Unfortunately part of your issue is the speakers. Some don’t really wake up until higher volume. My Dynaudio Contours (original series) are like that. They love the juice. I recently got the Heritage Specials and have been shocked at how great they sound at lower volume. Same amp, different speaker.
amp upgrade
I have been using CA CXA80 with B&W 604 speakers for about 5 years. I use Sonos streamer hooked up to the amp using optical cable. Also have some CD's and blue rays. overall sound is good but I always feel some punch and dynamic element is missing when I listen to the same titles with other random systems. Also the combo is not that expressive at lower volumes, sound gets a bit lost when volume is low. the other issue is lack of clarity in speech when watching movies. have to crank up the volume to hear the conversations but still a bit mushy.... When I bought the system I also auditioned an Arcam FMJ amp which sounded cleaner than the CXA80, I still remember it. it was not an option back then due to lack of availability.
Wondering if upgrading the amp would solve this issue. I am looking at the newer stuff, preferably a steaming amp as most of my music is sourced from Tidal. Has anyone used the Naim unity atom or the NAD m10 V2 ? are these any good? In particular something that can reproduce clean sound at lower volumes. I will at some point upgrade the speakers too but I feel I should be able to squeeze more out of them with a better amp?
thanks
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Coincidentally, What Hi-Fi also made a comparison between CXA80 with Arcam (but different model A19), pinpointing these shortcomings you have mentioned. I am not sure if you have seen this article before and influenced by it though ... https://www.whathifi.com/cambridge-audio/cxa80/review
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I looked at AVR I have ceiling speakers that can function as 4 channel, the issue is that I want the integrated amp to drive the tower speakers (most cheap AVR sound awful, I had a pioneer "elite" and ditched ditched it a while back). furthermore cheap AVR's don't have typically pre out except for sub. What I need is a DTS/surround processor that would take the TV HDMI-ARC and process it into left/right/center/surround and output it via pre out so I can connect it to the stereo amp for the towers and the mono amps for the ceilings speakers. to my knowledge only one such equipment exist made by emotiva audio, but there aren't many reviews of its quality https://emotiva.com/products/basx-mc1-13-2-channel-dolby-atmos-dts-x-cinema-processor?utm_campaign=gs-2019-11-07&utm_source=google&utm_medium=smart_campaign&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmN2iBhCrARIsAG_G2i6Id_t07wXE5UZX1ke8nWuITpDho_mcZLF9caSiV9PG4eNiReZCQ6saAoiPEALw_wcB |
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