I am new to the HiFi game as I wanted to upgrade to my first "real" system when I moved about 10 months ago. Therefore, I read a lot (including a lot in the Outlaw Saloon) and ended up loosely modeling my system on some of the systems I read in HiFi related magazines that were installed for famous people, including Oliver Stone and a couple other directors/producers. I now understand that my modeling after film industry folks may have caused the system I ended up with to have a bias toward movies rather than music--but I am new and really don't have much to compare it to so the movies, and music, sound pretty terrific, clean, and "HiFi" to me!.

In any event, I say "I loosely modeled", because I substituted Outlaw products for the Amps (a 7125 amp driving my center, 4 surrounds, and second zone, and 2 2200s driving my 2 mains) and Processors (a 990). I substituted Outlaw because they seemed in many reviews to compare well to the ones the famous people had, but Outlaw was much less expensive which helped my sell to my wife.

But, when it came to speakers, I really could not compare reviews as I did not believe there was any good way to compare features for such an important yet subjective component of a HiFi system. And, when I went to various dealer and installer showrooms, I really did not know one reputable source from another and besides the various HiFi speakers, which incidently were never the same brand, sounded pretty good to me in the showrooms. Therefore, I really did not have a enough knowledge and experience in HiFi to make a truly informed decision in a reasonable amount of time and effort by listening to and trying out various speakers.

Given these limitations, I took the only practical course of action I thought was available to me, I chose the speakers some of the directors/producers I had read about installed--which in 3 separate instances, including in Oliver Stone's home, were NHT Evolution speakers (and Oliver Stone said that he knew how his movies were supposed to sound, including his movie "The Doors", and his NHT speakers delivered). Based on these votes of confidence, I have 3 NHT Evolution M6 speakers for left, center, and right mains, 4 NHT Evolution L5 wall speakers for surround, and 2 NHT Evolution U2 subwoofers (with the paired subwoofer controller and 200 watt subwoofer amplifier). My NHT speakers really sound great to me--and apparently to some directors/producers too. Moreover, the price of the NHT speakers over the internet were extremely reasonably priced (and cheaper than the Outlaw bookshelves).

Therefore, NYGIANT, because you don't really have an opportunity to listen to the speakers you are going to buy, and you may not want to try out several different speakers with no practical ability to compare them side by side, perhaps you might want to consider the NHT speakers. With that said, I am sure the Outlaw speakers are terrific, and they do come with Gonk's recommendation, which in and of itself is probably one of the most objective opinions you could hang your hat on.

P.S., Gonk, if you read this, who are you and what do you do for a living? If you are not already on Outlaw's payroll, you should be as your contributions to this site are invaluable to the industry generally and Outlaw in particular. In fact, you are one of the reasons that I own Outlaw products; it was your general HiFi knowledge and insights that kept bringing me back to the Outlaw site and to their products.