Owned Penta 3s for many years and loved them, before changing to Beolab 9s. However, the sound from the 9s seemed clearer than from the Pentas, and more kinaesthetic, if that makes any sense.  With the 9s, sometimes you felt you could almost touch the sound.

The Pentas definitely had a fairly limited 'sweet spot', at least in our living room..whereas the 9s radiated sound effectively to what seemed to be most parts of the room forward of the speakers.

But the bass in the Pentas seemed better than in the 9s. 

I hardly ever post here, but just thought I'd respond as I'd had long experience of each speaker you mention.

Andrew

Doesn't sound like it's a huge difference. I actually like Pentas pretty much. Much more so than 8000s or even 3s. Still I was contemplating the 9s. Thanks for sharing your experience!

If you want a huge improvement you can upgrade the Penta's! Than you get a great soundimprovement but you keep the typical Penta sound.

i did it with mine Penta's and the change in sound is unbelievable. Sounds like you took a big blanket of of the Penta's. More details in treble, but never tired and the bass is amazing!

With upgrading the Penta's i mean new capacitors for the amplifiers and new designed filters for the speakers.

I'm not a technician so i brought them to somebody else who did a superb job (Beobuddy).

First i was sceptical, but when the job was done i knew immediately the Penta's will stay at least 10 years longer...

I think Martin (die_Bogener) invented and shared some of these modifications on this platform. He did my spare pair of crossovers but I have not had yet the opportunity to exchange them against the original ones.

@ Pentalex. Thanks!

Die Bogener changed the filters to his personal taste. I didn't. You just can't change values of resistors because of a personal opnion. Every customer has its own hearing. Penta''s are designed to perform as best as possible over the complete frequency range based on calculation and measuring with special instruments.

We did have a go comparing them at the launch of the Beolab 9 -