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Went to Fry’s electronics today expecting to buy a replacement for my stolen camera, but their salespeople are so inept that I decided they didn’t deserve my money (“I’m sorry sir, but we can’t turn them on for you”—NO SALE FOR YOU). Instead I wandered into their speaker room (as I usually do at some point) and spotted a pair of these on the top shelf with a red reduced price tag…

Cambridge Sound Works M50 Bookshelf Speakers

They were store display models on sale at a discount, $95.67 for the pair. I compared them to some Polk speakers of similar size that were on sale for $40 a pair, but the Cambridge’s were much more lively and accurate, with a noticably better soundstage even in the horrible little listening room (that’s just speaker nerd speak for “where you can hear the sound coming from”—with good speakers, you don’t want to hear the sound coming from the speakers; you don’t want to hear the speakers at all, just the music). Definitely worthy of their $299 list price, and at $95, I couldn’t pass them up.

The display models were unscathed except for being covered in labels and stickers, which leads me to an unusual Fry’s good experience—I went to a random salesperson who looked helpful (I searched) and asked him if they sold Goo-Gone. He looked at my speakers and led me to his department instead, then gave me an open bottle of goo-gone and some paper towels. After a few minutes I had them shiny-looking and without ugly stickers. I was very thankful for this diamond-in-the-rough manager who actually helped me. After my bad camera experience, this almost evened it out so that I might set foot in a Fry’s in the future.

So, back to the speakers, I’m enjoying them more than I should at the moment, still hooked up to the great little T-Amp. They will make working at home much easier. It’s no wonder moving up from $20 KLH bookshelfs with a little plastic tweeter. Big downside though—I can hear compression in LAME -V2 mp3’s now (that’s around 192kbps VBR) Fortunately I’ve been ripping everything I like in FLAC lossless thanks to the 250G hard disk. Good call Tristan, good call….