It began with the arrival of the ATM2 and Kharmas and you know the rest. No matter what I tried I just couldnt get a sound that felt right to me, a sound that needed to deliver for my very broad taste in music and let my listen for hours on end.
The last update over on that thread was when I had the Kharma monos and pre in the system. Now this was the best pairing of speaker and amps to date and I gave it high praise at the time. But you need to live with a component(s) for a number of weeks and over those weeks I began to feel far from satisfied. I made the decision then that perhaps the Kharma sound just wasnt for me. I think I gave it a fair go given the sheer number of amp/sources that came through the door but after all that I still couldnt get things to sound right for me. Turns out then that I had to return the Kharma monos anyway as they didnt belong to Cloney. This was the prefect opportunity for a system reboot!
I felt that a highly accurate and dynamic speaker is what I needed to avoid and instead a more broad-brush type of sound was what I ought to be looking for. My previous Usher/Gamut combo had that sort of sound and it is by far the most satisfying system I've owned so far. Doing the research, several names came up including Harbeth, Spendor and Sonus Faber. I had some familiarity with the SF sound and trawling the interweb for opinions I began to set my mind on these.
I put my Kharmas up for sale last week, not really expecting much but as luck would have it I was contacted by someone who was very very interested in my Kharmas. Even better was that he had a pair of Sonus Faber floorstanders, the older non-M model which some prefer to the newer M models. So a swap was done to see what we both thought of the sounds and I'm delighted to say that both of us are really happy with each others speakers.
The Cremonas have that lovely lush broad-stroke type of sound in spades and even though its early days yet I really think I'm finally there now. Honest! :-)
This morning I took home a pair of Classe CAM350 mono blocs and a Classe's CP-800 pre on trial for a week or two. These SF's are reasonably difficult to drive so I thought that a pair of big ass SS monos should do the trick. I shyed away from valves as I think the SF's have enough softness, richness and musicallity already so no need really to soften things more with valves. Perhaps a valve pre at some point down the line.
A few grainy pics from my phone.....
