Speaker Decision

You may still find some Ovator S400s in stock in Australia if you search. Might as well go for the ideal! As a back-up Totem Hawks are also brilliant with the SuperUniti. 

+1 to options already mentioned but also consider the Focal Aria 936 , I've had the 926 in the past, excellent speaker for the money 

Thanks CDBOY and WENGER2015 for the suggestions. I hadn't heard of the Totems and would like to hear but no dealers in Brisbane unfortunately but can definitely give the Focals and Ovators a listen.

I've read good reviews of the Tannoy XT8F also - any thoughts on this?

Not sure about Neat Acoustics dealers down in Oz, but, having worked through much of their range, they do seem to have a marvellous synergy with Naim kit.

Anything from their extensive range of floor standers is worth a listen, if you can.

I went from a Unitlite + 684s2 to Unitilite + 683s2 to SU + 683s2 in fairly quick succession last year.  I have a similarly sized listening room to you - around 8 x 7m I think.  The SU + 683s2 fills the room with a pretty rich sound to my ears so dont know why your CM8s (more expensive speaker) appear lacking.  The 683s2 does get very good reviews - and it's great vfm (I picked up mine ex-demo for £700).  Just a thought.

+1 to Nick's suggestion, the 683's have a bigger, fuller sound than the CM's and with a SU they are one of the best-value ways to fill medium to large rooms. Likewise the Focals have a full and punchy sound, and if you can find Goldenear Tritons or MA Silver8 they can fill larger rooms very well.

But first, how long have you given the CM's in your new place? I don't think CM8's should sound thin on the end of a SU, so it's worth investigating first. Noting the old room was small and almost square, it's likely that there was some bass modes giving the impression of fuller sound, but maybe also making it slower and muddying up the mids unless you had some room treatments. The new room is also quite square, but at 4x the size, it will naturally take a bigger speaker to energise to a similar degree.

I would give it at least a few weeks to see if it's just a different presentation that you get used to. Try moving around the room to see if you notice areas where the bass is stronger or leaner. If so, then try playing with the speaker positions, layout, even along a different wall if that could work in your space. If the problem is mainly due to room/speaker interaction, then changing speakers could be a waste of money until you do some room treatment/correction.

Sweeney Denis posted:

Thanks CDBOY and WENGER2015 for the suggestions. I hadn't heard of the Totems and would like to hear but no dealers in Brisbane unfortunately but can definitely give the Focals and Ovators a listen.

I've read good reviews of the Tannoy XT8F also - any thoughts on this?

You will not be disappointed with the focals, you get a lot of speaker for the money....worth demoing the Aria or possibly electra range...

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

DC71 - I've been in the new place for 2 months now but haven't had much time to play around with speaker positioning so thanks for the suggestion which I'll do before doing anything further. I'll post results back onto the board shortly...

I used my SU with PMC twenty.23s and it worked really well. They may be worth a look. 

I was just going to post that PMC twenty.23 gets good reviews here with the SU.

I am very surprised that CM8s can sound thin on the end of a SuperUniti, even in that huge room. I think some diagnosis may be in order here.

Sources:

Spotify is only really good for checking out new music and background listening. It uses a compressed codec and so the resolution and dynamic range delivered is poor. This will be highlighted by a system designed to show of dynamics.

How have you ripped your music to the NAS? Is this using a quality ripper and what server are you using  - is it the one built into the NAS itself? The chances are that the NAS's server is not as good as you'd like and if you used something like iTunes to rip, then we really need to know what you've set to figure out if the rips are as bad as, or worse than, your Spotify stream...

Cabling:

Are you using Naim NACA5? If not, there is a good chance this is a souorce of lacking body and involvement. I realise you were in a smaller room earlier and it probably sounded room-filling, but that may have been the room masking the fact that the cabling was letting you down. If you're using NACA5 then it's not a cabling issue.

Positioning:

I've used CM8s in a quite dead sounding room almost as big as yours without any issue whatsoever. However, if your room is sparsely furnished then it should be pretty lively. This could cause a disconnect between frequencies which could be affecting the result. If it's sounding a bit lightweight, you could place the speakers closer to the wall behind them. I wouldn't go closer than 30cm to that wall though, since they're relatively heavily biased in the bass in the first place and can cause the wall to join in the fun. Going closer to the wall may help them couple to the room more effectively.

