I snapped up a pair of ex-demo 603s for £350 ($560) after auditioning them against far more expensive units including the B&W P5, Castle Howard and Mission 752. I'm impressed by the smooth and relatively extended bass together with a detailed top end and excellent overall balance. The stereo image is well focussed and the units seem nicely transparent. On the negative side, the sound is a tad rounded and a little warm, which isn't to everyone's taste, and the mid-range can become slighlty confused when the volume is cranked up. I listen to classical, adult rock and jazz in roughly equal measure and the 603s do justice to all three genres. They need space to breathe and must be kept well away from corners and the rear wall or else the bass just goes out of control - so they're no good for small rooms. I have them at least 4 feet from the side walls and 15 inches from the rear. And of course, be sure to biwire them.
System:
Technics SU-V5 amp (due for an upgrade but its musicality is hard to beat)
Marantz CD-52 MkII SE CD player
B&W DM603 speakers

I've been using these loudspeakers for 3 years now, so I had the time to analize them, tweak them, and hear them with different equipment settings. My digital front end is the Parasound great inexpensive cd player cd/p 1000 amplified with Parasound solid state electronics. First of all, these babies care a lot for positioning. I'd played a lot with their placement finding that they are very sensitive to small changes in position. They give their best soundspace and imaging with very little toe in(I use 1/2" of toe in)and 8' center to center distance. Their sonic attributes are a large soundspace with very good imaging, good focus, adecuate depth, adecuate lack of coloration (a little moody), adecuate transparency, lack of bass definition and extention with some boominess and lack of timbral correctness in the lower frecuencies. After electronics break in period I haven't found the so commonly mentioned excees of brigtness and high frecuency harshness in the DM603. Midrange is balanced and liquid with good dispertion in this range. Their best attribute is a capacity to convey musical information in the right places in front of the speakers, specialy in the narrow sweet spot they create at 7' from the plane in front of the speakers. Euphonical rather than critical, they lack detail. Their lack of resolution makes it imposible for them to disapear even thoug they form a credible 3D presentation. Down again, very inadecuate low end, lacking detail, tightness and extention. There are better speakers in this price range, specialy the little costlier NHT 2.5i. Last note: a look inside leaves a lot to be desired in crossover construction, bracing, and wiring.

I'd just got my brand new DM603 for $1000 about 2 months ago. Together with my Sony recieverDA50ES and DVD player S7700,it provides clear, uncolored and very good image high and mid range sound even low bass but natural. After about 50 hours( or more) burning in this speakers, you will find James Taylor, Paul Simon or your other favorite musicians perform their music in front of you.

While I'd like to consider myself an audiophile, i cant afford to be one, so i do the best I can with the resources I have. Maybe someday :).
Anyway, I've gone thru a number of home theater upgrades in the past couple of years and I decided that when I upgrade my speakers, I want something that would perform very well with music primarily and home theater secondary.

I had the B&W solid solutions home theater setup and ended up replacing it with a pair of DM603's for the front, 601's for the rear and a cc6 for center. I'm still using the solid subwoofer for now. Source units are a sony 7000 for cd and dvd, a lexicon dc-1 for a pre/pro and parasound amps.

Myself and my friend spent about 3 hours setting up the 603's and listening with various sources ranging from the IASCA car audio test CD to kenny G to metallica to janet jackson. My living room isnt the ideal place for a system like this, but finally after much tweaking and playing around with speaker positioning, im pleased as punch. for under $1000 a pair, the 603's are simply a great bargain. imaging and soundstage is excellent and very obvious. the high are a little bright for my taste, but my friend was very fond of the sound. hopefully some break in time will tone it down a little. an excellent purchase for the price, and they arent too shabby in the bass area either, though i still the the subwoofer is still beneficial.

If your listening room is similar to mine (little carpet so somewhat bright) don't even consider this speaker. It's inherent brightness was intolerable in my listening environment. Almost anything sounded like exaggerated cymbals and tambourines with a bit of muddied music playing behind them. I think this brightness is mistaken by some for detail... I just found it tiring to listen to. The high end brightness might have been tolerable if there was good midrange or bass to offset it but I found these areas also lacking. John Lee Hooker's guitar was totally washed out and hidden in the midrange and the single 7" active driver couldn't produce accurate bass at anything beyond modest listening levels. Lower bass was just usless booming. Sure this isn't a expensive speaker but even at this price level I expected better.
My reaction to them was particularly strong since I had my ultimate purchase, PSB Stratus Silvers, on hand to audition at the same time. If you're looking at the 603's definitely give these a listen. In every way they are better. Balanced and detailed highs, clear smooth midrange and taught deep bass. With their 2 1/2 way design I can play music at any volume level I want effortlessly. Even aesthetically they surpass. Mine are in the dark cherry veneer (real wood at no extra cost compared to vinyl on the 603's) and every one who sees them remarks how strikingly attractive they are.

