Clarity, neutrality,decent bass

None

I just purchased these in Mahogany which, as others have said,look great. I previously owned a pair of Klipsch Forte's which had a 12" woofer and 12" rear firing passive radiator. Also, I think the sensitivity was like 100db at one watt. Those speakers had the best low end I've ever heard. At low volumes it would quietly fill the room with clear, detailed bass. At high volume you could feel it in your chest. They were great speakers but I found that there just wasn't enough dispersion for listening environment I had them in and they are a bit large. So, I went looking for a bookshelf fullrange speaker. I looked at PSB, Paradigm, Klipsch, Mission, JBL. The best of that bunch was Mission. Pretty good sond not much bass. Then I listened the M80's. Beautiful sound. Mids and highs are fantastic. Voices on these speakers are very clear and real sounding. A few of the reviews here have complained about the bass. When I compare these to my old Klipsch Fortes I definately lost some bass. I expected to. But, the M80's still put out a reasonable amount of bass. I mainly listen to Jazz and the bass lines I've heard don't leave me wanting for more. I suppose if your into Rap/HipHop and your looking for thundering bass then these speakers might not do it for you. It would also depend on the size of your listening room. Overall I love these speakers and don't regret selling the Klipsch at all.

Sound quality, imaging, build quality and looks.

Heavy. No doubt this contributes to the sound quality, so not really a weakness.

Sound better than any other 8" bookshelf I've auditioned in boutique stereo stores and cost me less than half as much as any of them would have. Handle many types of music well. Well-balanced and nice stereo imaging. Beautiful to look at (I have and recommend the mahogany). Made in China, but build quality is superb. I echo al the positives made here by others. Bought them sound unheard on the eBay store and wasn't disappointed. One speaker was missing the plastic receptacle for one of the grille plugs. CS immediately sent me a replacement and a UPS return sticker for the speaker. (Great customer service even for those buying their "refurbished" gear! ) There doesn't seem to be anything refurbished about these at all. These speakers are an excellent match to my powerful vintage Pioneer SX-1250. I have them bi-wired into two of the three speaker outputs and placed on $20 solid oak barstools (from Target) which make excellent poor-man's speaker stands. How they'd sound with a less powerful amplifier I can't say.

Similar Products Used:

JBL N28s PSBs, Boston Acoustics.

Price, sound quality (when bi-wired and placed on high mass speaker stands), very fast delivery from hifi.com, looks (I got the dark slate grey color and they look very nice), good quality construction, good quality binding posts.

Platic framed grille seems a bit flimsy. Can't really move manufacturer's badge to horizontal positon because pins on back of badge leave large, noticeable holes in the speaker grille cloth.

These speakers have the potential to be darn good, if not great speakers, particularly for the price. Make the effort to bi-wire them and place them on heavy (high mass) speaker stands and you'll get great results. I picked up the M-80's a couple of months ago as the centerpiece of an inexpensive, but good sounding music-only audio system to replace pieces that were stolen several years ago. Initially I was disappointed with the sound of the M-80's. However, I did everything I could to wreck their sound. Chief among my mistakes was to place them directly on the floor and to mono-wire them with the jumpers in place. Set up this way they sounded muddy, weak and cheap. I thought I had wasted my money and contemplated sending them back to Cambridge. After reading various posts about the speakers I thought I should at least give bi-wiring a try before sending them back. A spool of audio cable and some crimp-on connectors later they were bi-wired and my mind was changing about them. Bi-wiring resulted in a noticeable improvement in sound. Certainly the sound was far from great at this point, but it was much improved. I knew that getting the speakers off the floor would help significantly. I hunted for a pair of stands but found nothing locally which would be suitable. I ended up scratch-building a pair of stands which raised the speakers about 20 inches off the floor. Getting the speakers off the floor resulted in a substantial improvement in sound, though things still sounded muddy and the bass was boomy at certain frequencies. I never realized just how critical speaker stands could be until I filled each stand with the 25+ pounds of sand they were designed to hold. The mass of the sand anchors the stands to the floor and deadens their natural resonance. The result is that the speakers now sound superb! On the stands the M-80's louder at the same volume setting, and the bass becomes so much clearer and tighter. The overall improvement in sound quality is nothing short of amazing. For my set-up the speakers sound best sitting on the stands horizontally. Definitely experiment with laying the speakers on their side for your system.