I would start with them such that they form an equilateral triangle to your favoured listening position with very little toe-in, if any. If this is not possible they must never be further apart from each other than they are from you. You can bring a bit of focus through toe-in, but if you toe them in heavily, you are likely to encounter a heavy but one-note bass. I almost never set up modern speakers with more than 5 degrees of toe-in.

Frank.

Thanks once more to all of you for your helpful advice and especially to you Frank for going into some level of detail.

I am away from home for a few days so can experiment with positioning when I get back. In the meantime, wrt ripping, I generally buy from HDtracks and just copy the FLAC files across to my Synology DS112J network disk. QED XT-40 cabling goes between the SU and B&W's. I also think you hit the nail on the head in that my room is sparely furnished, oak floor boards, no rugs and no curtains, just blinds so I guess its very lively. The CM8's sounded so much better when I had them in my smaller apartment which was heavily furnished. With the temperate climate in Brisbane, thats the way I'd like to keep it so perhaps I need speakers that aren't quite so upfront but more mellow. A dealer I spoke to today said I should also consider KEF's as they have a more mellow sound and should work better in my lively room. I'd also thought about auditioning the MA Silver 8's and 10's, as per DC71's suggestion, but his view was there would be to lively for my  room 

Thanks, Denis

Hi

My room is about the same size as yours with plenty of soft furnishings.  I am using a Unitiserve with a NAC-N272 preamp and NAP 250 DR Amp.

I have a pair of PMC PB1i Signatures and I am lucky enough to be also listening to a pair of PMC Fact 12s on extended demo.  I listen mostly to classical but also to rock.

I am swapping from one to the other and listening to the Fact 12s with the sound balance controls in various positions.

I had expected there to be not a great difference between the two but the dealer and I were both astonished by the enormous difference.  There is absolutely no comparison between them.  The Signatures are warm and easy to listen to with strong bass.  I thought they were tight until I listened to the Fact 12s which have the tightest bass I have ever heard and make the Signatures sound woolly in comparison.  The accuracy of the Fact 12s seemed to be perfect throughout the frequency range and made the response of the Signatures sound inconsistent in comparison.  The sense of presence and the sound stage are much better with the Fact 12s.  After being used to the bassy Signatures, the Fact 12s seemed a little lean at the bass end even with the Take controls set high on LF and low on HF until I got used to them when I felt they were more realistic.  The dealer and I both heard details with the Fact 12s which we had never heard before with familiar music.

My only slight concern is that the Signatures are definitely easy listening but the Fact 12s may be a bit fatiguing at the levels which seem to drive them well.  I sit about 5m from the speakers.

i suppose the point of all this is to repeat what contributors say time and again.  You can't really know what speakers will be like until you hear them in your home with your equipment over a period of time.  The Fact 12s are very expensive. (The Signatures were dear too at a bit less than two thirds of the price).  When I have the cash, I shall probably splash out.  I have never heard anything which seems so accurate and musically engaging to my ears.  The law of diminishing returns undoubtedly applies but, by goodness, the returns are there.

Denis, the QED XT40 is not known as a particularly good match for Naim equipment. Naim's own cable would bring a great deal more drive and power. That'd be where I'd start. The QED would also make things a bit bright I think. 

Frank.

dave marshall posted:

Not sure about Neat Acoustics dealers down in Oz, but, having worked through much of their range, they do seem to have a marvellous synergy with Naim kit.

Anything from their extensive range of floor standers is worth a listen, if you can.

I strongly agree with Dave on Neat speakers. I have Neat Motive S1, Totem Hawk and Definitive Tech Mythos STS. I tried them with Nait XS-2. To my ears and after 3 months of experimentation there is no contest, The Neats are more musical, 3D, clearer vocals and  with tight and deep bass, they are simply amazing. I always think that if this is how the entry level sounds like in Neat then how about the Momentum or Ultimatum, Oh I should get there very soon ))

Hi everyone and thanks for the incredibly helpful feedback.

A few have suggested NEAT speakers however there doesn't appear to be any dealers in Australia, let alone Brisbane so that's out.

