Mr. Lin
Lunatic Member
I've been planning to do this for a while but just haven't had the time, but even now, I think I'll focus on the main points so as not to bore you to death. Here goes:
In the past year and a half I've acquired three excellent "performance" CD players. I chose them based on reviews, company philosophy, reputation, and design of the specific model, and out of curiosity as well. I prefer integrated CD players at this point as I don't have the money to buy the DAC and transport I'd really like to own.
These are the CDPs in question, in the order I bought them, first to last:
1. Jolida 100 (tube output)
2. Musical Fidelity A3.5
3. Naim CD5i-2
Let's start with the Jolida. This is a model I'd been curious about for years, and nearly every review I read on the internet was positive, so I had no reservations about getting one. I bought it new. Do to the accessible way it's designed, an amateur DIYer like myself is able to perform some basic upgrades. In short, I replaced the RCA sockets with a Furutech version, replaced all the wiring from RCA sockets to circuit board, dampened the chassis and a number of electrolytic capacitors in the power supply, and installed two Hi-Fi News Silver Star fuses. Pictures and more details are in my previous review of the 100 here:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=271384&highlight=jolida
Oh, and I did some tube rolling with my collection of awesome NOS tubes, and found the 5751 type most pleasing.
Apart from comparing it to the other CD players, I won't say too much more about the Jolida here since I've already written a review of it.
An impulse buy proves fruitful, for once
I moved about four months back. Just prior to the move I thought to myself, If I'm going to have two separate rooms for audio systems, I can't NOT have another CD player. Otherwise I'd have to lug the Jolida back and forth, and who wants to deal with that kind of hassle? So onto Audiogon I went. My bid for an Arcam CD92 failed, then I came across the Musical Fidelity A3.5, which was within my budget. I knew nothing about it, but I certainly liked the looks of it, reviews were promising, the company is highly reputable and established, and the retail price was twice that of the Jolida. I know some people say cost means nothing in hi-fi audio, but my experience has been just about the opposite of that. You get what you pay for.
The A3.5 is in the first picture below. It's an upsampling CD player, an approach to CD playback that MF is a proponent of (some are not). I expected the A3.5 to out-perform the Jolida in one way or another, and it was immediately clear that it did.
This is what I heard:
The first disc I played was one of Haydn's string quartets on the Tacet label. I'd been listening to these over and over again in the past few months, but when played back on the MF there was greater timbrel accuracy, or harmonic color. The strings were a good indicator of this, I could hear the texture of the strings and the micro-dynamics that make them sound closer to the real thing. This made the sound a bit more raw, but not really in a bad way, perhaps more a sober way (that doesn't sound enticing either but it's a positive comment). I'll clarify this in a moment.
What else did I notice? For one thing, and this was in line with a number of reviews I read, the sound stage was much smaller than it was with the Jolida. The players sounded like they were in a tighter space, and the presentation was a bit darker, and a little warm. Highs are softened; in fact, one of the first things I noticed when the string quartet began was a distinct lack of harshness, like sibilance but from the instruments, not a voice - this harshness at the top end was present with the 100, but absent with the A3.5. A tube unit sounding slightly hotter on the top end than a solid state one, who'd have though? :scratch2: I attribute this "softening" to the upsampling. It makes lesser quality recordings more listenable, at the slight expense of a sense of quickness, or PRAT.
So back to the sobriety comment. What was that about? I believe it was a Six Moons review of the Jolida unit in which the author used the word "intoxicating" to describe the sound of the 100. This is one way to put it. The sound of the Jolida CDP is big, lush, airy, with a wide sound stage and three-dimensional imaging. By comparison the A3.5 is, well I just explained that above, but by "sober" I meant that the Musical Fidelity CDP is probably closer to reality (the reality of the source recording, that is) than the Jolida. I suspect most people would prefer the more exciting presentation of the Jolida, but I actually prefer the A3.5, just a bit. I'm huge on instrument texture and that's what the A3.5 really delivers, which makes it particularly strong with classical music. There's also more detail than one gets with the Jolida, which is no slouch in that category either. It's a close call, I'm glad to have both and won't sell either any time soon.