Other equipment of note: Rotel RCD-971 (deserves 5+ stars), Carver m1.5t amp and C-1 pre-amp (I'll be replacing these next), Carver TX-11 (a great tuner)

I auditioned this speaker. I thought for the price $1,000.00. it was one of the better speakers I listened to. Good highs and mids was the driving force in possibly purchasing these speakers. However, I was not overly impressed with the bass response, it was not tight enough for my taste. I eventually listened to th CDM7SE's and I was blown away. Needless to say these incredible speakers now sit in my living room. Oh, by the way, most audio stores I went to offered me 15% off of retail and 20% off of demo's.

I've owned the DM603s for a few months now, and found that they do really well as long as music doesn't contain dense, layered electric guitar. Acoustic, jazz and electronic/techno is great! Vocals are outstanding and so is the big sounstage. They tend to sound a little muddy and bright, but they only cost a grand.

Although I have serviced, installed, listened to, and enjoyed lots of different Hi-Fi equipment (and lots of different speakers by B&W, Kef, Pioneer, and, :( even Bose) I've never had a decent pair of speakers of my own (I emphasize a _PAIR_ because I prefer stereo rather than HT for music) simply because I've never had a proper room to put and listen to proper speakers in (and that's another point - it's pointless to assess speaker quality in an inadequate room/ambient - and, at least in my area, HiFi shops are all inadequate).
However, when I finally moved into my new house with a nice, spacious, wood-padded living room (approx. 30 sqm) I haven't thought about which speakers to choose - all my (not so small) experience (both as a technical expert, and as a person that enjoys good sound of a good music) pointed to B&W DM 600 series. It was just a question of model. And I think that 603's were _THE_BEST_ choice. Of course, my rating is based on my personal sound setup (phono/CD+amp+cables+speakers+*ROOM*), on my personal music preferences (blues, jazz, new age, ethno), and on my personal sound preferences (soft, natural, and _DISTINCTIVE_ - DM603's can be listened to at 10% nominal power from a 70 W amp, from 15 m distance with every word perfectly clear and understandable).
So, the cables are JBL 4 sqmm, bi-filar (amp-speakers connection is, naturally, bi-wired).
The reciever is a (about 18 years old) Sansui 7040 Ar-tube (excellent piece of equipment, but keep out the mobile phones, even when the amp is off!!), 4x70W true RMS.
The turntable is Telefunken 7000 direct drive, with Telefunken 550 cartridge.
The CD-player is Sansui CD210 (a low-end junk, basically, with a strange high-pitched buzz in the pregaps), but even with this bad CD player the final result was amazingly good. I've also tested with a borrowed NAD 524, and haven't considered that test in this review because the best possible rating is only ***** :-).
Just one more remark: my living room is missing half of the ceiling (instead, there is the roof slant), which makes it extremely resonant in 40 to 100 Hz range. Additionally, the receiver tube output is especially good in bass. So, it _MAY_ be that the spakers would have somewhat poorer performance in the, let's say, usual circumstances.

Mmmmmm...These babies are soooooooooooooooooo good. The midrange is perfect. Bass is deep and powerful..Treble is airy and detailed.. Oh God what a speaker!!

I've owned this pair of DM603 for 13 months.I can say "DM603 has a potential." through my exprience and several experiment in my living room.
If some DM603 owners feel DM603 does not sounds good than expected,
I'd like to recommend to do the followings to improve the sound quality or
should say in order to "draw" the potential/true quality of this DM603.
- Take out the front cover (That's sounds better especially in high frequencey sound)
- Speaker setting: locate the DM603 firm and solid on the hard floor
as it does not swing/move if you attempt to swing the top of the DM603
(This sounds better for the sharp/fast bass)
- Speaker setting 2: mesure the distance of between the pare of speakers and
your listening position and also find the best angle/direction of the speaker
system toward the listning position. ( It provides the sound stage and image)
- Changing speaker cable to bi-wire
- Changing speaker cable to MTI bi-wire speaker cable or some sort of good stuff. (This provides more accuracy for the sound image.)
- Changing amplifer to the better one.
(It'll change the sound itself.)

I tried above all and so far I enjoy the sound quality of this DM603 very much
especially with Jazz music and some of classic music.
In order to draw the potential out of this speaker system, I'd like to say
the owner needs to select the good enough amplifer/receiver which can drive DM603 properly.

I enjoyed DM603 first 12 month with Marantz SR780 (85W x 5) and it can drive
DM603 okay. By changing the speaker cable from normal Monster bi-wire cable to MTI bi-wire, even Marantz represents focused sound image/stage.
In the past one month, I changed the amp from Marantz to Mark Levinson No.332,
and I was surprised by the potential of this DM603, it sounds great.
Fast bass and quick attacking sound such as piano keyboard stroke, it sounds
natural very quick start and smooth faid-out out of the string.
I am still upgrading my audio system however,
I will use/enjoy this DM603 until I will get Nautilus804.
I admit that DM603 does not represent the low bass however, the specification
of DM603 says so.

The bottom line is "I like DM603".
Sorry for my broken English.
I put 4 speakers (which people call "Stars") on DM603.

Sincerely yours,