![]() I'm listening to a Keeb Mo album right now, and the very top piano notes, which he (or the pianist) plays on and off in a boogie-woogie style, sound amazingly more like real music than I heard before this. I could hear and feel the improvement: More details, cleaner top end, better interior resolution and more soul in the upper bass and lower mids. I haven't paid much attention to what I am hearing since then because I knew it takes a while for new solder joints and silver cables to settle in. And second I have a hearing disease.Ģ-3 weeks ago I changed the connections between the transport and the Dac and between the Dac and the output stage to from a stock copper (not Lexus) cable to AN-Vx. The AN CDP has more inner resolution, so of course the individual instruments stand out more clearly within the sound stage defined by my speakers. Components can emphasize certain aspects of the sound stage, but the speakers do most of the work. First, the sound stage in my system is dominated by the role played by the LS3/5A speakers. I don't have much to say about sound staging here, for two reasons. The Arcam is a very good player for what it cost at the time (about $1500) because it does a lot of things very well has no big faults and is as reliable as. Under these circumstances, my Arcam - which I think is a really good player for the price - would sound a bit like a radio in the next room. It sounds as if there is a live orchestra playing (pity the screaming, door-slamming, low-life neighbors downstairs), bold, detailed, but also capturing the contrasts between the fast and loud and slow and soft parts. I am listening to a collection of Wagner overtures (and later the New World Symphony) in the next room, as I work in my study about 25 feet away with the door open. Be careful about pairing it with amps and preamps that also have a lot of gain. When i tried a T-S round plate, the presentation was too euphoric and lacked detail.ĭ. However, I used this preamp with very neutral and balanced input tubes: T-S VT-99s and Sylvania 6SN7Ws and this defintely helped to achieve this tonal complementarity between the two components. The CDP loves this preamp, even though it can be a bit warm. My de Havilland UV preamp may be an exception. It mates well with both SS and tube equipment as long as the tube equipment is fairly neutral in its presentation. Later, when I rewired the unit, I found that this blend was improved!Ĭ. In short, this player combines a good blend of detail, a bit of darkness, and a rich, organic sound. It really brings out the best in female vocals, jazz and acoustic music. I am told that this is what "organic" sounds like. It is much more relaxed and the presentation comes with "soul" inside the music. ![]() This CD player is "better than" my Arcam CD-192T. But on non-neutral speakers, watch out, as I found out when I played this unit through a set of Charo speakers at the dealers: "muddy waters".ī. On reasonably neutral speakers, this sounds great. The CD is also a bit "dark", tipped down to the upper bass lower mid-range. I found, for example, that my SBH headphone amp picked up a lot more detail than did my SP MPX3 SE Slam. This can be lost through bad downstream components. If you have weaknesses downstream in your system, this CD player will exaggerate them. Then I changed the tubes to Amperex Holland 6DJ8 Orange Globe A frames and started to listen for fun. I let this unit burn in for over 400 hours before it stabilized. ![]() It has a front loading tray and a very simple display + a remote. So, what is this? It's a combination of a Phillips Transport/CD reader + an Audio Note 1.1 x/II Sig Dac. The US distributor is Audio Federation in Boulder Colorado. There are pictures there as well, but I have included the one of the insides at the end of the review. You can read about the player itself on the thread "Shameless plug for Audio Note CD player. I posted about this on a previous thread, and promised a review. ![]()
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