Price Paid:  $900.00 from High End New York Au

Summary:
Hi All,

I was looking for a small bookshelf speaker with a full spectrum of sound as to avoid using a subwoofer. I live in a small Manhattan apartment, and this was to be used in my second bedroom along with my computer where I listen to a wide variety of music. For starters, I looked at the Paradigm Mini Monitors which sounded very good for the money, but the tweeters were unimpressive. The Paradigm Atoms sounded less full, and had the same tweeters. Still a good speaker for the money, but not good enough. I listened to NHT Classic 2s, which had very impressive tweeters and fantastic imaging, but lacked in the low end. They also and had a heightened midrange which I found annoying. Overall, they seemed like they would perform better for home theater than 2 channel audio. Then I tried the Kef iQ3s which sounded full and had an overall pleasant tone, but they were slightly larger than the other speakers I was looking at, and the back of the speaker was narrow, which was going to cause mounting the speakers to be very difficult. After this, I looked at the B&W 686, which I thought were the only speaker in the bunch that sounded bad. They were compressed, harsh sounding, limited in imaging… just bad. I had read that these were the budget speakers of the year, and was very disappointed. So on to the CM1s - The CM1s were more expensive than I had originally budgeted, but they were the size I was looking for. They had the smallest driver out of any of the speakers I had looked at, and yet when they were first turned on, I thought that there was a subwoofer on. The tweeters in the CM1s present a beautiful soundstage, the midrange is smooth and full, the speakers bring music to life… they sounded exciting. The only weakness I found was in the low end. These speakers are ported, and they are a little loud in the mid bass. I didn’t find this annoying, and considering the size of the speaker, it’s a totally forgivable compromise.

All in all, these speakers are fantastic bookshelf speakers. I think lots of small apartments will appreciate how amazing sound can be found in small packages. They are also very attractive. Even my girlfriend thought they looked good. And really, getting great audio equipment past the girlfriend / wife test is a large factor these days.

Best Regards,
Ben

Price Paid:  $0.00 from AUDIO ETC

Summary:
I bought these about four months ago to upgrade from a pair of 602s3's that I had .
Listened to them in the store for a bit and brought them home. I hated them when I first hooked them up to the point that I thought I was going to bring them back to the dealer. I thought I had made a big mistake . I decided to run them for a while and boy amI glad I did. These little monitors are incredible. They opened up and started showing me why B&W is on top of the game.

Strengths:
These monitors are very musical. Instruments and vocals are so clear that it's scary.
No detail is overlooked when playing back a decently recorded CD.
I would recomend these speakers to anyone cramped for space or who just likes stand mounted speakers in a smaller room and who wants to attain real music reproduction

Weaknesses:
Won't play as loud as other speakers but I never push my gear anyway.