Similar Products Used:

NAD, Nakamichi, Denon, EMS, Yamaha

Strong bass,Warm mid's and high's good looks and excelent overall sound quality.At $400 a steal.

A little to tall, You'll have to shop around for the right hight stands.

Although I paid full price fpr the m80's I'm still very impressed with the speaker,the build quality rivals all the hi end brands costing two or three times the price. With monsters bi wire cable the hi's shine with clarity and wamth but no harshness. The bass is tight and punchy but not muddy or intrusive.Used with the p1000 sub,s300 rears and mc400 center they make perfect fronts in a home theater. A great great speaker even at list price.

Similar Products Used:

Infinity,Klipch,Polk Audio

Detail, clarity, range, appearance

A little bigger than I would like

After trying out several options in the CSW Newton series, I can recommend these speakers highly. They are equally adept in straight Music or Home Theater applications. I had originally purchased the MC200's as my left and right mains with the MC300 as the center channel. The MC200's are great speakers but were a bit bright for my taste. The MC300 is a great center channel, but in my opinion a bit too mid-range focused to work as the left and right main channels. I decided to listen to the M50, M60 and M80 bookshelf speakers at a CSW store and all were fairly suitable - the bigger-woofered M80s were warmer while the M60s had a bit more clarity. I was puzzled as to why the three-way, M80s did not have the same clarity as the M60s - turns out that the M80s have the capability to be bi-wired (one set of wires for the tweeter/mid and another for the woofer) but by default are usually run with just one set of wires with the 2 sets of terminals connected via gold plated jumpers. I decided to go for the M80s and am glad I did. They sounded really nice using the jumpers, but once I ran a second set of wires to each speaker, the upper range opened right up without being harsh while the warmth and fullness I had noticed in the store was still intact. The detail is wonderful and the imaging is absolutely superb! Since the M80 uses the same tweeter and mid-range driver as the MC300, it is an ideal sonic match. I use a P200 subwoofer for home theater, but the M80s are very adequate by themselves for most music. On top of all this, the M80 is also aesthetically pleasing. I think these speakers are worth the $450 asking price, but when purshased as "B Stock" (open-box) at $250 (with 10 year warranty, 45-day trial and 1 year trade up intact) I don't know of any real competition for these speakers.

Similar Products Used:

CSW (MC200, MC300, M60) Boston Acoustic Polk Yamaha

Price and looks, if any strenghts

Sound

All due respect, I thought these were crap. I am a CSW fan, too. I have the P1000, M300 for rears in my HT. After owning these I went in to buy the M80s, but the sales guy talked me out of it. I listened to both the M80 and the M60. The M80 gives your more bass, but is not efficient. The speaker hardware used matched with the cabinet doesn't work. I wanted to buy the M80's, but thank god the sales guy made me listen to the M60's...not perfect, but much better. Clarity of the M60s is better.

Incredible build quality, the wood finish looks amazing. Amazing sound, for $240 off ebay i don't think anything is close.

None.

I did about 2 months of research on bookshelfs and floor standing speakers $500 and under, and finally decided on these. They just blew me away. Great imaging, plenty of bass, and a great warm sound. Awsome soundstage. Sound just as good when they're on soft as they do when they're cranked. Awsome in home theatre as well, although i still use a powered sub for that nice low end punch. I have a mc300 as the center between, and although they're not "prefectly" matched, they blend really well. Just a great all around speaker. If you're in the market for some serious main speakers, give these a listen, you won't be disappointed.

Similar Products Used:

B&W, CSW, and klispch speakers

great sound. great look. GREAT DEAL!!

at $239... i cant find anything wrong.

