I am helping a friend spend a gift card that he received for his birthday and is considering upgrading his Infinity Primus 360 tower speakers - they have been a bit abused and now that his kids are a bit older he wants to get a nicer set. Depending on how much the towers end up costing, he also would like to add the center channel from the same make, but rear speakers are less important, right now. The problem is that the gift card is only good at Best Buy / Magnolia so that limits his options somewhat. At Magnolia, there are really two brands that are still within his price range Boston Acoustics & Definitive Technology (the Martin Logan Montage was a thought, but not anymore).

A couple of questions about these that the sales reps are not being very helpful on:

- Are the Boston Acoustics at Magnolia this brand's top-of-the line towers? If not, would they be a significant improvement over the Infinity Primus?

- The Bostons are pretty cheap looking. Does the Veneer stay on after a couple of years? This is one of the problems with the Infinitys, by the way.

- What's really inside that sock over the DefTechs? Is this decent driver technology or are they trying to pull the proverbial wool over something?

- Why would one want to use "bipolar" speakers as mains? Better imaging or just marketing hype?

- Can we get away w/o adding a sub if we settle on the DefTech BP7K series?

- The Mythos sounded a lot better than we had expected, but we that was in the showroom. Will the metal cabinets become irritating in another room?