I set out this afternoon to audition the 8200cd player with my roksan kandy L3 amp and b&w 685 speakers as a baseline, I then moved onto to the monitor audio rx6 and then b&w cm8 peakers in turn.
I took along a good spread of my cd's to aid the audition, from led zep , through the wedding present and the manic street preachers to placebo and the band of joy.
Initially I was amazed at the shortcomings of the b&w 685 and even the rx6's as the audiolab dissected the music in a ruthless fashion, showing how poor some of the recordings were. It was only when we connected up the cm8's that I felt that we had a good amp/source/speaker combo that was able to reproduce my better recordings in a manner that had me tapping my feet and moving toward a feeling of inspiration, then I realised I had a large problem. The audiolab was so revealing that most of my cd's were now sounding less than satisfactory from a recording standard basis, hells teeth I thought, this leaves me in a pickle.
I opted to swop out the audiolab for a rega apollo, now the bass sounded muddled on some of my tracks and the soundstage less defined, but my lesser cd's sounded listenable, hmm still not happy.
Bring on the naim cd5i, well wasnt that a disapointment, it just sounded so flat, reduced soundstage and sibilant.
Now I just wanted the audiolab back. Its so very good that you simply have to be the owner of very well recorded cd's/ music sources, does not solve my problem.
I have opted to borrow the audiolab and trial at home next weekend with my sonos/roksan/b&w 685's at home.
Have I missed somthing here, can anyone help me out?
I absolutely love the cm8's, i dont want to change my amp, but I want a source to enjoy my cd's with!!!!
Thanks to the staff at Audio t in Portsmouth for putting up with me for 3 hours this afternoon
I took along a good spread of my cd's to aid the audition, from led zep , through the wedding present and the manic street preachers to placebo and the band of joy.
Initially I was amazed at the shortcomings of the b&w 685 and even the rx6's as the audiolab dissected the music in a ruthless fashion, showing how poor some of the recordings were. It was only when we connected up the cm8's that I felt that we had a good amp/source/speaker combo that was able to reproduce my better recordings in a manner that had me tapping my feet and moving toward a feeling of inspiration, then I realised I had a large problem. The audiolab was so revealing that most of my cd's were now sounding less than satisfactory from a recording standard basis, hells teeth I thought, this leaves me in a pickle.
I opted to swop out the audiolab for a rega apollo, now the bass sounded muddled on some of my tracks and the soundstage less defined, but my lesser cd's sounded listenable, hmm still not happy.
Bring on the naim cd5i, well wasnt that a disapointment, it just sounded so flat, reduced soundstage and sibilant.
Now I just wanted the audiolab back. Its so very good that you simply have to be the owner of very well recorded cd's/ music sources, does not solve my problem.
I have opted to borrow the audiolab and trial at home next weekend with my sonos/roksan/b&w 685's at home.
Have I missed somthing here, can anyone help me out?
I absolutely love the cm8's, i dont want to change my amp, but I want a source to enjoy my cd's with!!!!
Thanks to the staff at Audio t in Portsmouth for putting up with me for 3 hours this afternoon