I love these speakers. I read all the reviews about them on this site. I just do not agree with the bass complaints. I use a Onkyo TX8511 and have no complaints what so ever about bass. Its tight and very musical. Just what a bookshelf speaker should sound like. I would recomend these to anyone who wants a great sounding, great looking speaker. And at $239 from CSW ebay store, what more could you ask for.

Similar Products Used:

bose 301. JBL S38II. Axiom M22ti

Great looking exterior! Great sound (very musical)! Pretty decent bass considering the smaller size. Amazing value for the money, even paying full price, but even better when getting them off of Ebay.

Large for a bookshelf speaker. Cannot be placed safely on satellite speaker stands (you "can" but I would strongly suggest against it). Smaller bookshelves may not be large enough either, so placement can be an issue.

This is a really amazing pair of speakers and it would be worthwhile even for the full asking price of $400, but when you buy them refurbished from CSW on Ebay for $250 they are an INSANELY GOOD DEAL! The speakers are sold as refurbished, but in fact they are just fully working customer returns that result from CSWs 45 day trial period. I don't know why anyone would want to return these speakers, but enough seem to that you'll always be able to get them "refurbished" in pretty much any color you desire (Mohogany, Blond Maple and Slate). To start out with the wooden exterior of the speakers looks really nice, and they sound as good or better than they look. I'd strongly encourage you to get either Maple or Mohogany since getting the Slate will just be doing yourself a diservice. There's nothing wrong with slate, by any means, but it is just so much more blah than the finished wood. Unless you absolutely have to match these with other slate speakers you have, it just doesn't make sense to get them in that color. Originally I purchased these speakers for use in a HT setup, but this didn't end up working out due to size reasons. I guess that might be the one downside about this speaker, it is fairly large and it is definitely a bookshelf speaker. You can't really these on a satellite speaker stand, because they are just too large. So, instead these speakers were placed in a different room for listening purposes. I was amazed with the quality of music produced by these speakers, including a great deal of bass. Since these are book shelf speakers with only an 8 inch woofer and no subwoofer, etc, I wasn't really expecting them to pump out very much bass. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised. For most music listening I think these will probably produce more than enough oomph for almost anyone, unless you really listen to a lot of techno or other music with serious amounts of low bass a subwoofer shouldn't even be necessary. My mom actually prefers these speakers to the Polk RT1000i towers we have which cost 4 times as much and I actually tend to agree. The RT1000s can produce more bass, due to their built in powered subwoofers, but as far as the midrange and treble, I actually think the M80s are better. The t RT1000s are pretty damn good too, but sometimes their treble seems to be a little bit overwhelming which makes them fatiguing to listen to over long periods (biwiring them seems to have helped with that though). I guess I should also mention that the M80s also support biwiring, but make sure to read the manual so you don't make a mistake when hooking them up that way. The connection is not complicated, but I can easily see how someone could make a mistake. In conclusion, I'd just like to say, once again, that these are a great pair of speakers. For $250 for a "refurbed" set on Ebay you can't go wrong (I really love refurbished stuff, you get so much more for your money!). If you go into a store for $250 you'll probably end up with some crap made by Bose that sounds like a tin can, so please don't make that mistake!

Similar Products Used:

Polk Audio RT1000s. CSW MC500, MC300, S300 (also great speakers). Aiwa sound (not sure what model, was some package deal that my sister bought). Some other older speakers (no idea what company or m

Beuatiful full range sound for all tyupes of music. Incredible build quality - the cabinets (especially the Mahogany finish)are a thing of beauty). Great value.

None

I had posted an earlier review saying that while I liked the speakers very much, I had to agree with some other posts that said the bass was lacking in these speakers. Well now that I have my system setup properly, I must retract that statement. If you have these setup as part of a home theatre system with Dolby Digital receiver, make sure you set the main speaker setting to Large. These speakers can go down to 40Hz so it's appropriatte. If you have it set to Small and the Subwoofer setting = Yes, then it will automatically cut the low end to your main speakers at 80Hz and thus the lack of low end bass. Now that I have it set properly I find that I really don't need the sub when listening to music - although I still use it sometimes for the chest pounding kick. These speakers sound better than some of my friends floor standing speakers that cost 1000-1500.