My good friend, Dan is contemplating a speaker upgrade. He is a B&W guy and looking at the 802D and its recently introduced replacement, the 802 Diamond. He has auditioned both at V nice shop in the Cleveland area. We then found out about Butch’s AV in Natrona Heights. He carries B&W but specializes in McIntosh mainly. Two weeks ago we took a drive out after calling and making an appointment to hear them both.
When we arrive, he is with some other customer & his wife and says he will be sith us shortly, so we start wandering the shop. 40 minutes later, when he bids adieu to the previous customers, he comes up to us. When we ask were the Diamonds were he said, “Right here”, pointing to the 802D’s. We asked again, and again he pointed to the D’s. Dan said, “I want to hear the 802 Diamonds”. “Oh” says Butch, “you mean the new Diamonds? They’re in back, I didn’t get them out”.
“Oh well” we said, putting our best behavior up front. “We’ll just give the 802D’s a listen then if that’s OK?” So he hooks up the speaker cables, leaves the speakers stuck in against the corners of the room, shows us the CD player and tells us to have at it on his way out to the front of the shop.
Dan & I went to the audition armed with a test disc of bit-perfect rips we were both V familiar with. It became blatantly apparent less than two minutes into the first track. Something was terribly amiss with the music. No depth. No center information. The music was easily pinpointed to the speaker as the source. No separation or positioning of voice or instrument.
We took it upon ourselves to try repositioning the cabinets. As I examined the available slack in the speaker cable the banana pin connectors nearly fell out of the terminals all by themselves. I must admit to panicking for split second as I imagined shorting out the shop’s McIntosh amp. Knelt behind the 802D holding the banana plugs tightly to the terminals & feeling a bit like the Dutch Boy with his finger in the dyke, I asked for some help, Turns out the shop’s banana plugs were so beaten & worn they had no grip on the terminals what so ever. Tisk, tisk.
Multiple attempts at positioning availed no improvement in performance. Flat nondescript stage, booming muddy mid-bass persisted. Keep in mind these are $12K speakers!
It was at this point as Dan & I continued to diagnose the issue that we began to question the electronics. Taking a closer look at the shop equipment being used was all it took to trigger the forehead slapping, Homer Simpson D’OH epiphany. Turns out what we had reasonably assumed to be an integrated amp was in fact the two channel MC452 being supplied signal directly from the MCD301 SACD/CD. No pre-amp? When we questioned Butch his response was, “Oh, yeah. I sold the pre-amp last week and didn’t put another one out yet”. Tisk tisk. Again.
These are just some of the issues encountered during our visit. I’ll just say that as we discussed our experience on the way home, the more we were disappointed by the overall service, knowledge, care, professionalism and interest shown us by this retailer.
Regarding the equipment, I have no first-hand experience with passive pre-preamps or direct to power-amp from CDp. I know many whose opinion I respect who say it can be quite revealing. Based on this single experience with this specific equipment I can feel fairly confident in saying that while it truly was a 'revealing' encounter, across the board improvement is not always the result.