I wonder, though, if I removed all the upgrades to the Jolida, how much farther apart would the two be? Because I have to say, the RCA socket upgrade alone yielded a very noticeable improvement in transparency.
The Naim of the Game
And now comes - as they sometimes say - the game changer. With two fantastic CD players in my possession I figured I wouldn't need to buy another one for a long time. After reading some reviews and doing some research I began to seriously lust after a Naim CD player. Some day, I promised myself. Then the planets aligned and one came up used on Audiogon for the right price, when I had the money, and I pulled the trigger, feeling slightly guilty as I did, and wondering if I'd made a mistake. The CD5i-2 is, after all, the direct competitor of the A3.5. Perhaps the two would be so similar I'd regret my decision to buy yet another CD player.
Well those concerns were wiped away in the first minutes of listening to the Naim.
If you know anything about Naim as a brand, it's probably their reputation for a house sound that does timing very well, which results in a quick, lively sound. Naim claims much of this comes from paying a lot of attention to the power supply. More on that shortly. What you get with the CD5i-2 is a more up front, or forward presentation. You're closer to the action, in other words. Quite different from the A3.5. In my opinion, this characteristic brings everything to life in a big way. The music is more exciting, you feel more involved. Is there a bigger compliment than that? Maybe, but that's a big one.
As for the pace and timing thing, it's all true, and your foot will be a tappin', trust me. You can really hear this with percussion and bass lines. Transient response is fast and clean, there's no blurring whatsoever, and this makes the beat and rhythm sound more realistic and enticing, which we know of course to be vitally important.
There's plenty of detail, but this is one area where the A3.5 and the Naim are actually pretty much even.
Tone colors? I'd say the Naim is again right on par with the A3.5, and you'll recall I believe this is one of the latter's strong suites, but with the Naim there's something hard to describe that gives it an edge in instrumental texture. I think it has to do with the more open, clear presentation of the Naim, as opposed to the the darker, more closed in sound of the A3.5 (which sound much worse than it really is).
As for sound stage and imaging, the width is somewhere in between the rather extreme cases of the Jolida and the MF, and therefore probably closer to reality than either. The sound is big and wide enough, but not to the point where you're questioning how true-to-life the reproduction of the source recording is. Imaging is very strong, with players and instruments positioned precisely and clearly, with the sought-after "air" and "space" around individuals. In this regard I can imagine better, but it's still among the best imaging I've heard, falling short only when compared to my best analog setup.
I've been doing a lot of listening through headphones lately, but not long ago I did a direct comparison between the Naim and Musical Fidelity players through my secondary system, using normal speakers. When the Naim was dropped into place all the things I've described above breathed life into the music, plus something else I haven't yet noted. This CD player seems to have an iron grip on the music, so much control and tautness, it never sounds overwhelmed or disorganized even when challenged. In the end, I had a more emotional connection to the music when it was played back on the Naim.
What's in a Naim?
Good question, thank you for asking. Take a look at the last two pictures below. When I opened up the CD5i-2 I was quite surprised at the size of the toroidal transformer inside. The one in the A3.5 is literally half that size, and the Jolida uses two smaller stacked iron transformers. Which is the "best" approach for technical reasons, I'm not really qualified to tell you. But as I said before, Naim focuses a lot on the power supply, so I'm assuming, based on the resultant sound, that they're correct in doing so. Look at the Black Gate electrolytics, they're pretty hefty too.
Now there's one more thing about this CD player that I really like, but haven't mentioned yet. That would be the CD drawer, which actually houses the transport. If you take a look at the picture in my signature you can see how it works. You manually pull the drawer out, which swings to the right, then you place the CD on the "tray," and finally place a magnetic puck over the center of the CD, which holds it in place. I don't like flimsy drawers, they really irritate me. While the Jolida and MF drawers aren't exactly flimsy, they're typical plastic drawers that don't inspire the kind of confidence one gets upon seeing and especially touching the one in the Naim. It's some sort of glass-impregnated material, it feels solid and dense, it feels like high quality, no question. And I personally find the ritual of manually loading the CD enjoyable and more involving.
