"Sorry to jump in on this, can you tell me more about the Strada, I was thinking of getting some for a 5.1 system."
I don't know about 5.1 system, but based on some reviews you have to avoid the Anthony Gallo TR3 subwoofer, (i don't know about the rest) apparently it was designed to play music more than to reproduce THX effects.
as for the Speakers : I wouldn't be exaggerating if I say they are amazing,
Pros:
-Amazing treble and midrange, a lot of experts are comparing them to Electrostatic drivers, they are so Open and accurate, I did not hear such performance coming from any of the 10 speakers(priced between 1K and 2500K) I extensively auditioned, a couple of them had Ribbon tweeter and cost 2500K.
Sound stage is wonderful , and they are not fussy about positioning, if you close your eyes you can forget about the speakers and literally get the feeling of having the artist in the room, such feeling is really felt when playing vocals (i.e. Rebecca Pidgeon: Spanish Harlem) Acoustic Guitars (Friday Night in San Fran) and Fusion (Anouar Brahim: Outstanding eyes of Rita)
among the things I really appreciate is the absence of unwanted sounds generated by the traditional wooden boxes.
I doubt any speaker below 10K will reproduce human voice , saxophone, trumpet, guitars in such fidelity, You can read reviews about them but personally I got the feedback from my Audiophile friends, one of them has Avantgarde Acoustics spearkers, and the other one has top of the range Silverline speakers (we're talking here about speakers costing more than 15K ) not to mention that both of them play music instruments, so i believe they know what they are talking about and both of them were amazed, and spent hours at my place listening to their reference CDs and one of them felt that the Strada produced better high frequencies than his own set .
CONS:
- Not the final word in bass, that doens't mean they don't produce low frequencies at all, it means that for some type of music the bass produced is not enough, they do a great Job with Jazz, soul, Blues, R&B but for classical and Rock you need to add a subwoofer.
- Even if they are classified as sensitive speakers (around 89dB if I am not mistaken) they are a bit power hungry, they need 100W and more to shine.
Miscellaneous: Built quality is very good, a pair of these speakers can easily fill a 5x5 room with the help of a sub-woofer.
as you might know purist hates 2.1 systems because of the science behind acoustics, however it seems that a small number of sub-woofers were designed to be part of a Hi-fi system more than a LFE element in a 5.1 setup. such sub-woofers are equiped with sensitive crossovers, they are fast and accurate enough to go along with a pair of speakers, on the otherhand the drawback is that they don't produce the Big Boom generated by Action Movies. The 2 Musical subs I am currently considering are :
1: Anthony Gallo TR3 and,
2: Amphion Impact 400
Hope that was helpful