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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 

speedmaster20d
speedmaster20d OP
17 posts
 

thanks, sorry I was not clear. the movie source is not blue ray, they are mostly streaming 4K from the smart TV which is connected to the amp via optical. The TV converts from DTS5.1 to 2CH PCM stereo. Maybe the issue is the TV DSP and downsampling to 2CH. I can rule this out by trying a blue ray movie and setting the blue ray player to 2CH PCM and see if it makes a difference. 

the equal loudness reference is very helpful, it seems the low frequencies need quite a bit of boost as the amplitude drops. I am going to try this, I have heard some systems that perform much better at lower volume but maybe they had more bass to start with. 

perkadin's avatar
perkadin
286 posts
 

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. 

lanx0003
1,939 posts
 

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

 

boxcarman
578 posts
 

Lots of good advice here.another would be to switch out the optical cable for a digital coax.  Optical is good for video, not so good for audio purity.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
7,910 posts
 

Buy a receiver and a center channel speaker. Receivers are cheap now. Use the theater bypass on your cxa80 when watching movies. No way around this with a 2ch amp. 

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