Cambridge soundworks ensemble ii
Ravel's La Valse sounds glorious and spacious, the explosive sound of its tympani surely isn't for a faint heart Yoyo Ma's cello in Bach Cello Suites suddenly comes into being, detailed and subtle. The bass is tight, the high is airy with the volume set at 9 o'clock I still can hear the detail of the music balanced across the frequency spectrum. Far exceeding my every expectation, the sound was fabulous. I paired the Ensemble with the amp in a set up which is rather blasphemous to an audiophile: the satellites on the left-right ends of computer desk, about 3 ft apart in between sit the monitor and cd changer-printer stacked the sub, CPU and amp side by side under the desk. However, the story suddenly changed when a friend of mine built me a (fully) tube integrated amp, rather smallish 2 x 15 wpc. So, for the last 7 years, it was relegated to rear speaker in my HT setup, which I rarely used. I tried it with various amplification, Kenwood AVR 105, NAD 710, Denon AVR1600, and even the humongous Adcom 5500, didn't pacify the problem. To my disappointment, this system didn't live to its hype the high was ok I guess, the bass was on the weaker side, but the most noticeable was the mid which was very weak, although I still preferred its balance over Bose's. If you got a good CD player, and an amp, you won't be disappointed with this, but if you have just entry level gears, there are other speakers that are more forgiving, and will sound better, like PSB atom for instance.īought these speaker system when I lived in the US while ago, based on my former roommate's recommendation (he was doing his PhD in acoustic at that time, so I thought that was a credible recommendation). With the right setup, this can sound really good ! When it first came out, it was named the best sounding speaker for the money by audiophile magazines. When it was matched with a lower power amp with an entry level CD player, it sounded awful - down right annoying. I am listening to them with a Parasound CD player, and an old Sansui G3000 receiver, and it sings ! Sounds dynamic and clear - like a much more hi quality speakers. It also needs good powerful amp to sound good.
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With the wrong setup, it can sound annoying, but with the right setup, it can really sound like a much more expensive speakers ! It is a little metallic sounding, so it needs a good CD player to warm it up a bit - one with wide and deep sound - not an entry level one, but an audiophile one. I think the bad reviews were given because it is hard to system match this speaker.