[DRCope]

Vertigo,

I know you'll think I'm making this up at some point, but it's all true . . .

The Njoe Tjoeb 4000 would be an excellent choice at half your stipulated budget. When I bought the Cary 303 it was to replace a 4000 which was damaged in shipping. Having gotten used to the build quality on the CAL, the return to the tin can level of a Marantz base plus shipping damage inspired to go nuts. So I jumped several levels to the Cary.

It was built like an aircraft carrier, and sounded extremely impressive, but I don't know that it was more musically satisfying than the Njoe Tjoeb, which has well-built guts inside the tuna fish can exterior. I couldn't justify the additional expense for the satisfaction gained, so I sold it.

I bought the PD-65 and Audio Note DAC Kit 1.1, (used for about $800 combined), sight unseen, sound unheard, based on impressions of people whose ears I respect. The Pioneer has the stable platter transport, which was adopted by several high end co's for their mega$$ transports. It sounded pretty good all by itself as a CDP. When the AN arrived, it raised the level of musical satisfaction by an order of magnitude. The electronic edge present in oversampling DACS was gone. (You're probably wondering "what edge?" You don't know it's there in the good players until you hear playback without it.) The organic, 3D sense of voices and instruments is incredible. I'm not talking about imaging, but the sense of integrated, coherent sources of music, not reassembled chunks of sound.

If this sounds like gibberish, it's a combination of your not having heard the changes I'm describing, and my struggle to describe them in a meaningful way.

You've gotta hear it for yourself.

 

[squirt]

The Jupiter is also at the top of my list for a CD player...i don't worry too much about coloration the players may impart as long as its pleasing to my ears and otherwise of very high quality...

 

[RickG]

I don't know where the "coloration" term in regard to the Rega originated. I have had my Planet for about six months now and find it very natural and musical without the "digital" edge many CDP's exhibit.

You go, Vert. I think the Rega will blow your mind.

Rick

 

[CRESCENDOPOWER]

Do a poll. That would be fun way to decide what to do with over a thousand dollars. Ha Ha!

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

MacDEF i won't pretend to fully understand design limitations of multiplayers but what i do understand is there are design compromises cd player makers deal with when designing multiplayers in the transport assembly.

I think the correct way to say this is that "there are design comprimises that SOME cd player makers MAKE."

There is absolutely nothing that dictates that CD changers must have inferior transport mechanisms than singe CD players. In fact, many use exactly the same transports. It costs a bit more to make a multi player that will have a comparable transport quality, simply because you have to put the same transport in both, and then add the cost of the changer.

This is really one of the HUGE myths of audio. Think about this logically. On a single CD player, the drawer/tray is not the transport. It is a drawer that pulls the CD inside, and then places it on the spindle. Once it is on the spindle, it doesn't even *touch* the drawer. On a multi-CD player, the changer drawer is simply a mechanism to "hold" multiple CDs. When you want to play one, it rotates to the correct CD, then places it on the spindle. Once on the spindle, the CD doesn't even *touch* the drawer. That's why you can change all your discs while one is playing.

Given the above facts, there is NO reason at all why a multi-CD player should have an inferior transport than a single CDP. As long as the drawer places the CD on the spindle of the transport, and doesn't touch it after, the two can and will operate identically given an identical transport.

The only time a changer will "degrade" the sound quality of a CD over a single CDP is if you're changing CDs while one is playing -- the vibration from the changer rotating will probably introduce some errors; however, chances are those errors are within the error-correction abilities of the player.

Quote:

i asked a Sony service person if it was possible to make a multi disk transport track as well as a high end single disk transport. He said yes but the costs would be very high and with added complexity and reliability issues and he added Sony would have no interest in making such a high end multi disk transport as stable as the single disk one since the market for high end multi disk players is not there to justify it...

Well, unfortunately, that Sony service person was pretty clueless. While it is true that a changer has a higher probability of reliability problems given that it has more moving parts (simple manufacturing rule), that doesn't mean you can't make a changer very reliable. Plus maybe he needs to look at his service catalog, and see that Sony has indeed made several high-end multi CD players which are selling quite well.

Quote:

Well as it turns out they didn't...Of course when you look at the current crop of Sony SACD multi players its clear they are very decent players by any standard but are targeted for the more mainstream mass market. Of course you can get a lower end SACD player modded to sound as good as a high end player or even better with red book cds...time will tell if someday multi players will find a place for themselves in the high end audio arena...

Not sure what you're talking about -- check out Stereophile's latest Recommended Components list. A Sony 5-disc changer is listed in the Class A rating, along with some pretty amazing single CD players. I'd call that high-end.

 

[Tim D]

Its hard to generalize about changers because....a lot of audiophiles don't like them, so a lot of high-end designs aren't going to incorporate it...ESPECIALLY if its more costly to the manufacturer. SO really the root of the problem is the chicken-egg issue. Audiophiles think changers are worse...audiophile catering companies will not build many changers which are MUCH more expensive on their end...hence the general perception of changers is maintained. Audiophiles are happy because they prefer single CD players. Audiophile companies are happy because single CD players are easier to deal with and cheaper.

BTW, the huge transports required for changers is indeed much more difficult to handle and probably involves more motors that are also beefier! This can inject electrical noise during use depending on the layout and powersupplies I would wager...but since these motors are in use during swap operations...

In any case perhaps a hardened DIYer would know more...but I'd wager they would say that if they had to build a CD player they would make it single because it was EASIER and cheaper.

Finally a lot of audiophile companies USE the transports from the "big names" like Sony or Philips. So I would wager that Sony is better capable of producing more complex transports at a lower cost due to economy of scale.

