Theos and Motif are here!

After a month and some of waiting they came today! Sound and look great so far. I'm using a Marantz AV-7005 Pre/Pro, Emotiva XPA-5 amp, and Audioquest Gibraltar (single bi-wire) speaker wires.

Awesome system! Well done. Are they dark cherry?

Yeah they're dark cherry. Only negatives right now are there is very little bass and the the mids and highs sound a little flat, but for an ESL with 3 hours on them I'm pretty sure that's to be expected until they loosen up a bit.

It took my Theos a couple of days to settle in. Don't worry, after a week they'll sound very different.

Looks good. Get them away from that wall!

I'll eventually get them away from the wall, but my wife hasn't seen them yet and I need to make sure she doesn't freak out about the size... so I have to show them to her closer to the wall at first and gradually sneak them out into the room haha. unfortunately I'm only about 10' back from them at their current distance, I bought them knowing I'll be in a bigger place in about a year or so.

I understand. You might try some absorption on the front wall to help with those early arriving reflections.

I notice that tweek on the left side of the table, excellent enhancement Enjoy the new toy!!

so I have to show them to her closer to the wall at first and gradually sneak them out into the room

I do the same thing cept with the couch.............

Curious about your Gibraltars. I was thinking about picking up a pair of those wire, so I am just curious what you think of them on the Theos. I also have a pair of Theos on the way to my house.

The Gibraltars are great, but I never A/B compared them with my old speaker wires (AudioQuest Type4). I've always been a huge fan of AQ products, I know some people bash them and say any decent quality speaker wire sounds the same, but I A/B compared my Type4 speaker wires to Monster, Monoprice, Blue Jean, etc and always found the sound to be more to my liking. More transparent and open are the best descriptions I can think of. They are incredibly thick cables and dont bend very willingly, though, so you have to kind of wrestle them into the correct position to the bi-wire connections line up right. With this setup, though, I can pause my McIntosh CD player and crank the volume to +10db (easily loud enough to cause ear damage and get me evicted) and there is no white noise at all, which shows how effective good connection and insulation is. I highly recommend getting some AQ NRG (or any similar product) power cables in the exact length you need to eliminate the wads of 6' power cables hanging behind all your AV equipment, too.

How do you think the av7005 blends with them logans? What other HT equipment have you compaired the marantz to ?

I love your theos, I went to BB and had them demo'd for me and they were awesome and they are truely are a manly looking speaker .I cant believe how mutch they dwarfed the vantage when side by side

Yeah the Vantage was a nice speaker but the Theos's panel to cabinet ratio is much more impressive and it has a much better (in my opinion) stance and look. The AV7005 works really well but you can't use Audessey, it makes the speakers sound like absolute dog crap (it didn't work that well for my previous Vienna Acoustics speakers either). If you just dial them in by ear, the Marantz's hardware has incredible audio fidelity and the Anchor Bay video processor is great as well. I'm using Audioquest Colorado balanced XLR cables for the front left and right, and Audioquest Columbia RCA interconnects for the center and my rears. The receiver I was using before this was an Onkyo NR1007, which was fantastic as well and I really liked the THX audio modes which Denon and Marantz don't have anymore. I was considering the Onkyo Pre-Pro but it would be about $600 more and it wouldn't match the aesthetics as well, which I don't care about much but the wife does. The pretty blue lights on the Panamax, Emotiva, and Marantz all look really cool together, and the LED lights on the Theos are blue as well. The only huge pain in the a$$ with the Marantz is the IR receiver is in the little port hole in the front and recessed about 1.5" back, so you have to aim the remote straight into the receiver for it to control anything. I use the RS-232 control with my Control4 system so normally it doesn't matter but when I'm doing stuff in the menu I still have to use the regular remote and it drives me nuts.

Audyssey works just fine on my av7005 combo with summit, summit x, cinema, and stage combos I have had in my room. The problem could be related to your specific room or measuring locations (or speakers too close to the wall).

Could be, I might run it again later once I've added room treatments, but after running it today the sound was just really confusing and wasn't very well focused. I had a similar problem with my Vienna Acoustic speakers and the Marantz SR-7005 (that I replaced with the AV-7005) in the last place I was living (just moved about 3 months ago) and that room was set up pretty well. It felt like it was holding back the Theos from using their full vocal range as well even though it acknowledged that they were full range.

Right now I am running a pioneer elite with my logans and it sounds like crap even though everyone tells me its a great receiver .Before I had an onkyo and it really sounded great with the electrostats but I got rid of it because it never had the preouts .Right now I gotta get a new dac and HT pre so I might either go integra , anthem or that marantz thern I am getting my hands on a pair of then theos

I'd go for the Integra Pre/Pro if you want to just bite the bullet and go all out. The marantz is great but the Integra or it's Onkyo sibling will have Audyssey XT32 which supposedly sounds quite a bit better than version found in the Marantz AV-7005 (I've never heard it being used with ESLs, but have heard it hooked up to some B&W Nautilus speakers). I loved the sound of my Onkyo and the GUI and OSD information were top notch as well and made on-the-fly tuning very easy. The Marantz is great but was much, much harder for me to get dialed in, and I do this for a living. For an amp there are obviously a ton of options and almost any will sound better than a receiver, I went with Emotiva because the bang for your buck is unbeatable.

Yeah I love AQ as well. I currently have all AQ stuff, and once I recoupe my bank account I will be upgrading all my cabling.

Back to the Marantz real quick I will be using a SR-7005, so are you or aren't you happy with the Marantz on the Theos? haha Its a little unclear. My immediate plans are to get the speakers in my house, then upgrade wires, then turntable, then amps, center, then surrounds. But if the Marantz is just garbage then those plans will change a lot.

I did in fact listen to the SR-7005 on the Theos at BB and it sounded great to me. It might be case of the jitters.