[kamiraa]

Well after living with both speakers in the room for a week I have results. I followed my same methodology as before, left speaker (Older CM9), right speaker (Newer 804D). The music source was a laptop controlling through HDMI, the music was converted to mono. I level matched both speakers, turned off the EQs, and controlled the Left and Right balance through the computer to allow for quick A/B testing.

I used my McIntosh 601s as amplifiers, bi-wired with pure silver cored and silver tinned wire, the interconnects were Audioquest Columbias 72v DBS, and the Preamp was a Denon flagship AVR-4520ci.

The CM9s and 804D are EXTREMELY close to eachother. For acoustic music, classical, and female vocals they sound near identical. The 804D has a small edge over the CM9 for clarity from the tweeter. Outside of that in blind testing it's impossible to tell the difference really. . . . at this point I was not very happy with my purchase.

I did some searches for the components that makeup both speakers, as a result I discovered that the crossovers although slightly different use the same components in a similar arrangement (functionally very close to each-other, as equivalent circuits including values of the RLC), the driver arrangement is the same (two 6.5 woofers, one FST driver, and a 1 inch tweeter).

Alright so here was something that surprised me that made the 804d worth it! With rock music sometimes the CM9s would sound "busy". It sounded like controlled chaos, just noise. For acoustic performances or female vocals like I mentioned above, there is so much control, but rock . . . well it sucked so much I haven't listened to rock on this setup really at all.


For the same rock and hard rock tracks the 804D didn't have this same result. The 804ds were able to resolve the many different instruments playing, and they were very distinct and separated. For example with rock bands with multiple instruments playing together (sometimes missing notes haha) and a singer at the same time, everything on the CM9s just sounded smashed together, which distorted the vocals slightly. The 804d pulled all the detail out, and the imaging allowed each instruments to be placed in the room better, this allowed for the vocals to be controlled.

Anyways, that is my final observation of the speakers. The 804Ds are staying just because of this control, I think it will help for the music I like listening to sometimes, and obviously during movies it should help (controlled chaos in action movies).