Now for some details...
I wrote the TLDR for those who are just flipping through the forum looking to quick high level opinions.
Now I would like to dive into the details of where I have been and what I am hearing now coming from a guy with a modest system, that has grown over the last 15 years, with modest funds, in a small den (10' x 13') that is used by my wife and I as a TV room.
Well where have I been? I have had a number of different set ups, all of which were really just AVR systems for TV and Movies with occasional 2Ch listening to some good old rock and roll. What many of you may have had in the past and and what you would get from a big box store like Best Buy. I have owned Bose, Elacs, Pioneer, Yamaha, Polk you know common stuff.
As I got older I started to shift from a quantity to a quality buyer. This was around the time my wife started looking at me a little cross eyed every time I said I wanted to try a new stereo component. Did spending more money on better components bring in more quality? Yes and No. Yes my system sounded different, and I liked what I was hearing, but it was missing the wow factor.
A good friend of mine and I were talking a few years back and he is a life long audiophile. He made the comment to me that with the speakers I had I would never really hear the changes I was making. At the time I had a nice pair of Elac book shelf speakers with a 10" powered sub and remembered thinking, It sounds good to me, what is he talking about.
A year or 2 later I purchased a few Schiit Audio products. Now to some they may be rolling their eyes thinking Schiit is not Hifi. I am here to say, not true. Sure they have some modest gear that is just ok, but their higher end stuff is really good quality for the money, excellent value, and basically made in America. This was also my first purchase of a good DAC and tube pre-amp and dedicated power amp. Much of this I paired up with my Polk R600 tower speakers and loved the combo. Then my audiophile buddy had me over to listen to his All VTL tube amp and Splendor speaker system, then I knew what I was missing. So what does any of this have to do with the GR Brutes? I'm getting there, hold on.
Wanting that same Wow factor and knowing I did not have the funds to get the same system my buddy had, I said there has to be a way. So I asked him where to start. He said, "start with good speakers", drop the mic. I said but I dont have the funds to get speakers like you do. He then said, well you could just get one of the GR Research speaker kits and build them yourself. So I did some more research and took the leap.
The Brutes were my first real purchase into "HIFI" gear IMO, besides rebuilding a Dynaco ST70 tube amp.
So what have I learned on this adventure so far... Speakers really do matter.
Having modest quality speakers with cheep crossover parts is like having a Porsche with all the horsepower one would want and driving it on bald tires in the rain. No matter what you do to the shocks, springs, exhaust, the paint, you name it, you will never get the horse power to the ground without great tires. Speakers are no different. They are what connects your system to your environment (room).