ATC SCM11, PMC DB1I, PROAC STUDIO 115, BW CM5, KEFF R300

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what a day!!!!!

having sold my old BW601 s1, i needed a pair of speakers. i went to coventry at the frankharvey hi fi shop. i started with the highly rated ATC SCM11.

sourse my good old Musical Fidelity E10 amp and the Audiolaab cd player(1 with on board DAC). as soon as i pressed the play button i knew that my 40 watts PC amp is not going to cut the mustard, we listen to a couple of tracks anyway, there was undoubtly a lot of clearity and detail in the sound, sound was also exteremly neutral, might have been too neutral for me though. i could hear a lot of distortion and i put this down to my amp not being able to deliver enough power to drive the atc properly, for me to buy those speakers i would have buy a more powerful amp with them, which at this present time i was not prepared to do. may be in future when i buy a new amp i will definately give them a go again.

next up was the PMC DB1i. they were much more efficent and my amp had no trouble driving them, there was nothing wrong with the sound, its just that i have reservations about small speakers and they were a bit light on the bass. so we moved on to the next pair

ProAC studio 115, big speakers but efficent enough for my 40watts amp, having listened to a few tracks i felt the same quality sound can be achived with cheaper speakers. they could not justify thier price tag. nothing wrong with the sound.

Than came the good old BW CM5. they were the best looking 1S out of all the others. they sounded no less impressive than the PMC and the Proac, but i was looking to get something different, dont know why but wanted to a different brand for some reason.

So came the KEFF R300. first impression very good, having listened to the LS50 about a couple of weeks i must say i was really dissapoined with keff sound, but R300 sounded like a different leauge, sound was alot fuller, bass was tight and sound staging was particularly impressive.

i was unable to make my mind up and dicided to give Monitor Audio GX50 a go, having listened to just half a track i realised how bright they sounded compare to all the others, too bright for me.

so it was down to R300 and CM5. I listened to both the speakers again, couple of tracks each, sound wise there wasnt much, if anything, that put them one above the another. in size however CM5 seemed a better option, R300 might have been a little too big for where i normally positione my speaker. so i stuck to my previous brand and bought the CM5, i feel i might been a little biased choosing them over the R300, but i could not help it, may i am too used to BW sound having had the 601 almost 20 years but i like what i hear.

i would to like thank David at the frankharvey's hi fi shop, he has been a great help.
 
A

Anonymous

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The CM5s are stunning speakers & IMO they're not given enough time.

The PMC's are also superb but I found their sound a little wanting at times but that's probably my tastes in music.

The KEF R300s are stunning as well but they do need a good amount of room around them to sing at their best plus a bigger room as even in my living room (16ft by 11ft) they were too much whereas the R100s and LS50s were bang on!
 

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