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CD player recommendation

Art K. said:
Nice write up. Always liked Marantz SACD playback and still am not fond of their redbook playback (never offensive but never exciting either). A little too much meat on the bones for me. Arcam has a very good hifi sound but always comes up short relative to the "realness" factor. That's why I have never owned one. I'm in love with Naim and Rega relative to redbook...and will give Marantz another listen. I did enjoy my CD63 many moons ago.
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For the "realness" factor (and we all know exactly what you mean), I'm happily discovering that my Musical Fidelity CDP scores high in that category, in some ways just nudging out the Naim. But the Naim is still better. :D
 
Mr. Lin said:
For the "realness" factor (and we all know exactly what you mean), I'm happily discovering that my Musical Fidelity CDP scores high in that category, in some ways just nudging out the Naim. But the Naim is still better. :D
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I know what you mean about the MF (having listened to a whole bunch of MF gear), however if you attend a lot of live music you will find, probably in a hurry, that the MF is just more hifi and the Naim is music...just sayin'.
 
I always thought my Marantz had a realness fator to it that I was very pleased with. It is so relaxing and musical. The redbook side of the player brought new life to every CD I owned.

I heve never had the opportunity to hear the Naim or Musical Fidelity players there are just no dealers here. The most we get are Marantz, Rotel and NAD althouh the NAD 515 has sparked my interest.

If I had to buy high end again I would probably go with the Rega Saturn based on hearsay alone! :thmbsp:
 
Thanks.... The duel didn't involve any SACD head to head as the arcam CD17 doesn't play SACD and the CD37 is just to expensive for me. The Marantz DAC's...beign 10 years old still hold up and the internal built quality is far superior but again the price gap speaks for this....heck the marantz remote alone with it being metal can be used as a weapon. :D

I am seeing if i can try a tube pre... I may go to a SS amp and try a SS pre or a passive pre and see what the results come out to be. I am looking at a Symmentry AC-1 crossover as described above as it has a variable crossover point as opposed to the RM-3 crossover by Beveridge as it is fixed at 200Hz unless i can find another card for it which after talking to Rick Beveridge said its gonna be hard. when he went under his landlord took everything from him. He lost everything except for his knowledge. He is still smart as a whip...

Back to the Arcam... its a very musical, life-like player....and if I never heard the Marantz I would be very satisified as its a great player but after hearing the Marantz you get that level of sound and never want to look back.

I don't know what the sonic difference are between the other Marantz SA series vut i know the first one...the SA-1 is an amazing player with no cost cutting in mind...hence the price and the weight for a 10 year old player.
 
Trust what you are hearing. That SA-1 is a keeper. If I had to I would buy the SA8003 all over again. Marantz has a name and they live up to it IMHO.
 
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I agree its a keeper. I am happy with it and just wanted to see if the grass was greener with something nwer and it wasn't.
 
I picked up about a month ago a Cary 303/100. Its a beefy 35 pound hunk of metal. Plays hdcd as well.

At first compared to the harmon cardon dvd player iwas using, i was surprised that the soundstage didnt seem as big, but from all the reviews i had read they made a point of saying that this players magic is playing whats on the cd with as little euphony as possible.

A month later, last night actually, i popped in Neil youngs prairie wind cd, which turned out to be hdcd, and heard the most realistic rendering of acoustic guitar i have ever heard. When the backup singers started to sing it filled up the soundstage beautifully.

Its a well built accuracy machine. Rather than punch you in the face by highlighting areas of interest, it instead rolls out refinement that you wont notice at first.

I love equipment that continues to surprise!
 
Art K. said:
I know what you mean about the MF (having listened to a whole bunch of MF gear), however if you attend a lot of live music you will find, probably in a hurry, that the MF is just more hifi and the Naim is music...just sayin'.
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Yes I totally agree, and this is going to seem to conflict with my last post, because I didn't word that one very well. I meant to say the MF seems to do instrumental timbre more realistically than the Naim, specifically in the area of micro-dynamics, like the "brassy" sound of a trumpet, or the resonance of the wood in a cello. However - and I recently updated my other thread comparing the three with this conclusion - in the end the Naim gives a more convincingly realistic presentation, one I would describe as organic, vague as that may be in regards to sound.

MeatInStereo, I think you wouldn't have to go too much higher in price for the grass to be greener with a newer CD player, even though the Arcam didn't quite make it. But it's probably simply not worth the trouble since you're so happy with the Marantz.
 
