Expensive CD Player - why bother!!!

[Tony8377]

I finally got hold of a new CD player which I have been looking for second hand for about two years. My previous CD player was the Myryad T20 (£600 in 1998) which I bought second hand for less than £250 about 3 years ago. I've always loved the Myryad with it's detailed, slightly forward presentation. I've previously also owned an Arcam DV89 and I preferred the Myryad (I partly bought the Arcam as a one box solution so that was a waste of money and now own a pioneer 575 which I am more than happy with for DVDs).

Today I took delivery of a second hand Classe CDP10 CD Player. I've wanted one of these for ages as it got the best and most consistent reviews accross the globe that I have ever seen for any CD player (see here, here , here and here for sample reviews). I set the player up using a decent power cable, isolation and interconnect into £3.5k worth of stereo amplification and speakers. I sat the Myryad on top with a standard mains cable and much cheaper £40 interconnect, to give the Classe every advantage.

Once the player had warmed up for an hour or so I began listening to some of my test CDs which I know very well. I have to say I was somewhat gutted, sonicaly they both sounded virtually identical. I kept getting up to change CDs between the two players trying to hear differences between particular instruments but they had very similar characteristics. Normally you can say that guitar or piano or bass sounds different even if you are unsure exactly which is better but these sounded soooo similar.

To be fair (phew) the Classe is slightly more laid back and creates a slightly bigger soundstage but it is quite subtle. I will say this, it is just a more enjoyable listen and a lot less fatiguing I'm just stuggling to know why. Had it not been on my own system which I've had for years I'm not sure I could have chosen between the two in a blind test.

The Myryad was always a massively underated CD player and better than any sub £700 player I had heard on my system but even so.

So the question is why bother!!! I could of spent the money on better amplification, replacement speakers or even speaker cables/interconnects and I'm sure I could have got a more obvious improvement if I could have found something to buy.

My point is if someone said to me here's two grand build me a second hand system I would buy a £200 player, spend £950 on amplification and £850 on speakers and this would thrash any system where equal amounts were spent on each component (i.e. upgrading to the next model up on speakers or amplifier gives a more noticeable upgrade than on the CD player).

Just my thoughts (and heh I just bought the CD player so I'm not trying to justify my position )

[shahedz]

what a disapoint ment for you, i have a myryad cd player i bought from these forums for £100 , and am a very happy bunny with the performance, i realy enjoy listening to cds on it and think it was a bargain!

[alexs2]

I think the problem lies in being able to try before buying....it's not often possible buying used/ex-dem gear,but can sometimes be done,and can also be done via the occasional friendly dealer.

As it is,both are good players,and another consideration is the difference a new DAC could have made in place of the Classe...just to make it worse!

If you really are that dissapointed with it, can't you swap it from where you bought it with something else?

And if it's new, give it time to burn in, might make a slight improvement.

[SKA.face]

I've been pleased with my CD upgrades without spending a fortune,and somet¡imes the differences arn't worth the costs.To me after years of flaffing about,the biggest difference is speaker to room acoustics and analogue turntables.

[Knightshade]

Most CDP's (For Me) fall into roughly 2 catagories. The sub £1500ish bracket which all sound very similar (with the few exceptions of valve output CDP's) and the other ones.
A £90 DVD player and a good DAC and you've got your £1500 - £2000 CDP for a fraction of the price. Start going beyond that and you get into the realm of great players and very big disapointments. The biggest that i've ever heard to date was the Chord Blu/DAC 64. The most lifeless, clinical sounding combo i've ever heard. Give me a DVD player and a NOS dac anyday.
Whilst I agree with SKA Face, room acoustics are very important. If it's not there in the first place. All you'll do is tweak 60% of what the CD really is.

[Tony8377]

Originally Posted by Gullanian

If you really are that dissapointed with it, can't you swap it from where you bought it with something else?

And if it's new, give it time to burn in, might make a slight improvement.

I bought it second hand over the web (thankfully I lost the one I was bidding for on eBay as I got this one a lot cheaper). Whilst I was slightly dissapointed and could shift it without losing money I am going to keep it anyhow(maybe the last pure CD player I ever buy). I like everything it does and I've never heard one better it's just I don't think you can squeeze too much more out of CDs than a good mid priced CD player does(the Myryad was just a great match for my system given the price). I think the thing that surprised me most was how similar every element sounded it's just the Classes does it slightly better, more open, slightly better seperation. Think I have to accept that it's not something I can test by player swapping to test how a certain guitar sounds but instead have to listen to the overall presentation - re-educate myself on how to test hi-fi . Or perhaps after 12 years I have reached by HFi threashold and should sit back and just enjoy

Originally Posted by alexs2

I think the problem lies in being able to try before buying....it's not often possible buying used/ex-dem gear,but can sometimes be done,and can also be done via the occasional friendly dealer.

