Oh-kay. Dust is settling, I have a glass of very good, cheap Port, and it's time to get caught up where I'm at.
I think I'll cover things more or less chronologically.
Part 1: A reunion of sound.
When last we left off, I was enjoying my system with an additional set of the incomparable harman/kardon hk775s. Sadly, they moved on to their rightful owner, but he's better for it and I'm happy to have them off the workbench. I also had an event with my CD player, the Emotiva ERC-1. After nearly a year of solid, flawless service, it began skipping and not reading CD's. A quick trip back to Tennessee was the proscribed cure. In the meantime, I came across something of a familiar friend. At a pawnshop, here in town, sitting on the same shelf as the CD-player portion of an Awia shelf system and a Hello Kitty DVD player was a vintage jewel of a CD player, a Denon DCD-1520.
Some may recall that I consider my first "serious" CD player to be the Denon DCD-2560, donated to the cause by my good friend and gearhound doucanoe. The DCD-2560 was not the latest and greatest circa 2004-2006 when it was in regular use by me. There had been, purportedly, great advancements in digital technology to the point where it's four 20-bit DACs and 16x oversampling seemed a quaint anachronism. But, by-golly, it sure sounded right, and I've held Denon in high regard since then, at least as far as their CD players go. However, it was getting cranky, and while it worked most of the time, the times that it would act up were getting increasingly more numerous and it seemed sometimes that I was spending as much time changing between CD players as I was listening to music. In the meantime, a string of other very good CD players came along of various stripes and vintages (from older than the Denon to brand spanking new), but It really was the Denon they were being secretly judged against.
So, enter the DCD-1520. This was, at least in my book, a stupidly good deal. The unit, as it sat on the shelf, looked as though it had just then been removed from the box. It was completely free of any tell-tale fingerprints, dust, scratches or any other evidence that it had ever been used. Indeed, the only sign that it had not spent the last 24 years in a hermetically sealed box was the fact that it was missing a screw on the bottom cover and one on the back. Apparently, at some point quite recently, it had been brought in for service, most likely a new transport belt. Internally, it looked just as virgin, without a speck of dust on the optical lens and the grease still fresh on the sliding parts.
Slotting it into my system, I was immediately reminded of why I so loved the DCD-2560. The clarity and accuracy of the midrange. Strong, forceful, tuneful bass. Shimmering high-end with no sort of digital hash to either make things too edgy or, conversely, smooth things over too much. And this was from a unit that predated the DCD-2560 by some 6 years, and featured numerically inferior digital filters and DACs (though about equal build quality and strong analog section.
Part 2: The most analog digital amp I can imagine.
The day after Christmas, I had occasion to stop by MarkB's place. I wanted to drop-off (and share, perhaps?) a bottle of Bristol Cream and listen to some tunes, while baffling his girlfriend's little boys, if possible. As we sat sipping drinks with his co-worker Jerome, listening to various Bjork and The Doors CD's, I mentioned that, despite him living up here for a couple years, and despite his several offers, I still had not taken home his Yamaha MX-D1 amp to put through the crucible of audio that is my listening room. I took it home that night.
For those not in the know, the MX-D1 was Yamaha's flagship audiophile power amp circa 2002 or so. It was novel in that it was a class D "switching" amp that also used a SMPS (switch-mode power supply), resulting in a 500-WPC amp that was only about 2-inches thick and weighs not more than 25-lbs or so. That itself was not so novel, but the fact that it was not based on some Tripath or ICE chip was. The design was all proprietary and promised the possibility of superb analog performance.
I was, of course, skeptical of such a feat. Every class D amp I had heard regardless of lineage or cost more or less sounded the same to my ears and in my system. Admittedly, there had not been many, being limited to a JVC unit, a Bel Canto Design unit, and a couple other unmemorable "deck of cards" amps that were variations on the standard Tripath or ICE theme, some better looking, others better built, all with god-damned blue LED's.
I slotted the MX-D1 into my system and began listening critically immediately. I was not going to be nice to it. It was going to go through the wringer with the most devastating source material I had, and it was going to play into my near-dead-short speakers. I was astonished by what I heard. This was not a class-D amp as I knew them. This was, somehow or other a tube amp. Almost all of its sonic characteristics, at least in my system, mirrored those of a tube amp. Wonderfully fluid midrange, with a slightly out-of-focus quality. Solid, extended, but decidedly underdamped bass that laid down a warm and inviting foundation. The highend, while being very well extended, has a slight softness that bordered on the etherial. Imaging fell firmly into the "spooky good" category, with the ability to scale and layer the performance properly. Not as much depth as with the 775's, but better than most of what has passed through my system.
It also seemed to cope well with the challenging load presented by my speakers, with plenty of drive and clarity even at deafening levels, but, unlike the 775's which clip gracefully (if not a lot earlier), once the limits are reached, there is no more to be had and the amp does not seem to handle it well. I measured just shy of the stated 500-WPC into my speakers before there was audible (and visible) clipping. A tremendous amount of power, but, in uncanny fashion, I'm sure my speakers would have appreciated more.
So, as I hand back the amp tomorrow, I will be better for it. I still hold it as the exception among class D amps rather than the rule, but it is a damn fine amp, and for those who want the performance of tubes, but need the power of a really high-power solid-state amp, the MX-D1 seems to be the only game in town.
Part 3: See Part 1, plus one.. err, two!
Yesterday, while creating the Frankenstein monster of CD players, I was offered the opportunity to take home another CD player. I really was beginning to get the impression that I would become The Man with Two Brains, and was quite ready to say "no, thank you, really!" until I learned what the CD player was. Indeed, it was none other than the Denon DCD-3520, Denon's TOTL CD player contemporary to the DCD-1520 mentioned above. How could I say "no"?
In many ways, the DCD-3520 is the DCD-1520, just done on a grander scale. Separate audio and digital power supplies, cast and machined aluminum panels, fully balanced differential circuits, and copper-clad 40-lbs chassis complement the same 20-bit filters, BB PCM64P DACs (two of them), KSS-151A optical block, Sony processor and servo control, and so on. But, indeed, it is these very details that take an already very good CD player and take it to its ultimate realization. Despite possessing many of the same core components, the DCD-3520 provides noticeably better sound because those components now can operate without limits, without excuses, without compromise.
Sonically, as good as the DCD-1520 is, it was not good enough to displace the more confident sounding Emotiva ERC-1. The DCD-3520, on the other hand is good enough, and then some. I cannot recall, save for from LP/vinyl, such certainty of performance, such effortlessness and ease of sound from my system as with the DCD-3520. It's like being in the presence of a master electrician, who is weaving wire through the house and breaker box almost from muscle memory, someone who does not bother with the details of the execution because he already has the final outcome in sight. When music is played through this player, it simply leaves me with the impression that it could not have been performed any other way. The Emotiva would do it wrong. My old Cambridge Audio Azur 640c would do it wrong. By golly, even my old Denon DCD-2560 would do it wrong. How doesn't matter. Only the DCD-3520 can do it right, and now that I've heard it, why bother with the details. The final outcome is as it should be; there is nothing else to be said. Yes, it's that good! The only word that seems to work here is Confidence. This player possesses Confidence to a degree that I've only before heard in top-shelf vinyl setups.
Notes for the new year
And so, as the new year starts, I've taken a time warp back to the 1980's, as my whole setup, save for preamp and cart, now hail from some point in the 1980s. Really it makes me wonder about my long-standing bias against that decade. The decade that gave birth the the hk775's, the DCD-3520, and of course the real jewel of the era, me.