While I do enjoy CD player "rolling" (oh how ridiculous I've become ), on most nights the Naim is in use, and there's absolutely no contest when it comes to which is my favorite, the CD5i-2 is more than a step above both the others. In fact, it's now one of, if not the most cherished of my audio components. I fully intend to go up to the next level, the CD5X, at some point in the future (like next week - no just kidding), which has the additional benefit of optional separate power supplies, which supposedly make quite an improvement.
The close-up, colorful (not colored), and exciting sound of the Naim really does bring the music to life to my ears. And I know I've already said that but it should be repeated in the summation.
Good Looks Can Get You...
Ok, so you couldn't care less about how your gear looks, as long as it performs well. Fair enough. But I'm a visually-oriented person nearly as much as I am an auditory-oriented one. Who's the winner here?
Of the three, although it's neat, clean, and has a look of general quality, the Jolida is my least favorite. The Naim, though I really do like the green on black theme and the way the drawer looks when swung out, falls just behind the A3.5. It's the bluish purple display on the MF CDP that floats my boat. It's a simple thing, but I find it very attractive with the white characters on top.
How about the remotes? They're very important too IMO. Here I have to take my hat off (even though I'm not wearing one
) to Jolida; the 100 comes with a heavy metal (not Iron Maiden) remote with metal buttons. It's heavy, it's probably nearly indestructible, and it's easy to use. Plus I feel like royalty when I handle it. In second place is the Naim's remote. This simple design is not exactly what I'd call intuitive, and I've read some complaints about the idiosyncratic nature of the buttons, but you get used to it. For example, when you press pause during playback, you have to press pause again to continue. If you press play instead, it starts the track over. Interesting. A large, circular pad has arrows for going forward and backward with tracks, and this is what I like most about this remote: almost analogous to the sound of the CD player, one feels like there's total and instant control while changing tracks, there's no lag here. You press, it goes, instantly. On the other hand we have the Musical Fidelity remote, which, while not necessarily bad, is a little annoying. Long buttons on the bottom are used for primary CD playback (this remote is used with other MF models), and what bothers me is how narrow the field is for the remote to communicate with the CDP. I often have to aim it over and/or around things. With the Naim and Jolida remotes, well, they seem to go through walls.
All's Well That Ends...
No it's not over. The review is, but not my journey into the heights of digital playback, which has become something quite good in the last ten years or so. I should note that I also own an original Rega Planet, which has since kicked the bucket. It was my first "good" CD player, and it opened my eyes to the possibilities of normal CD playback. As it turns out, they can sound great!
I will eventually move on to something else. It's not a manifestation of some deep unhappiness or inability to stay focused on and enjoy what I have. Believe me, I'm enjoying it, like crazy. All the time, effort, and money brings you closer to the music, which is the entire point. As we all know, there are many different ways to get there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
They (whoever they are) say the CD is dead, or dying at least. In any case, it's terminally ill, the prognosis is not good. Musical servers and digital files are in, and they're the wave of the future. For me, however, the vast library of CDs I currently have and am expanding upon nearly every day makes it well-worth spending money on CD players. And since they do eventually die, I figure it's a good idea to have a few around. I have to tell you though, I think I've found my brand, at least for digital playback, and it is - you guessed it - Naim. I'm not sure I'll buy anything else in CD players from now on. Maybe, but my priority will be a higher Naim model above all else. It just works for me, I look forward to using it every day.
If you're still reading you need to get a life (just kidding, and like I should talk anyway ). I thank you for your attention and would like to hear your comments and even questions.
It's good to get all this off my chest.
Please Note: As it's now after midnight, I have to work tomorrow, and I'm tired from typing all this, I won't be editing it just yet. In the meantime, please excuse any typos, etc, that you encounter.
