First, a little background.
My 2-channel system is iTunes Apple Lossless, feeding a Music Streamer Plus (while my DAC-60 is in for repair), into a PS audio GCC-250, driving Acoustic Zen Adagios and an MFW-15. All placed in a moderately-sized study.
My home theater system is in a very large room (combined kitchen, dining room, living room with cathedral ceilings). There I have a 5.1 system with a mac mini driving an Emotiva DMC-1 preamp, Outlaw Audio 7700 amp, AV123 Rocket 1000 mains, "bigfoot" center, AV123 surrounds, and MFW-15 sub.
I found myself listening less and less to anything on the home theater, much preferring the sweet, accurate, "in the room" sound of the 2 channel.
Doing lots of research and reading a lot, and trusting Danny a lot, I was considering the LS-6 or LS-9. Even though my wife is "accepting" of my audio "hobby", I thought the LS line would be pushing the WAF.
So I settled on the OB 7 Plus, getting from Danny the pair he had for sale that he had built for RMAF. In private communication (I hope you don't mind Danny) Danny in his understated way suggested they would probably sound better than the RS1000s, and also better than the Adagios. I had my doubts, but even if they just match the Adagios I would have been happy.
Got the OB 7 Pluses in yesterday, with the helps of friends, wife, and offspring moved them into place and the RS1000s out of place. Put the Emotiva in stereo mode to cut out the other speakers. My 7 year old Daughter had the first choice of music we would try out. She picked "Santa baby". Not necessary a great test song but fun none the less. It sounded very, very good. Next up, to test bass, as chosen by my 15 year old Son, was Paranoid by Black Sabbath. The low end sounded a little muddy , so I turned off the MFW-15. And wow, finally I had a full-sized drum kit in my house. Kick drum through the symbols sound true to life.
Next I started playing some of my reference songs, as well as some remastered Beatles. Sounding very good, but a little harsh at the high frequencies. I took the Music Streamer Plus from my 2 channel and feed the music from the Mac Mini through that. Eureka. Top to bottom, tremendous sound. Everyone was pleased (even the wife) with the new speakers. Couldn't stop listening. And this was playing through a weak link - radio shack special RCA cables. This morning I swapped in some better RCA cables (from Outlaw). Leaving the speakers playing to break them in. Looking forward to another listening session tonight. Plus I still need to do a frequency sweep to tune the built-in subs and the MFW-15. Also the mains are sitting on the floor with no feet, so I need to do something about that as well. The sound will only get better.
Net result, on first impression, is that indeed the OB 7 Plus are better than the Adagios, filling a large room with clean, sweet, accurate sound, big clean sound stage, and packing a great bass punch.
The next project is to build an N3 to replace the bigfoot as the center channel. Wish me luck!
And I saw some other posts in this circle about replacing Rockets with OBs. Based on my experience I suggest you don't hesitate...
Thanks Danny.
