CDX2 vs CDS2 the rematch

Chris Bell's review of the CDX2 piqued my interest enough for me to actually take the time to book a dem and listen to the new gear. Could the CDX2 really be so good that it outperforms a CDS2 even without an XPS? Fortunately for me, Oranges and Lemons had most of the kit I wanted to listen to, however like most retailers, the old dem stock is long gone, so a direct comparison between a CDS2 and the new gear is currently impossible. Impossible, that is, until the new year when I have arranged for a home dem. Thus we have several unknown variables, but I feel I have nonetheless been able to draw some valid conclusions.
Originally I asked to listen to the CDX2, 282, 252, and 250. At home I use a CDS2 feeding into a bare 102 and 180 powering Epos ES11s. So in the shop they set up a CDX2, 282 + hicap, 250 and the most appropriate speakers they had were the Epos M12s. You may be wondering why I didn't listen to the 202/200, but with limited time I was trying to assess the merits of the new amps as well as trying to measure up the CDX2. I've heard the M12s on the end of a Nait 5 in the past so I am reasonable confident that its sound approximates to the older ES11. Later I intended to listen to the 252, but as it happened we didn't get that far.
First impressions are often interesting. How many times have we heard people say that the difference was immediately obvious from the opening bar? Well in this case the opening bar left me with the feeling that I was listening to something familiar. I stood up to check that the XPS2 was indeed not connected, it wasn't. Having previously owned a CDX with and without an XPS, I can say with confidence that the sound is similar to the old one. For starters it has nowhere near the bandwidth of a CDS2 sounding rolled off at both ends. It also sounds smaller scale, the sound coming from a flat plane in between the speakers, rather than the large 3D space all around the speakers you get with the CDS2. It also sounds distinctly veiled by comparison, a bit like you've got cotton wool in your ears. So the immediate impression was that the old order had not changed, the CDX2 is still a CDX, even though its wearing a pretty new outfit. My CDS2/102/180 was clearly preferable to the approximately similarly priced CDX2/282/hicap/250 as anyone who understands frontend first would know. However, over the period of a few tracks it became clear the the new CDX2 does certain things very well with certain pieces of music. Playing the recent Fabric Live CD showed that it locked onto the beat and clearly delineated the various strands of the music. In this respect it was analgoue like, in that you could follow a pattern played on a symbol, for example, without it sounding like it was being modulated by other things in the mix. Was it better than the CDS2? No, but it was also probably no worse in this respect, its just that the CDS2 has so many other strings to its bow, like tonal refinement, bass wallop and a generally more "real" sound to instruments. With slightly more complex music I felt that the CDX2 focused on the main theme at the expense of subtlety. It always had drive, but not necessarily great speed or subtlety. With drum and bass it was just about perfect, allowing for the lack of deep bass (obvious even with such small speakers), but try and play something by Carlos Santana and it feels like it has been given one ball too many to juggle.
After about an hour I realised that doing a 282 vs 252 dem was pointless. The 282 was easily capable of exposing the traits of the CDX2 which fairly clearly dominated the character of what I was hearing. So I left with the promise of a home loan of the XPS2 next year along with the new preamps so that I could do a proper dem. The CDS2 is still the king, or at least until January anyway.
John