As it is,both are good players,and another consideration is the difference a new DAC could have made in place of the Classe...just to make it worse!

I've never found a good hifi dealer where I've felt comfortable listening to stuff in their showrooms, they're all too pushy and annoying. At this level it's really pointless demoing in store anyway as your home and equipment makes all the difference. I have a good mate who buys a lot of second hand hifi just to listen to and knows his stuff so I normally buy equipment from him having listened to it first.

Never been convinced by the DAC route, did briefly have a decent Toshiba DVD player hooked up to both a Pink Triangle Ordinal DAC and a Trichord Pulsar DAC but frankly when I bought the Myryad it trounced the pair of them (it also sounded better on its own than with the Ordinal and just different with the Trichord which was great because selling them netted a lot more than the cost of the Myryad).

Originally Posted by SKA.face

To me after years of flaffing about,the biggest difference is speaker to room acoustics and analogue turntables.

I would agree with that, after recently moving house I spent ages on another forum trying to get the room acoustics right having suffered from a complete base dropout. Ended up having to fire the speaker accross a completely different axis - worth it in the end though (much better but by no means perfect). I found this to be a useful starting point and well worth a play.

[overkill]

To me after years of flaffing about,the biggest difference is speaker to room acoustics and analogue turntables.

Agreed. My best ever sound (bizarrely) was in an modern, early 80's built place, we rented for a while in 94'. Those walls, for some reason, produced terrific acoustics that I've never been able to reproduce.

As for TT's, unlike my own experience with CD players which echoes Tony8377's, the law of diminshing returns doesn't kick in until VERY high up the chain. Even then the sound of each marques components make for a very different sound. Each upgrade I make has made huge leaps in performance.

CD wise, spending a small fortune (as Tony found) hasn't reaped any really monumental improvements. I was cut to the quick after spending £1,500 on my Primare 30 only to find it wasn't that much better than the Micromega it replaced. And no, I don't have a 'thing' about French CD players.........

[alexs2]

Originally Posted by Tony8377

Never been convinced by the DAC route, did briefly have a decent Toshiba DVD player hooked up to both a Pink Triangle Ordinal DAC and a Trichord Pulsar DAC but frankly when I bought the Myryad it trounced the pair of them (it also sounded better on its own than with the Ordinal and just different with the Trichord which was great because selling them netted a lot more than the cost of the Myryad).

Much depends on the transport and DAC,but to be honest,hooking a DVD player up to a DAC isn't the best way to test one,as a number of DVD players have such high levels of jitter as to make comparisons between DACs meaningless.

A really good off board DAC can make a huge difference,with a decent CD as transport.

[Knightshade]

Originally Posted by alexs2

Much depends on the transport and DAC,but to be honest,hooking a DVD player up to a DAC isn't the best way to test one,as a number of DVD players have such high levels of jitter as to make comparisons between DACs meaningless.

A really good off board DAC can make a huge difference,with a decent CD as transport.

A half decent DVD player (you shouldn't dismiss them just because they are DVD players) and a good DAC will happily take on the lower priced (>£1500) CDP's. Agreed it won't match the higher end equipment. And of course, the better the transport, the better the result.

[speedy.steve]

This is very interesting.

I have the ~£800 (when new) Musical Fidelity A3 CD player. It's 5 years old now and plays very well. Nice warm, involving, detailed enough sound.
Having heard a friends Copland on my amp and his speakers I know there are better CD players out there. Ok at £3K or there abouts.
I think if I spent £1500 on one now I would probably be dissapointed - not a big enough leap.
Same with the speakers I just bought. Auditioning speakers for a little more money than the ones I had did not work at all. I had to go several times higher to get that improvement in authority, detail, pace and range I was looking for.

Could this be where you are now?

[dynamic turtle]

I think you have to be very, very careful about spending big money on cd source "upgrades". At the end of the day, the difference between good DVD players (say, the Philips 963SA) and premium, dedicated CD players (say, the Densen B400), is worryingly small.

