and no original replacement and 2 new paper cone woofers with cast frames, shielded magnets and steel phase plugs. The replacements had more clarity in the mids and were smoother overall. The original had more punch in the mids, but that came at the cost of a harsher, cardboardish tonality ( I think the plastic cone was the reason).

All in all a good choice so far of the replacements. The price was right and the fit was pretty close. Some tweeter damping in the 7k area seems to be needed, but I'm partially deaf above 7-10k anyway and the thought of some woofer shims to attempt a simple time alignment has been considered. For now this will have to do to stave off the lust for a pair of B and W Matrix 801's and a Krell or some such...