[Matt F]

For those who think Pioneer's 747A could perform better, a specially tweaked version is now available courtesy of Townshend Audio - see this months HiFi Choice - they said it is absolutely fantastic - state of the art etc.

Downsides? Only one - the price: £2000 for the upgrade (on top of the price of the 747A of course). Think I'd go for a Tag DVD32FLR if I had that sort of money to spend.

Matt.

[ian_guinan]

They have got to be absolutely barking mad!

I don't wish to offend any 747 owners with the quote but it brings to mind what the garage owner says to the young guy in the John Carpenter movie Christine when he brings in the broken down rusty old car for restoration...(someone must know what I'm talking about!!)

...to the effect that no matter how much you 'polish' a thing you won't make it 'shine' unless the source is up to it in the first place..but not in so many words...

Sheesh..wish I hadn't started typing this..'you can't make a purse out of a pigs ear' would have got the message across a lot easier .

Regards,
Ian Guinan

'you can polish a turd all you want, it still smells....'

No punt intended to 747A owners, just couldn't resist ROFLOL

[Matt F]

I think in fairness to Townshend, we should note that we're not talking about the kind of tweaking that the Marantz KI players have over the standard ones, we're talking about a separate box (that sits underneath the 747A) giving a clean and stable power supply plus various other changes.

Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of HiFi Choice (I just use the newsagents as a library) but from memory they said something along the lines of - the CD replay is ace, the DVD-Audio replay is as good as they'd heard, the SACD replay is the best they've ever heard and the DVD-V performance is vastly improved. They didn't say it wasn't a value for money upgrade but did add that it doesn't, of course, look like nearly three grands worth of kit.

If anyone has got a copy of HiFi Choice to hand, perhaps they can confirm what they said about the tweaked 747A's performance on the various formats.

Matt.