AP wrote:

I want to purchase the beolab 8002 speakers, and recently spent close to 2 hours at a store testing out sources. I took my bose lifestyle CD player and we connected that directly into the speakers with RCA wires, and it sounded heavenly. The bass sounded great, And so did the mid and high frequencies. but an hour later if I had when I left the store, thinking back, i felt it could have used a little more thump (or punch Whatever one calls it). Then came the real test, with my iPhone, considering most of my music is Electronic and shall continue to be electronic. I plugged it into the aux jack of the CD player, and played it, and was disappointed that the punch was lacking and in general the bass was not rich. There was no comparison between this output and what I got from playing a regular CD. I Then tried to stream directly from Spotify at 320K bps, and the result was not very different. I then removed my CD player from the middle and directly plugged the iPhone connector with RCA plugs at the end into extension Rca cables straight to the 8002 speakers, and the result was still the same. The last test left to do was with the sub woofer (beolab 11) but we did not have the appropriate cables to do a proper set up (iPhone connected to the speakers, and the speakers connected to the sub woofer ). But the service engineer was a smart guy and found a way to plug my phone directly into the subwoofer through the headphone jack with some wire , and connected the subwoofer to one of the speakers thru a cut open makeshift wire. The result was massively different, and I had no more complaints with the thump and even the bass. My question to you is, is there any other way to get great bass and punch from the 8002 speakers without having to buy an expensive beo lab 11 sub woofer? Like a different set of cables, on a preamp, or something else? I intend using the speakers only to play CDs and the iPhone. The living room in which the speakers will be is around 500 ft.². Sorry for the long account! Cheers

Mike the bose cd player has no settings for bass or any form of equalizer. I get a feeling your second statement is true, and while i am not technically trained on this topic, i cant imagine why an apple connector is causing poor sound while some other cable will beat it. I say this cause i have been using the iphone thru the bose cd player's aux jack for years on my regular bose setup (bose subwoofer and cube speakers), and it sounded almost as good as CD playing on that CD player

Hi AP.

I tried everything (loudness, EQ setting etc) off my iPhone into the same speakers and they sound like absolute garbage off an iPhone.  Off a B&O head unit they sound like a different speaker and crank 3 times as loud.  If I was yourself, I would buy a B&O head unit (new or secondhand - very cheap to pick up a 3200 now, and they still look nice) and run your phone through that.  You can get an aftermarket bluetooth receiver for all B&O head units off ebay to connect your iPhone wirelessly and control volume from that..  I tried everything.  At least with the B&O head unit you can control tone properly, I tried every EQ setting on the iPhone, straight into the RCA's of the speakers and they all sounded terrible.  Good luck.

You are asking too much from the iPhone, I use mine connected to my Century, BeoLit 12 and Beosound and I'm very happy with the sound quality but I must admit I'm not into high bass levels. To improve quality I invested in a FiiO amp and now looking at their X5 for a higher quality portable player.

Back to back testing with my old wolfson chipped  iPod and it kicks my iPhone, and that's the problem, SMART phones are trying to do too many things in an ever decreasing package.

I would pay a premium if Apple brought out an Audiophile system. 

iPhone sounds fine through the century or beolit 12 (use the same units with my iPhone).  But straight into a B&O speaker via RCA, different story ,sound signal has not been processed via preamp of century or beolit,  sounds like RUBBISH!!  Volume output on iPhone must be very low compared to B&O head unit.  i tried a disc man straight into the speakers, the same thing, absolute rubbish sound.  Playmaker perhaps?