[Big G]

To go into my home big rig / dual Hi-Fi, Home theatre.

Comprising of JM Lab Cobalt 826 signatures, matching centre and 806S surrounds, Denon 3805 receiver.

Ive Auditioned a few players in this price category, including the Rega Apollo (at home on my system) Not the synergy i was expecting, massive bass bloat from this player / system / room combo, it seemed to have doubled the bass output compared to the phillips 963SA player I was using.

I am looking to treat the room also to tame any bass / treble irregularities.

Opinions of this player welcome, If auditioned in store, and was pleased with its warm signature, very musical.

Will be auditioning at home before purchasisng, but looking for feedback from people who own this model or have heard it.

 

[THeX]

I have this player, I think build wise, wow its fantastic. Mind you, I haven't had a long line of CD players to really tell you the difference. I didn't get a chance to demo the Apollo as it wasn't released.

The look of this thing to me is very WOW. I love the blue lights and the build quality for the price is fantastic. 13.2kg I think it weighs.

Compared to my old CD player ( an old pioneer ), I find the sound much more open, airy, detailed with lots of low end extension. However, the transport is a bit noisy (but if you're using headphones, this won't matter), and the top plate of the player has vibration when a CD is playing.

Now I'm a super anal person here, and the shop has gotten a bit annoyed at me for my super analness. So take my criticisms with a grain of salt.

Sound Quality and Build Quality -> this thing is tops. I mainly use this machine for redbook, SACD doesn't really float my boat, but I saw it as a nice handy extra.

I've gone through 2 players though.

The first player, had a cosmetic issue with the casing, it was like if the metal case was not machined correctly. So the right hand side at the top would pop up and look kind of well, weird... Operational wise, it was fantastic, the build quality of the remote is great, just the right hand side popping up wasn't right -> the repair agent couldn't fix it without a hammer.

So I got replacement.

The replacement has been fine, but early on VERY RARELY it would give me a TOC read error (has nothing to do with titles n stuff). So far the read errors haven't occured. This happened about 4 times (I've had this unit now since early Jan 2006). I'm thinking the laser was probably dirty and i've played it quite a bit now and this problem has cropped up.