Me again. :) My brother, a friend and myself went to Sevenoaks this morning as planned, and here's what happened for anyone who's interested.
We listened to the Rotel RA-05 with Monitor Audio BR2 speakers. We were expecting good things as they had received much praise from What Hi-Fi. Verdit: nice detail, bass/presence boomy and muffled, and not very powerful either. Hmm. Onto the cheaper Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 speakers: an improvement. Bass was definitely more controlled as well as stronger. (I joked that we had consistently preferred the cheapest speakers.) Feeling reasonably happy with that combo, we decided to listen to some more expensive speakers, just to compare... I asked if they had the Epos M5 speakers in, but they didn't. However, they were willing to sell the last set of Epos M12.2 speakers they had (which apparently had never left the shop and only had light demo use for £400. In came the pair, on Partington Super Dreadnought stands. And that was that. We had to buy them - so much more power, and even more detail. The sound was rich, but controlled, and did an awesome job of our classical, electronic and rock music. Having decided on the speakers, that left the choice of amp. They had a special offer on a display Arcam A80 (£500), which was nice as we would've paid this for the A70 at the other shop. I much prefer the Arcam styling and remote, so was hoping that I would like the sound too. And it sounded good, but not as good. The assistant then proposed a quick listen to the Rotel RA-06, it being the same price as the A80 offer. Listening to that confirmed we preferred the less warm, clearer/sharper rendering of Rotel. Whether or not it was worth going for the RA-06 instead of the RA-05 I don't know, but anyway... Here's what we ended up with: Rotel RA-06 amplifier, silver (£500) http://europe.rotel.com/series06/specs/ra06.htm Epos M12.2 speakers, dark cherry (£450) http://www.epos-acoustics.com/products.asp?logging=122&lookup=m12.2 Super Dreadnought speaker stands (£150) http://www.partingtonandco.co.uk/sd.html QED Silver Anniversary XT Bi-Wire speaker cable, 4m and 3m (£70) http://www.qed.co.uk/i327c159-158/QED_Cables/Speaker_Cables/Silver_Anniversary_XT_Bi-wire.htm QED APNX Airloc 4mm Banana plugs (£70) I understand the stands, cable and plugs were discounted as part of the overall deal. Now all we need is a Squeezebox, and in the longer-term a better storage/server machine to feed it. (Where have all the Squeezebox 3 Wireless models gone? Everywhere online seems to be out of stock.) Thanks again for your advice everyone. I feel that we've ordered the basis of a system in which we'll find much enjoyment. Will let you know how we get on with it when it's all set up. -- Impeller ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Impeller's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8396 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30074 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
