M-Audio CX8 Studiophile Active Monitor Review Part Two
By Paul Dakeyne
| Posted in Feature
Continuing on from Friday’s review of the M-Audio CX8 studiophile monitors, today’s focus moves from technical and physical specs to the question of performance.
So how do these monsters sound? Well, for listening material, I took the CX8s along a very much similar audio test path to the one I walked with the CX5′s – with contemporary pop/dance (overly compressed as it can be), some classic tunes on warm-’n'-trusty vinyl, a variety of familiar tunes via CD and then a full multi-track studio production, played back by Logic 9. The contemporary stuff (mostly disposable pop, mixed seemingly for iPods and mobile phones) sounded surprisingly warm and non-fatiguing. When checking some well-mixed CD reference tracks, as with the smaller CX5s, I had another ‘wowser’ moment (my bench mark for that feeling comes from the first time I heard the Adam A7s). Here, I had the experience of hearing certain parts in a track I didn’t remember were there before. I’ll quote myself actually, because my reaction was identical on these M-Audio CX8s – “the transparency and realism in what I was hearing was awesome, with superb presence, clarity and a beautiful bottom end that just felt perfectly real – not coloured, over accentuated or ‘fake..”
A full Logic 9 multi-track production was handled effortlessly by these superb monitors. I can’t help but again note a similarity in my findings with the 5s. At ‘normal’ monitoring levels, acapella vocals were delivered with a non-coloured but accurate response, tracking applied EQ curves precisely. Solo’d instrument mids were constantly maintained in accuracy and higher frequency content, again controlled and non-fatiguing. And oh boy, are these babies loud – I mean, really LOUD! I’ve actually never had this much power – and almost 100 per cent un-distorted power at that – with such high dB levels in my room before. Funnily enough, the user manual describes at one point how to connect a sub-bass unit to these monitors, but it’s not needed. The CX8s have an astounding low end response, which is tight, warm and totally energising.
In conclusion then (and considering their recent and new significantly-lower price point) these monitors could probably whup the backside off just about any monitor in their class when it comes to pure, unbelievable power. An amazing linear response, great separation and transparency makes them the closest monitors I’ve heard in a long time to even approach my (and I stress) personal benchmark A7 reference. To handle non-coloured, accurate sonic reproduction of everything I work on, I’d be quite happy to install these right now if I was in the market for new monitors. They are quite large though, and may not aesthetically suit every environment, and that huge dB blast may not even be possible to achieve in your room or circumstances. However, if you have the space to accommodate, and for all the reasons above, I’d give a solid recommendation and huge thumbs up to the M-Audio CX8 Studiophile.
