Tony8377
Established Member
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 )
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 )