I know these are two entirely different approaches, since the 1801's are extremely insensitive speakers and the Pi's are extremely sensitive.

One constraint is that the speaker can't be more than 44" tall, because of where I'm going to place them, so the standard method of building the 7Pi's is out, even though I do have a corner available, so I guess I could make a 2-way version of the 7Pi's.

I want to spend around $750 ideally, but I'm willing to go up to $1k.

If I did go with the Pi's, there is also the question of active versus passive. I could buy the Behringer digital crossover, which would have a lot of nice features, like the ability to eq for my room, but would require a bit more setup.

What would you do in my situation? Also, if I did go with the 1801's or the Pis now, I may still build the other farther in the future, since I have some NHT 1.5's I could upgrade with the 1801's.

Thanks, Ian