tiger style

Thank you. It sounded great in the shop. Their demo room, acoustically, isn't very good (he said something about it but I wasn't paying attention) so hopefully will sound good at home too. Like I said I'll try to give some feedback soon and get a few pics up too.

Thanks. The Leema is the elements amp with digital board. In store at my local Sevenoaks it was £1550. It's cheaper at hifix (£1395), even if I got it there, plus the LS50's at £800 would have taken me to £2195. Also like I mentioned he threw in some chord speaker cable, usb cable and a burn in disc, so it could have been worse. I have the Kef's sitting in my flat now so hopefully by friday I should have everything set up. I will report back at some point this weekend.

Hi thanks for the reply. I went to my local Hifi shop where my friend works today and checked out the Audiolab M-DAC running through an Audiolab 8200P to 2 Kef LS50's; also the LS50's through a Leema elements amp/dac playing uncompressed tracks on a ipod. Both setups were very good. The Leema sounded cleaner and slightly clearer and the Audiolab setup slightly warmer but not quite as nice as the Leema. I fell in love with the Kefs. I asked my friend about the M-Dac plus active monitors like the CMS65's and he suggested against it. He said for my size place active speakers might be too much and they're more for mixing and recording and the sound would be analytical almost clinical and not as laid back as passive speakers. So in the end I went with the Leema and the Kef LS50's, some chord cables and even though he advised against it a chord USB lead. All for £1941. Ouch. Again, thanks for the help people.

oops double post

Hello Eloise, many thanks for your response. You've helped me a lot. Apologies yes I meant the CMS65's. I was toying with the idea of a Benchmark a few years back but decided against it but looking at the Audiolab M-DAC it seems to punch above its weight, so I might get it as a starting point. Do you think I should get passive speakers and an amp or go active? Like I said I'm not looking to do any mixing just listening to wav's, mp3's and a little gaming and a few films. What manufacturer/model would you recommend I should demo? After a little soul searching, my budget excluding the dac would be £1400. Many thanks I have a sub (BK XXLS400) which is connected to my AV receiver via RCA to one of the inputs on my sub. Can I attach active speakers to the other input? I've attached a pic of the rear of the sub

Many thanks for the help. I was looking at the Audiolab M-Dac which seems to be getting good reviews. I was wondering if the Focal CM65's would be a good match for it? It's slightly above my budget but if the sound is great then I don't mind so much. Just to clarify, I plug a dac into the motherboard via USB, plug the powered speakers into the dac (what kind of leads would I need?) and I'm good to go?

Hi, I'm looking to upgrade my PC speakers (Cambridge Audio Soundworks 2.1) to something much better, but I have no idea what I need. My PC motherboard is an Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen3 and I'm currently using the onboard sound via a 3.5mm jack. I can't use an internal sound card as my graphics cards take up all the slots. It has a front speaker connector, central/bass, rear speaker, and line in (they all look 3.5mm to me) and an optical SPDIF out. I'm looking for bookshelf type speakers on a fairly large desk (1.6m) mainly for listening to music (WAV's and MP3's), gaming and a few vids. I don't have an amp, just my PC, so I'm trying to figure out what my options are. I was looking at these: Kef X-300A, which seems to do it all and connects via USB B&W MM-1, I heard these today and they sounded ok for such small speakers but I wasn't overly impressed. I prefer my Soundworks to it. ADAM ARTist5 Studio, they look ok but I'm not sure how they would connect to my PC. I like the look of the Focal CM65's but again, I don't know how I would connect these up or the Benchmark DAC1 USB with a pair of powered speakers, but this is on the very limit of my budget. I'm ideally looking to spend £1200 and any more I'd need to do some soul searching. My place is small. My PC room is about 3m x 3m. I'm not looking to do any mixing, just listen to some great tunes. I'm not sure if I need a DAC or amp either? If you could point me in the right direction as I have no idea what I'm doing.