advice with playing cd's with my set up

Sorry, I got lost in your busy post & no capital letters to differentiate one sentence from the other.

If I have understood you correctly, the best upgrade you can do for your music, is buying a dedicated stereo amplifier. Even the cheaper amplifiers will beat high end AV receivers in performance.

have you auditioned the arcam av amp ? not many people use castle speakers for av but you sound like your a fan and there pedigree is exellent maybe you need a new amp and cd try fleabay for a leema cd player but again it depends on your budge, when was the last time you cleaned your wire ends and terminals?

I agree with Big Boss get a separate stereo amplifier or live with the compromise of having your system do two jobs and probably fail to live up to your expectations in either areas.

With all due respect to say " Even the cheaper amplifiers will beat high end AV receivers in performance"  is a bit of a generalisation. 

What "price point" for instance had you in mind when you made that statement?   No denying if you want to improve 2 channel performance then an amplifier with HT passthrough driving your front left and right speakers is the way to go and when I "combine my home and work systems thats what I plan on doing.  But I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to be looking in Roksan Kandy territory.  

2oldnslow:

With all due respect to say " Even the cheaper amplifiers will beat high end AV receivers in performance"  is a bit of a generalisation. 

What "price point" for instance had you in mind when you made that statement?   No denying if you want to improve 2 channel performance then an amplifier with HT passthrough driving your front left and right speakers is the way to go and when I "combine my home and work systems thats what I plan on doing.  But I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to be looking in Roksan Kandy territory.  

I have compared the £250 Rotel amplifier with the likes of Denon & Sony (£450 - 1500) & the Rotel easily outperformed them. Arcam is a different kettle of fish though, but you have to spend a lot more on an Arcam.

Yes, it is a generalised statement, but that's how it is. It all boils down to the cost of components that goes into building a receiver / amplifier. The cost of audio components in a pure stereo amplifier is much higher than in an AV receiver. In an AV receiver, much of the cost is spent on the video performance, upscaling etc.

Well as an avionics/electronics engineer I'm only too well aware that the video processing circuity, the multiplicity of amp channels, network connectivity etc etc in an average AVR contributes a significant proportion of the overall cost, but then that would apply equally to any Arcam AVR given similar specifications.  Never the less I can't honestly believe that in the OP's system the Onkyo is that much of a limitation. 

I can certainly understand something like the Rotel sounds different but easily outperfroms well that's totally subjective. I'd like to think it was the case i could save a fortune. I suppose at the end of the day we've all got different tastes and whats sounds good to one person might be a cacophony to another.  At the end of the day it's all about the music, if your listening experience is enjoyable what does it matter whether it "comes out of" a transistor radio or a "high-end" system.  

2oldnslow:

Never the less I can't honestly believe that in the OP's system the Onkyo is that much of a limitation. 

2oldnslow:

At the end of the day it's all about the music, if your listening experience is enjoyable what does it matter whether it "comes out of" a transistor radio or a "high-end" system.  

Very true, but the OP is obviously not very happy with his current setup & wants better music performance. In my opinion, the easiest upgrade for music is a dedicated stereo amplifier, unless you have any better suggestions to make. More suggestions will obviously help OP's case & be informative to rest of us.

Well now as the only component in the OP's system I'm familiar with is the Onkyo which bi-amped, bridged  or just in plain vanilla mode can drive my Jamo C809 fronts very musically, (specially fed high bitrate wave files via USB) I'm at something of a loss.  One thing the Onkyo has in spades is energy. Now I certainly don't want (as many do here) to comment on equipment I have no knowledge of but I did notice a Hi Fi World Review from way back when which summed up the Castle Speakers as  "Bass power and extension will impress but overall sound is uneven and rather sterile".  Is this perhaps what the OP is referring to and is unhappy about ?   He did however express an intention to retain them so whilst the CD player was in it's day very highly regarded I wonder if the simplest solution might not be to try for a home demo of something like the Marantz CD6003 which by all accounts majors on musicality.

2oldnslow:

Well now as the only component in the OP's system I'm familiar with is the Onkyo which bi-amped, bridged  or just in plain vanilla mode can drive my Jamo C809 fronts very musically, (specially fed high bitrate wave files via USB) I'm at something of a loss.  One thing the Onkyo has in spades is energy. Now I certainly don't want (as many do here) to comment on equipment I have no knowledge of but I did notice a Hi Fi World Review from way back when which summed up the Castle Speakers as  "Bass power and extension will impress but overall sound is uneven and rather sterile".  Is this perhaps what the OP is referring to and is unhappy about ?   He did however express an intention to retain them so whilst the CD player was in it's day very highly regarded I wonder if the simplest solution might not be to try for a home demo of something like the Marantz CD6003 which by all accounts majors on musicality.

