I had an interesting afternoon yesterday
First up, I had a listen to a pair of Focal 1027 Be speakers run by a Bryston pre / power pair of amps and a Bryston CD player. I wasn't that interested in the amp system yesterday as the guys admitted that it wasn't a pairing they'd suggest, but their preferred amp (Naim 282 pre / power combo) was unfortunately out on demo loan.
My now-standard jazz test track sounded great for about 5 seconds... and then the double bass kicked in. Oh dear. It sounded horribly boomy, out of control, lacking in any detail whatsoever... I quickly skipped ahead to the next track, which started with a very well-recorded drum intro. Here, the bass drum sounded great - fast, fairly detailed and pleasantly 'full', capturing many of the subtleties on the recording. No boominess.
It was immediately apparent that the room - a 3m cube

- was absolutely terrible for my first test track. That boomy awful bass note was at exactly the fundamental frequency of the room, which of course is why it was so terrible. This was confirmed by the guys in the shop who exactly predicted what I heard before I complained to them about it!
On the good side, however, the mid and treble ranges were really rather good. The brushed snare in the jazz was both cutting and right in front of me in the mix, but not harsh or over-emphasised (something I had heard with the B&Ws earlier). The piano sounded extremely good - warm, clear and bell-like in the upper registers with a bit of oopmh from the left hand. These were starting to impress me.
Then I moved on to the poppy commercial dancey CD. Wow. This sounded
superb - the best I've ever heard it. The very busy and full first track really sang on these speakers, and was so involving - the female vocalist was in front of me, supported by the full textures of the strings and the rest of the band on either side of her. The second, more synthy, track was almost as involving - again, very good vocals, superbly clear and well-positioned - but the slightly stilted synth bass was not at all even across all of its notes. This was quite distracting, and could have been down to the room again.
Finally, the classical CD. Unfortunately this didn't really move me - something seemed missing. I'm not sure if my ears were a bit off at this point but it all seemed a little 'cloudy' - the depth and detail I was hoping for didn't really seem to present itself. A shame; I didn't spend too long listening to this.
We then moved onto a properly run-in pair of PMC Fact8s. When I heard an almost brand-new pair of these a week or two ago I was fairly unimpressed.
However, these were on a different level
These were staggeringly better than the harsh, toppy things I heard last week. The clarity, airiness, transparency were so much more effortless and not in the least bit straining on the ears. The bass was great - firm and clear, if not quite as muscular as larger speakers. The jazz was excellent on them, the dancey stuff good but not great, but the classical was right up there with the PL300s for me. I was blown away by how much better these were. 9designs2, I think I heard the things you were describing finally!
Unfortunately, I was short of time by this point and so I didn't really get a proper chance to listen to these. I had a
very brief play with a Linn Majik DS, which fortunately had a Keith Jarrett album I know pretty well already dialled in and ready to go. Through the Fact8s, the piano was stonkingly good. I'm sure it sounded better than the Bryston CD player, though obviously I wasn't comparing the same recordings on both. They didn't have an Akurate DS in (out for demo like the Naim amp) but I'm extremely keen to see one of those.
Later that day, I auditioned the Monitor Audio PL200s. This was a newish pair but had been run in to some extent. They were being powered by a Chord Electronics CPA2500 pre-amp and SPM650 power amp, and the source was the Cyrus 8-series CD player again (which, incidentally, was falling apart and kept crashing - I thought I'd lost one of my CDs at one point!

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What immediately struck me was that the lower mid and bass sounded way flabbier, muddier and more indistinct than I remembered from the PL300s. Sure, the great top end clarity and openness from the 300s was there, but down below around 700hz or so things seemed to blur into one. All of my test CDs exhibited this, and it didn't take me too long to realise that I actually didn't really like them. There almost seemed to be some awkwardness in the transitions from the mid driver to the woofers, particularly in the jazz with the double bass walking way up into the treble and then descending back down - almost like a sort of sweep test tone!
It was a relief to get the PL300s in, and doing so really confirmed my suspicions. The clarity across the whole range was back - that lovely treble was enhanced by the authoritative, detailed bass and the whole thing just seemed to gel together a lot better than the 200s. The improvement was extremely noticeable. Maybe the 200s would improve with more running in, but I'm not so sure. They look like a compromise to me, and sounded exactly like one.
Then, for the purposes of comparison, we switched over to the little Bel Canto integrated amp I first heard these speakers with a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I had brought along an extra test CD: a live recording of Mahler's 9th Symphony by Abbado. This is a very good live recording on the whole, but around 4 minutes in on the first track there's a hell of a lot going on which most systems seem to struggle to reproduce. After listening to this passage on the Chord amps we switched to the Bel Canto and... oh dear. The bass became indistinct, most of the detail throughout the range was lost, the violins became harsh and brash... ouch. Quickly switching back to the Chord system and re-playing that couple of minutes of music confirmed my observations, which were correlated by the shop assistant who seemed to be almost as shocked as I was. The diminutive Bel Canto seriously fell short on this particular track
So, some observations from yesterday:
- The Focals have real promise, but the dodgy room didn't quite do them justice. I would like to return to those but in their other demo room (which was larger and not a cube) and with the amp combination they recommended.
- If the PMC Fact8s were a little larger and a little more muscular in the bass, I'd be very tempted by them. I may re-audition them to see if I can seriously consider them
- The Linn Majik DS looked very promising, so I definitely want to give that a proper listen and compare it to the Akurate DS.
- To my surprise (relief?) I was able to hear the difference between two different amps powering the PL300s... and wow, what a difference. The Chord system was head and shoulders above the Bel Canto.
Something which has occurred to me today: I think I need to be seriously considering a good amp combination with whatever speakers I decide to go with. The Mahler test with the PL300s really astonished me, because up to that point I was thinking that something like 95% of the sound of a pair of speakers was down to them and only 5% the rest of the system. That may sound naive, but yesterday it was more like 60% spekaers vs. 40% amp and the realisation of that was a little bit daunting.
Now I need to figure out how on earth I'm going to find the right combination of speakers with amps, given that there are so many varieties of both
arty