sonus faber + b&w

You should really keep the LRC from the same manufacturer/series to maintain tonality across your front soundstage, you could also argue that the surround speakers should also be the same to keep tonality when you have pans from front to rear.

Whilst the Sonus Faber may be excellent for 2 channel listening, you are compromising your Cinema set-up with having a different Centre. If Cinema is important you should spend as much as is possible on the centre, a significant proportion of the soundtrack is from the centre.

Have you considered the Sonus Faber Centre, Surrounds and Sub? Or a complete B&W set-up. Ultimately your ears should be the deciding factor, demo first and if YOU like it that's whats really counts!

Hope this helps.

Steve

[ReTrO]

The best compromise would be to buy a B&W Nautilus 800 system. That way you can have great stereo speakers and also a great surround system.

Look at the 804, 803 or 802 for fronts, HTM 1 or 2 for the centre and the 805 or SCM for rears.

Have onkyo 989 amp. Want to listen equally to music and movies.
Was suggested to spend good on the fronts but dont worry so much about the surrounds:
suggestion by my HT installer - not a dealer was:
F: Sonus Faber Signum
R: B&W (LM1 or similar)
C: B&W
Sub: B&W ASW 1000 or REL
any comments?

I personally would try demonstrating something like the M&K 'K' Series as a full package, as they are literraly unrivalled at dispersing sound. Also, don't worry about stereo. The reason for this is that all floorstanding speakers suffer from Diffraction distortion beacause of the inability to stop soundwaves colouring the midrange. So with the M&K's this does not happen. Ensure that the sub is properly set up and you will find this easily one of the best all in one packages money can buy.

Cheers

I agree that you might have trouble with floor standing speakers in most rooms, but satelite speakers, though good for movies are not good enough for music.

You need good monitor size speakers, like the Sonus Faber Concerto or B&W Nautilus 805 for instance, and a good subwoofer...

great, thanks for the advice....I will demo as much of these as I can at the weekend. My main limitation is size - I can do floor standers but I would need slim ones. And I can;t handle a massive centre.
Rears: small is better, sub doesnt matter.

I have 4 Concerto home, 1 Solo Home and 2 REL Strata III.

The sound is fantastic both music and films.

I recommend 2 Concerto Home and the Solo Home (as they have exactly the same drivers and frequency response) + 1 REL Strata III (later buy the second, it is a huge improvement), for rears I would now buy good dipoles (better for movies), for instance KEF THX. For music my setup is better, but it doesn´t make that much difference...

The Sonus Faber Concerto Home are, by far, the best music sound and looks I found at the price, and they are very dynamic for movies too.

They will sound much better with a good amp, I have Rotel.

I had an Onkyo 787, it was good, but improved a lot when I added a Rotel for the front channels...

Sub does matter a lot, but not the brand, any good sub will do...