I've tried a few now and have done direct comparisons,  and the fact remains AV amps are designed for the bang and thrash of effects-based movies and not music, which is nearly always compromised.

Haven't heard Castle speakers for years, but it would be unwise to lay the blame at their feet just because of one review of an unknown model.

Rather than muck around with the CD player the OP would be better off putting a stereo amp into his system and seeing if that fixes things, because, like it or not, that's where the problem most likely is. 

Suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, which is the beauty of this forum .  But before I withdraw I'll just make the point that the Onkyo when tested by this magazine (5* yes OK it is still an AVR) was a 1400 GBP product not a 600 GBP one and that the review I referred to was specific to the Castle Harlech.  Not sure if the OP has the original Harlech's or the S2 version but either are both very handsome speakers and quite sensitive so I'm guessing won't present that difficult a load for a "modest" amplifier to drive pretty loud.

As regards the specifics of the Onkyo NR905 with music the august Mr Evarad trying to clear up a misunderstanding of the 905 review wrote in another thread

"I don't think that's saying in any way that it's bad with music, just that it's not as stunning with music as it is with movies, which is very stunning indeed.

As a user of the TX-SR875, one step down from the '905, I'd say this is one of the most musical receivers around. But then that's MHO".

Theres no doubt that ultimately the way to go for 2 channel "performance"  is to use front and left pre-outs on the AVR in conjunction (ideally) with a stereo amp that has an HT by-pass facility.  That way when listening to a stereo source the AVR doesn't even have to be switched on.  I'd take a  wild guess that a 200GBP stereo amp a) is going to sound "different" but not necessarily better and b) probably won't have an HT by-pass facilty which means a slightly increased level of faffing about when running in HT mode.

That's what I intend to do myself but I'd be looking at amp's such as the Roksan Kandy although I'm very very tempted by the Peachtree Nova which I can get here and would integrate nicely with my Sonos system at home.  

I'm not simply trying to justify my ownership of the NR905, I don't need to, I selected it from what was available to me here in Saudi Arabia at the time and at half GB RRP it was and is a bargain.

So hope the OP resolves his issues and gets back to enjoying his music.

2oldnslow:

Suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, which is the beauty of this forum .  But before I withdraw I'll just make the point that the Onkyo when tested by this magazine (5* yes OK it is still an AVR) was a 1400 GBP product not a 600 GBP one and that the review I referred to was specific to the Castle Harlech.  Not sure if the OP has the original Harlech's or the S2 version but either are both very handsome speakers and quite sensitive so I'm guessing won't present that difficult a load for a "modest" amplifier to drive pretty loud.

As regards the specifics of the Onkyo NR905 with music the august Mr Evarad trying to clear up a misunderstanding of the 905 review wrote in another thread

"I don't think that's saying in any way that it's bad with music, just that it's not as stunning with music as it is with movies, which is very stunning indeed.

As a user of the TX-SR875, one step down from the '905, I'd say this is one of the most musical receivers around. But then that's MHO".

Theres no doubt that ultimately the way to go for 2 channel "performance"  is to use front and left pre-outs on the AVR in conjunction (ideally) with a stereo amp that has an HT by-pass facility.  That way when listening to a stereo source the AVR doesn't even have to be switched on.  I'd take a  wild guess that a 200GBP stereo amp a) is going to sound "different" but not necessarily better and b) probably won't have an HT by-pass facilty which means a slightly increased level of faffing about when running in HT mode.

That's what I intend to do myself but I'd be looking at amp's such as the Roksan Kandy although I'm very very tempted by the Peachtree Nova which I can get here and would integrate nicely with my Sonos system at home.  

I'm not simply trying to justify my ownership of the NR905, I don't need to, I selected it from what was available to me here in Saudi Arabia at the time and at half GB RRP it was and is a bargain.

So hope the OP resolves his issues and gets back to enjoying his music.

I agree totally on what you say, and having an onkyo 875 my self, found it to be great with music, with the right speakers.

Wait for the June issue of What Hi-Fi, out next month.

hmmm fascinatingly cryptic care to give us a clue ?

Just a thought darren but on the assumption that qed silver spiral interconnectors are what I think they are and you're using the analoque output of your CDP have you tried using either of the digital outputs.  I beleive your marantz has both optical and co-ax out so it might be worth a punt on trying those.

2oldnslow, Sorry to hijack this thread but you mention in one of your earlier threads that you are here in Saudi, whereabouts?  I'm in Jeddah and I am having no luck finding a decent AV shop.

Cheers Cameron.