Help me w/ small towers-bedroom HT/music system

Another +1 for Totem Arro for a bedroom HT/music system. Strong WAF. If you plan on using surrounds, Totem Dreamcatchers mate very well with the Arros.

Thanks for the replies. After much reading here, as well as listening to some speakers at retail shops, I pulled the trigger on a set of almost new Monitor Audio 9i listed here on Agon. This was after reading 3 or 4 professional reviews, as well as scores of individual reviews on Audio Review, ecoustics, etc.

The common themes were that the Monitors were equally good for both music and HT, which was one of my primary goals. They also were lauded for having excellent clarity, dynamics, imaging, and soundstage. Quality bass for their size was another commonly cited feature. I like that the bass drivers are a bit larger than many other sub $1000 models I found available used. The reason that appeals to me is that when I was auditioning speakers at shops, it seemed all the ones I heard with 5.5" woofers were muddy and lacked impact in the bass/mid bass, including Vienna and B&W.

Time will tell, but even if they disappoint, I haven't spend a ton on them, and can sell them and try something else.

OK, so I've had the Monitor Audio Silver 9i for three months now, driving them with my Yamaha RX-V1800 receiver. For the first couple months, I was largely underwhelmed. They just did not seem to have much in the way of dynamics or bass.

It now seems the problem had to do with speaker cabling. I initially used the bi-amp feature of my receiver and used some Morrow SP-2 for the HF terminals and some stranded Monster cable for the LF terminals. As I said above, I just was not impressed with the lack of dynamics and clarity.

Well, as an experiment, I dug out of a closet an old set of Goertz MI-2 Veracity cables. Now, I had used these years ago in another system, but don't remember them being particularly better than other cables I tried at that time.

So, I have no explanation, but there is a huge difference. After installing the speaker terminal jumpers, I connected the MI-2 cables, and disabled the bi-amp feature of the receiver. Apparently, either the Monitors do not like bi-wiring, or the Goertz are just the ticket for these speakers. Not only do I now have much greater and more defined bass, but transient attacks happen, RIGHT NOW. Vocals on music and dialog on movies are the best I've had. At this point, I am finally really enjoying these Monitor 9i, and would recommend them strongly.

As a follow up on speakers for this 2.0 bedroom system, I just picked up a pair of near mint Dynaudio Audience 82 towers to compare to the Monitor Audio 9i. I paid several hundred dollars more for the 82s, but they are much larger speakers and have deeper bass response.

I have to say, I am very surprised and pleased at the order of magnitude that these Dyns are better than the 9i. I mean to tell you, the 82s are in another league with respect to mid bass slam, articulation of bass notes, bass extension, and most importantly, the presence and definition of the highs such as cymbals. The brushed cymbals on Diana Krall's The Look of Love DVD-Audio are much more natural and "present" in the room.

I also just watched Wrath of the Titans Blu-ray, which has all kinds of effects and explosions. Wow, these are not really that large volume boxes, but man do they go deep. Also, dialog intelligibility is about the best of any speaker I have tried so far.

I've never owned Dyns before, due to the price it takes to get a tower of any decent size, but when I saw these 82s for sale here for a great price, I could not resist finding out for myself what they were like. I'm glad I did!