Many of us here use either DVD+DAC, or straight DVD for CD playback, with very satisfactory results. Not all dvd players make good cd players of course - some of them are a bit harsh/glassy in the treble (i.e. Pioneer 565) or perhaps flat/dull sounding (Denon 2900).

However, there ARE some very good CDP's out there that do justify their price tags and offer a significantly "different" presentation to warrant attention. i.e the Ah! Njoe Tjoeb spinners and Quad CDP's sound very different from the pack, to my my ears. NB - I said "different", which does not necessarily equate to "better"!!

Although I'm an advocate of DVD players from a VFM standpoint, unlike some, I'm not slavishly dogmatic in my belief. There is, in fact, a £500 Chinese CDP that I'm very close to ordering. Many folks (whose views I respect), profess it is not a giant killer, but an out & out titan-slayer! My curiosity has got the better of me, so I'll be trying one to see what all the fuss is about.

For those of you interested, you really ought to check it out - it looks too good to be true, even by Chinese standards!!: http://www.cattylink.com/CAT-E5eued.htm

Rgds,
DT

[CJROSS]

Ive had some interesting experiences with digital replay systems in my time (reading the sticky at the top of the page will testify to that), and have come full circle to using DVD players as sources. Ive owned a few DACs and enjoyed them all but what Im hearing from DVD sources in both mys sytems well it does me, Im currently use an old DAC also for Freeview Digital – Ive also hooked it up of a PS2 toslink wise and it sounds excellent with CD too. Ive heard a couple of DVD players being used in systems way in advance of what I own namely a £500 Sony NSV900 commonly available for £100 these days and I will say it blew my socks off. Just as my current Toshiba blows my socks off. If the Tosh evers dies, Im buying the £100 Sony.

I don’t think the kit has ever been bad, looking at my own history in hifi in retrospect, what has been different has been my attitude to it. As such Im off the merry go round of the next best source digitally, some CD/DACs etc burn brightly as never before, only to be replaced the year after by a new emperor. Knighshade highlights how things are changing in audio/hifi with the simple £100 NOS DACs, these are basic devices with scant attention paid to incoming jitter et al, have “old” designs and yet with those “flaws” are making a few people very happy – even with historically flawed CD transports. There will always be an old guard clnging to the latest digital device or DAC, but truth is quite a few are finding enjoyment lower down the scale.

To the original poster enjoy your cheaper CDP, you are about to enter a period of enjoyment of your system where worry and looking for the next improvement are long gone. Ive come to the condlusion, that the kit does not have the biggest impact on a person hearing it, more that they do. Having been at both ends of the spectrum I see it was me. Not the kit I listened to that made the biggest difference to what I heard.

[mobily]

Originally Posted by CJROSS

Ive had some interesting experiences with digital replay systems in my time (reading the sticky at the top of the page will testify to that), and have come full circle to using DVD players as sources. Ive owned a few DACs and enjoyed them all but what Im hearing from DVD sources in both mys sytems well it does me, Im currently use an old DAC also for Freeview Digital – Ive also hooked it up of a PS2 toslink wise and it sounds excellent with CD too. Ive heard a couple of DVD players being used in systems way in advance of what I own namely a £500 Sony NSV900 commonly available for £100 these days and I will say it blew my socks off. Just as my current Toshiba blows my socks off. If the Tosh evers dies, Im buying the £100 Sony.

I don’t think the kit has ever been bad, looking at my own history in hifi in retrospect, what has been different has been my attitude to it. As such Im off the merry go round of the next best source digitally, some CD/DACs etc burn brightly as never before, only to be replaced the year after by a new emperor. Knighshade highlights how things are changing in audio/hifi with the simple £100 NOS DACs, these are basic devices with scant attention paid to incoming jitter et al, have “old” designs and yet with those “flaws” are making a few people very happy – even with historically flawed CD transports. There will always be an old guard clnging to the latest digital device or DAC, but truth is quite a few are finding enjoyment lower down the scale.

To the original poster enjoy your cheaper CDP, you are about to enter a period of enjoyment of your system where worry and looking for the next improvement are long gone. Ive come to the condlusion, that the kit does not have the biggest impact on a person hearing it, more that they do. Having been at both ends of the spectrum I see it was me. Not the kit I listened to that made the biggest difference to what I heard.

Is it possible to use a DAC with a freeview box and a DAB as well as a CDP?

I always thought external DACs only had one input and output. Do they have multiple inputs to allow you to hook up a number of different kit?

[MartinImber]

Have you read what the US people have done to your DVD player - turning it into a fantastic CD player?