 

[markl]

MacDef is 100% right. All the drawer does is load the disc on to the spindle, then the drawer disengages, no different from a single disc machine.

BTW: here's one "audiophile" that insists on multi-disc. I wouldn't even consider a single disc player. I'm always appalled at the lack of selection of high quality multi-players. it's all due the myth that they sound inferior somehow.

Also, it's the large "mass-market" manufacturers that advance the state of the art and bring in new technologies at lower and lower price points. Frankly, they are the only ones that can afford to retain the number of engineers and researchers required to keep churning out newer and better models year after year.

The "high-end" companies simply add far better analog sections than the mass-market companies. They all use more or less the same DACs available to the mass-market companies as there are only a small number of outfits that actually produce them. All those high-end companies source their transports from the same handful of suppliers that serve the mass-market companies, did you know that? Look inside a "high-end" DVD player and you'll find plenty of components sourced from Panasonic. High-end companies are in no position to be able to build these things from scratch.

Am i saying that a mass-market $1000 machine will sound better than a $1000 "high-end" machine? Nope. That $1000 for the mass-market machine contains the cost of all those extra features, plus the extensive marketing needed to support them. The high-end companies can cram better parts in the analog section, remove features, and spend minimal dollars on advertising and generally more bang for the buck.

What's my point? Let's not bash the mass-market companies so much. If Sony felt its brand name could seriously compete in the high-end (and there were enough dollars there to entice a global company), IMHO it would have the resources and technical skills to create products that would destroy similarly priced "high-end" machines.


markl

 

[Tim D]

Yep a better analogy with cars besides Fords and Mercedes...would IMO be Ford and Saleen when it comes to Mustangs.

Saleen doesn't have the resources to build a Saleen Mustang without Ford. That doesn't mean a Saleen Mustang isn't going to kick the pants out of the stock Ford. And Ford probably COULD compete with Saleen...but why? They work together and its a win-win situation I would think.

The audiophile market is probably more volatile...and even though the units are much much pricier...don't kid yourself, I'd bet Sony makes far more money on their cheaper mass-marketed stuff than their SCD-1's.

 

[markl]

Quote:

don't kid yourself, I'd bet Sony makes far more money on their cheaper mass-marketed stuff than their SCD-1's

Well, they certainly do far more in terms of volume, that's for sure.

Let me relate a quick story. i used to own the CAL CL10 ($1500), the "world's best CD Changer" as it was billed when it came out around '98 or so. When I bought my Denon DVM3700 (retail $1000) DVD player, i was astonished to discover that the sound was much better than the CAL, which I thoiught was no slouch itself. The Denon is not only 30% chepaer than the CAL, it has all those extra features and DVD video components in there as well. Nevertheless, better sound. Why? Superior DACs, plain and simple. technology triumphed over build qualiy. To my mind, it's the same with DVD Audio players and SACD players-- more powerful DACs designed for much more demanding applications being applied to simple CD tecnology. Result: better sound than conventional CD players.

Speaking of SCD-1 and it's lower cost ($3K when new) little brother, the 777, Stereophile (for what it's worth, i know) felt the need to create an unprecedented new category, "A+" to describe their sound. They are essentially saying that the Sonys are better CD players than any they've reviewed in their history.

Support the new formats! You get a high-quality CD player thrown in for "free"!

markl

 

[jude]

Regarding the transport issue:

Multi or single, every drawer-type mechanism I've seen (as was stated earlier) uses the drawer (or drawer/carousel) to simply place the CD into the transport which then clamps it down and spins it. As MacDEF stated, the drawer usually just gets the CD to where it's going (the spindle) and then the CD is decoupled from that drawer. Maybe there are exceptions to how the drawer is used on some drawer-type loaders, but I haven't seen one yet.

That's why when you look at an Arcam Diva CD72 (which is a wonderful player -- I auditioned this model), the drawer doesn't strike me as any more impressive or durable than on most CD players beyond its face plate.

 

[Bob]

Quote:

Originally posted by markl Also, it's the large "mass-market" manufacturers that advance the state of the art and bring in new technologies at lower and lower price points. Frankly, they are the only ones that can afford to retain the number of engineers and researchers required to keep churning out newer and better models year after year. markl

This is soooooooooooooooo true. I am shocked by the amount of people that do not realize this ... just check the patents. If the big boys do not directly do the research themselves, they usually front the cash for another institution (like a university) to do it for them.

 

[dhwilkin]

Quote:

markl said... Speaking of SCD-1 and it's lower cost ($3K when new) little brother, the 777, Stereophile (for what it's worth, i know) felt the need to create an unprecedented new category, "A+" to describe their sound. They are essentially saying that the Sonys are better CD players than any they've reviewed in their history.

I thought that category was only created because of the SACD portion of the player...

 

[DanG]

D: It was. And that's very important to note. I can't wait to do a good side-by-side with a high-end Sony SACD player playing a redbook CD and a redbook-only player playing that same CD to see what I think. We'll see what happens!

 

[Vertigo-1]

Quite frankly, I'm pretty confident that CD players like the Jupiter 2000 or the Cary 303 will smoke SACD players in the same price region, if not higher, for CD playback. Which is why I haven't bothered looking at any of Sony's SACD players. Unless preference plays into the equation like in the headphone realm...then of course what is good and what's not is up to the buyer.

I took a look at the SACD selection from Amazon today...and there's a whole 4 SACDs I'm interested in, out of 85. I think I'll stick with CDs.

 

[Tim D]

There are some reports that the affordable Art DI/O can out do redbook performance of SACD players.

So chych...how do you still like your Art?

Heh I think I'm gonna try and snag one monday if its still in stock at that low price.