In the past year and a half I've acquired three excellent "performance" CD players. I chose them based on reviews, company philosophy, reputation, and design of the specific model, and out of curiosity as well. I prefer integrated CD players at this point as I don't have the money to buy the DAC and transport I'd really like to own.
These are the CDPs in question, in the order I bought them, first to last:
1. Jolida 100 (tube output)
2. Musical Fidelity A3.5
3. Naim CD5i-2
Let's start with the Jolida. This is a model I'd been curious about for years, and nearly every review I read on the internet was positive, so I had no reservations about getting one. I bought it new. Do to the accessible way it's designed, an amateur DIYer like myself is able to perform some basic upgrades. In short, I replaced the RCA sockets with a Furutech version, replaced all the wiring from RCA sockets to circuit board, dampened the chassis and a number of electrolytic capacitors in the power supply, and installed two Hi-Fi News Silver Star fuses. Pictures and more details are in my previous review of the 100 here:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=271384&highlight=jolida
Oh, and I did some tube rolling with my collection of awesome NOS tubes, and found the 5751 type most pleasing.
Apart from comparing it to the other CD players, I won't say too much more about the Jolida here since I've already written a review of it.
An impulse buy proves fruitful, for once
I moved about four months back. Just prior to the move I thought to myself, If I'm going to have two separate rooms for audio systems, I can't NOT have another CD player.
Otherwise I'd have to lug the Jolida back and forth, and who wants to deal with that kind of hassle? So onto Audiogon I went. My bid for an Arcam CD92 failed, then I came across the Musical Fidelity A3.5, which was within my budget. I knew nothing about it, but I certainly liked the looks of it, reviews were promising, the company is highly reputable and established, and the retail price was twice that of the Jolida. I know some people say cost means nothing in hi-fi audio, but my experience has been just about the opposite of that. You get what you pay for.The A3.5 is in the first picture below. It's an upsampling CD player, an approach to CD playback that MF is a proponent of (some are not). I expected the A3.5 to out-perform the Jolida in one way or another, and it was immediately clear that it did.
This is what I heard:
The first disc I played was one of Haydn's string quartets on the Tacet label. I'd been listening to these over and over again in the past few months, but when played back on the MF there was greater timbrel accuracy, or harmonic color. The strings were a good indicator of this, I could hear the texture of the strings and the micro-dynamics that make them sound closer to the real thing. This made the sound a bit more raw, but not really in a bad way, perhaps more a sober way (that doesn't sound enticing either but it's a positive comment). I'll clarify this in a moment.
What else did I notice? For one thing, and this was in line with a number of reviews I read, the sound stage was much smaller than it was with the Jolida. The players sounded like they were in a tighter space, and the presentation was a bit darker, and a little warm. Highs are softened; in fact, one of the first things I noticed when the string quartet began was a distinct lack of harshness, like sibilance but from the instruments, not a voice - this harshness at the top end was present with the 100, but absent with the A3.5. A tube unit sounding slightly hotter on the top end than a solid state one, who'd have though? :scratch2: I attribute this "softening" to the upsampling. It makes lesser quality recordings more listenable, at the slight expense of a sense of quickness, or PRAT.
So back to the sobriety comment. What was that about? I believe it was a Six Moons review of the Jolida unit in which the author used the word "intoxicating" to describe the sound of the 100. This is one way to put it. The sound of the Jolida CDP is big, lush, airy, with a wide sound stage and three-dimensional imaging. By comparison the A3.5 is, well I just explained that above, but by "sober" I meant that the Musical Fidelity CDP is probably closer to reality (the reality of the source recording, that is) than the Jolida. I suspect most people would prefer the more exciting presentation of the Jolida, but I actually prefer the A3.5, just a bit. I'm huge on instrument texture and that's what the A3.5 really delivers, which makes it particularly strong with classical music. There's also more detail than one gets with the Jolida, which is no slouch in that category either. It's a close call, I'm glad to have both and won't sell either any time soon.