--@H@B--> said:
I picked up about a month ago a Cary 303/100. Its a beefy 35 pound hunk of metal. Plays hdcd as well.

At first compared to the harmon cardon dvd player iwas using, i was surprised that the soundstage didnt seem as big, but from all the reviews i had read they made a point of saying that this players magic is playing whats on the cd with as little euphony as possible.

A month later, last night actually, i popped in Neil youngs prairie wind cd, which turned out to be hdcd, and heard the most realistic rendering of acoustic guitar i have ever heard. When the backup singers started to sing it filled up the soundstage beautifully.

Its a well built accuracy machine. Rather than punch you in the face by highlighting areas of interest, it instead rolls out refinement that you wont notice at first.

I love equipment that continues to surprise!
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There's a Cary dealer near me and I've heard a lot of their gear, and it has never failed to impress. I briefly auditioned one of their CD players (CD-P1?) but didn't have the time to really dive into it. It sounded very nice, but it's so hard to tell on unfamiliar gear.
 
Don't know if I answered this thread yet...

4-6 months ago I bought a NAD C-515BEE CD (only) player and it's excellent. It sounds really wonderful.

I'm really glad I bought this unit.

So far...
 
Hey John,

I got a chance to hear the marantz you have in action. A friend from work has been trying to get me to come over and hear his rig. I show up, and he has 5 ft tall legacy audio speakers, 2 Vac mono blocks all tube, 75 watts a channel, a cary preamp, and the almighty marantz.

That was an impressive rig. He played some patricia barber sacd later in the evening. She was singing a doors tune. Man.......

Huge sound....:yes:
 
Speaking of SACD, has anyone else noticed that on hybrid SACDs the Red Book layer tends to be of higher than average quality? Maybe I'm just getting lucky. Man I wish I had a SACD player, and one that decodes HDCD, that would be sweet! It seems like not only is the SACD format not dying, in the niche market is kind of thriving.
 
MeatInStereo said:
Yeah SACD needs to make a come back as the format is def superior to a standard cut CD.
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Do you like classical music? The way I look at it, even if were suddenly to croak as a format tomorrow, there's a pretty substantial catalog of titles that have been released already. I get regular e-mails from Elusive Disc about new releases and there's almost always a whole section of new and upcoming SACD releases.
 
Yes I do...some of the best produced music to listen to on the Beveridges.

Not on SACd but should be....Jeff Beck Emotion and Comotion....BUY IT!!!! Some of the the best guitar ever....its a great test CD for your system.
 
Mr. Lin said:
Do you like classical music? The way I look at it, even if were suddenly to croak as a format tomorrow, there's a pretty substantial catalog of titles that have been released already. I get regular e-mails from Elusive Disc about new releases and there's almost always a whole section of new and upcoming SACD releases.
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I get those emails, too, and am going to start diving in, trying to educate myself on classical since that's about all the SACDs seem to be. I'm not complaining...I've been wanting to get more into it. There seems to be a prett decent selection, and the few SACDs I have suggest that it's a really promising format. The dynamic range can be really startling. Very quiet to LOUD in no time...with a dramatic difference in the range of CD and LP.
 
--@H@B--> said:
Hey John,

I got a chance to hear the marantz you have in action. A friend from work has been trying to get me to come over and hear his rig. I show up, and he has 5 ft tall legacy audio speakers, 2 Vac mono blocks all tube, 75 watts a channel, a cary preamp, and the almighty marantz.

That was an impressive rig. He played some patricia barber sacd later in the evening. She was singing a doors tune. Man.......

Huge sound....:yes:
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I'd love to compare it to the SA-1 being discussed, to hear how far or not that they've come. It seems to be a good comparison, staying with the same manufacturer.
 
JohnVF said:
I get those emails, too, and am going to start diving in, trying to educate myself on classical since that's about all the SACDs seem to be. I'm not complaining...I've been wanting to get more into it. There seems to be a prett decent selection, and the few SACDs I have suggest that it's a really promising format. The dynamic range can be really startling. Very quiet to LOUD in no time...with a dramatic difference in the range of CD and LP.
Click to expand...

Getting into classical music: highly rewarding, highly addictive. There's an endless amount of things out there to discover, once you figure out what type of classical you prefer. I strongly recommend reading a book that covers the basic history and all the most well-known composers. This one is fantastic and probably tripled my appreciation for this type of music, once I knew the history of what I was listening to:

http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Guide-Classical-Music/dp/0679728058/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282356950&sr=1-4
 
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