DRCope
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2001
- Posts
- 61
- Likes
- 10
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$$ transports. It sounded pretty good all by itself as a CDP. When the AN arrived, it raised the level of musical satisfaction by an order of magnitude. The electronic edge present in oversampling DACS was gone. (You're probably wondering "what edge?" You don't know it's there in the good players until you hear playback without it.) The organic, 3D sense of voices and instruments is incredible. I'm not talking about imaging, but the sense of integrated, coherent sources of music, not reassembled chunks of sound.
If this sounds like gibberish, it's a combination of your not having heard the changes I'm describing, and my struggle to describe them in a meaningful way.
You've gotta hear it for yourself.
I know you'll think I'm making this up at some point, but it's all true . . .
The Njoe Tjoeb 4000 would be an excellent choice at half your stipulated budget. When I bought the Cary 303 it was to replace a 4000 which was damaged in shipping. Having gotten used to the build quality on the CAL, the return to the tin can level of a Marantz base plus shipping damage inspired to go nuts. So I jumped several levels to the Cary.
It was built like an aircraft carrier, and sounded extremely impressive, but I don't know that it was more musically satisfying than the Njoe Tjoeb, which has well-built guts inside the tuna fish can exterior. I couldn't justify the additional expense for the satisfaction gained, so I sold it.
I bought the PD-65 and Audio Note DAC Kit 1.1, (used for about $800 combined), sight unseen, sound unheard, based on impressions of people whose ears I respect. The Pioneer has the stable platter transport, which was adopted by several high end co's for their mega$$ 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.