I have brought them away from the walls slightly and also toed them in about 5 degrees and the sound has improved but not to any level I find acceptable let alone pleasant.

I'm taking the advice of some to change my speaker cable to the Naim brand and away from the QED XT40 that I'm using.

Today I visited a terrific dealer in Brisbane called Trimera Audio and was able to have a long demo of the Focal 948, Focal 926 and the B&W CM10 D2, side by side. The dealer said he's sells quite a few CM8's but mainly to apartment dwellers and his experience was that they didn't work so well in larger Brisbane houses. After the listening session (mainly female vocals), I was astounded by the Focal 926's and preferred them to the Focal 948's which I found quite tiring to listen to. Beautifully coherent and easy to listen to - tried to convince myself that I should be liking the more expensive B&W's and Focal 948's but kept coming back to the Aria 926's.

So next step is to invest in better (ie Naim,) speaker cabling and if that doesn't do the trick, then I will probably  trade in my B&W CM8's for the Focal 926's.

I really miss my music at the moment so  hoping things will improve with the cables and possibly the upgrade to Focal 926.

I listen to a lot of R&B and added a sub and it makes me rather happy. I have 272/300DR with Dali Epicon 6 and I would not say sub is overkill at all. 

Trimira doesn't appear to have Naim in their long brand list. Did you take your SuperUniti in to make it at least an applicable demo? If not, there could be any number of reasons for your preference. That said, I'd give a lot of credence to the dealer since he has experience of what works in your part of the world!

Warning: Naim's speaker cable takes ages to run in, 200-odd hours just to start sounding ballpark! Until then it'll probably sound pretty rough and ready. Sorry...!

Also if you can get your Naim dealer to make up an f-connection (search the FAQs) and you remove the nasty links on the back of the speakers this will pay significant dividends.

Frank.

Coiledmagnet's post is interesting – fact.12s are my aspiration speakers after passing an afternoon enthralled by them at a dealer. They also are beautiful and would pass domestically. But reviews suggest they are extremely demanding of power, and that anything less than a 500 amp would be hopeless. Here though we have them being run with a 250 and the description of their sound matches what I experienced with some big monoblocks. If a 250 can really do them justice perhaps my dreams aren't hopeless. I'd like to hear others' experience. 

Thanks for the interest.  As it happens, I have only just upgraded from 200DR to 250DR and the dealer, whose opinions I respect, thought that a 300DR would be a better match but I couldn't afford one at the time.  I have also read about comparisons between the 250 and 300 which are not always entirely favourable to the 300.  I had concluded that a 500 would be the ideal amp to audition but that combination of 500 and Fact 12 will be permanently out of my reach.

I know that commenting on volume control levels is puerile stuff but I was interested to find that where I had been listening to the 200 with levels generally between 40 and 45, I now need to have it set at 50 to 55 to achieve what I believe to be a similar volume.  The 250 sounds way better than the 200 with the PB1i Signature speakers.  I never had the opportunity to listen to the Fact 12s with it but, of course, the mismatch would have been even greater.

Sounds as though we face similar restrictions! My 250 is at last going to be DR'ed on Thursday at AV Options here in Chicago – although I have a large loft my 250 is normally set at between 40 and 45, but I have very sensitive DeVore speakers. I probably won't go for the fact.12s unless I can also afford a 300DR, which pushes things off into an indefinite but not impossible future. In  truth I rarely hear setups better than I already enjoy, even with stratospherically expensive systems at audio fairs, but the PMCs gave me one of those rare experiences.

Put the Proac D20R on your short list. Fabulous floor stander.

Hi and thanks again for the suggestions and sharing your knowledge.

I was able to hear the Focal 926's once again and this time hooked up to my SU! Even more impressed so have traded in the B&W's for the Focal Aria 926's - expecting them to be delivered by Friday this week, just in time for a weekend marathon of listening. I was going to order the NAC speaker cable but before I do, are there alternatives that would also work well to consider?

When I had my SU and PMCs I used Tellurium Q Black. It's a super cable and is nice and thin and bendy, unlike the rodlike A5. There is a long thread called Tellurium QB in da house, or something like that, which is worth a read, with lots of contributions from people who use it. 

Thanks HH, I thought I'd seen you mention this cable in a earlier post  so it was on my list :-)