I wonder, though, if I removed all the upgrades to the Jolida, how much farther apart would the two be? Because I have to say, the RCA socket upgrade alone yielded a very noticeable improvement in transparency.
The Naim of the Game
And now comes - as they sometimes say - the game changer. With two fantastic CD players in my possession I figured I wouldn't need to buy another one for a long time. After reading some reviews and doing some research I began to seriously lust after a Naim CD player. Some day, I promised myself. Then the planets aligned and one came up used on Audiogon for the right price, when I had the money, and I pulled the trigger, feeling slightly guilty as I did, and wondering if I'd made a mistake. The CD5i-2 is, after all, the direct competitor of the A3.5. Perhaps the two would be so similar I'd regret my decision to buy yet another CD player.
Well those concerns were wiped away in the first minutes of listening to the Naim.
If you know anything about Naim as a brand, it's probably their reputation for a house sound that does timing very well, which results in a quick, lively sound. Naim claims much of this comes from paying a lot of attention to the power supply. More on that shortly. What you get with the CD5i-2 is a more up front, or forward presentation. You're closer to the action, in other words. Quite different from the A3.5. In my opinion, this characteristic brings everything to life in a big way. The music is more exciting, you feel more involved. Is there a bigger compliment than that? Maybe, but that's a big one.
As for the pace and timing thing, it's all true, and your foot will be a tappin', trust me. You can really hear this with percussion and bass lines. Transient response is fast and clean, there's no blurring whatsoever, and this makes the beat and rhythm sound more realistic and enticing, which we know of course to be vitally important.
There's plenty of detail, but this is one area where the A3.5 and the Naim are actually pretty much even.
Tone colors? I'd say the Naim is again right on par with the A3.5, and you'll recall I believe this is one of the latter's strong suites, but with the Naim there's something hard to describe that gives it an edge in instrumental texture. I think it has to do with the more open, clear presentation of the Naim, as opposed to the the darker, more closed in sound of the A3.5 (which sound much worse than it really is).
As for sound stage and imaging, the width is somewhere in between the rather extreme cases of the Jolida and the MF, and therefore probably closer to reality than either. The sound is big and wide enough, but not to the point where you're questioning how true-to-life the reproduction of the source recording is. Imaging is very strong, with players and instruments positioned precisely and clearly, with the sought-after "air" and "space" around individuals. In this regard I can imagine better, but it's still among the best imaging I've heard, falling short only when compared to my best analog setup.
I've been doing a lot of listening through headphones lately, but not long ago I did a direct comparison between the Naim and Musical Fidelity players through my secondary system, using normal speakers. When the Naim was dropped into place all the things I've described above breathed life into the music, plus something else I haven't yet noted. This CD player seems to have an iron grip on the music, so much control and tautness, it never sounds overwhelmed or disorganized even when challenged. In the end, I had a more emotional connection to the music when it was played back on the Naim.
What's in a Naim?
Good question, thank you for asking. Take a look at the last two pictures below. When I opened up the CD5i-2 I was quite surprised at the size of the toroidal transformer inside. The one in the A3.5 is literally half that size, and the Jolida uses two smaller stacked iron transformers. Which is the "best" approach for technical reasons, I'm not really qualified to tell you. But as I said before, Naim focuses a lot on the power supply, so I'm assuming, based on the resultant sound, that they're correct in doing so. Look at the Black Gate electrolytics, they're pretty hefty too.
Now there's one more thing about this CD player that I really like, but haven't mentioned yet. That would be the CD drawer, which actually houses the transport. If you take a look at the picture in my signature you can see how it works. You manually pull the drawer out, which swings to the right, then you place the CD on the "tray," and finally place a magnetic puck over the center of the CD, which holds it in place. I don't like flimsy drawers, they really irritate me. While the Jolida and MF drawers aren't exactly flimsy, they're typical plastic drawers that don't inspire the kind of confidence one gets upon seeing and especially touching the one in the Naim. It's some sort of glass-impregnated material, it feels solid and dense, it feels like high quality, no question. And I personally find the ritual of manually loading the CD enjoyable and more involving.
