I think the 4's are best if you have the room and budget.

G.

I have made both Theater 4s and 2 Towers. They are in utterly different systems (the Fours are driven by 8W, the Twos by 100W) and entirely different venues. My Twos have the old tweeters. I have tin ears. Take what I say with a pound of salt.

I love both (witness that my pre-DIY commercially-bought mega-bucks speakers have been relegated to a tertiary system), but with all those caveats, I love my Four Pis more. They are beautifully balanced and the presentation is utterly three-dimensional. I tend to value tone and integration more than dynamics or detail, but even with 8W, complex orchestral like Mahler (who demands dynamics) comes through beautifully. On the other end, I'm listening to Tom Russell's version of "El Paso" (basically vocal, acoustic guitar and harmonica) right now and each pluck of the guitar comes through beautifully. My best friend, not an audiophile, is a James Taylor / Simon & Garfunkel fan (I can take them in short bursts). He almost went into cardiac arrest (and/or had an orgasm, I couldn't figure out which) when he heard them though the Fours.

In sum, if you can handle the size of the Fours, go for them. But if you can't, you're still going to have to look far and wide to do better than the Twos.

Tell us more about your system and your musical tastes, and I'm sure the crowd here will do their best to give you further advice.

I'm not affiliated! Just a fan.

• Pi Four Photo (Pre-Finished)

I really like the towers, and in my present setup they are nearly perfect, much more enjoyable to listen to than my high-end speakers, but on those rare occasions that I am home alone and can listen to music by myself, I sometimes miss that little bit of extra refinement that the high-end speakers have. I thought that the 4s just might give me the best of both worlds. I listen to a wide variety of music, rock, jazz, blues and classical.

Does anyone have suggestions on a simple diy amp that I could try my hand at?

Again, with all the caveats -- I have tin ears, I'm too lazy to do "critical" listening, etc., etc. -- I prefer the Pis, and it ain't close.

After finishing my 2 Pis I hooked it up to my Marantz 2252 and did a A/B comparison with my other high priced speakers and the 2 Pi became my Stereo speaker of choice

However, after sometime listening to the 2Pis I thought the bass could be better, so after re-arranging internal speaker insulation I settled on an improved midrange sound but still no major improvement in the bass department.

Around Christmans time frame, a friend of my gave me two home brew Dynaco Mark III mono blocks that was reglected for sometime... not knowing much about tubes, I paid a tech to get it fixed... afterwards I hooked it up to my 2 Pis and BINGO, the sound was amazing, smooth and relaxed... later on I started to do further research into Mark III design and reliased that the original builder of the Mark III had some fundamental questionable circuits in the unit, long story short I ended up rebuilding my Mark IIIs according to the original spec using new capacitors, etc also became more knowledgeable about tube circuits.
My new setup involves Marantz 2252 acting as my pre-amp, 2 updated Danyco Mark IIIs, and 2 Pi towers. The sound coming out of the 2 Pis is now incredibly smooth, the bass is there now (which could be better when it was connected to the Marantz) and I can truely claim there is no listening fatigue whatsoever and I can listen to the 2 Pis all day long.... Perhaps the sound of tube amps is what you are after and if you are electronics savy there are plenty of tube amp kits/projects out there. Or you may consider rebuilding and old Dynaco amp?