While I do enjoy CD player "rolling" (oh how ridiculous I've become
), on most nights the Naim is in use, and there's absolutely no contest when it comes to which is my favorite, the CD5i-2 is more than a step above both the others. In fact, it's now one of, if not the most cherished of my audio components. I fully intend to go up to the next level, the CD5X, at some point in the future (like next week - no just kidding), which has the additional benefit of optional separate power supplies, which supposedly make quite an improvement. The close-up, colorful (not colored), and exciting sound of the Naim really does bring the music to life to my ears. And I know I've already said that but it should be repeated in the summation.
Good Looks Can Get You...
Ok, so you couldn't care less about how your gear looks, as long as it performs well. Fair enough. But I'm a visually-oriented person nearly as much as I am an auditory-oriented one. Who's the winner here?
Of the three, although it's neat, clean, and has a look of general quality, the Jolida is my least favorite. The Naim, though I really do like the green on black theme and the way the drawer looks when swung out, falls just behind the A3.5. It's the bluish purple display on the MF CDP that floats my boat. It's a simple thing, but I find it very attractive with the white characters on top.
How about the remotes? They're very important too IMO. Here I have to take my hat off (even though I'm not wearing one
) to Jolida; the 100 comes with a heavy metal (not Iron Maiden) remote with metal buttons. It's heavy, it's probably nearly indestructible, and it's easy to use. Plus I feel like royalty when I handle it. In second place is the Naim's remote. This simple design is not exactly what I'd call intuitive, and I've read some complaints about the idiosyncratic nature of the buttons, but you get used to it. For example, when you press pause during playback, you have to press pause again to continue. If you press play instead, it starts the track over. Interesting. A large, circular pad has arrows for going forward and backward with tracks, and this is what I like most about this remote: almost analogous to the sound of the CD player, one feels like there's total and instant control while changing tracks, there's no lag here. You press, it goes, instantly. On the other hand we have the Musical Fidelity remote, which, while not necessarily bad, is a little annoying. Long buttons on the bottom are used for primary CD playback (this remote is used with other MF models), and what bothers me is how narrow the field is for the remote to communicate with the CDP. I often have to aim it over and/or around things. With the Naim and Jolida remotes, well, they seem to go through walls. All's Well That Ends...
No it's not over. The review is, but not my journey into the heights of digital playback, which has become something quite good in the last ten years or so. I should note that I also own an original Rega Planet, which has since kicked the bucket. It was my first "good" CD player, and it opened my eyes to the possibilities of normal CD playback. As it turns out, they can sound great!
I will eventually move on to something else. It's not a manifestation of some deep unhappiness or inability to stay focused on and enjoy what I have. Believe me, I'm enjoying it, like crazy. All the time, effort, and money brings you closer to the music, which is the entire point. As we all know, there are many different ways to get there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
They (whoever they are) say the CD is dead, or dying at least. In any case, it's terminally ill, the prognosis is not good. Musical servers and digital files are in, and they're the wave of the future. For me, however, the vast library of CDs I currently have and am expanding upon nearly every day makes it well-worth spending money on CD players. And since they do eventually die, I figure it's a good idea to have a few around. I have to tell you though, I think I've found my brand, at least for digital playback, and it is - you guessed it - Naim. I'm not sure I'll buy anything else in CD players from now on. Maybe, but my priority will be a higher Naim model above all else. It just works for me, I look forward to using it every day.
If you're still reading you need to get a life (just kidding, and like I should talk anyway
). I thank you for your attention and would like to hear your comments and even questions. It's good to get all this off my chest.
Please Note: As it's now after midnight, I have to work tomorrow, and I'm tired from typing all this, I won't be editing it just yet. In the meantime, please excuse any typos, etc, that you encounter.
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