Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
YADA YADA YADA....Everyone is right...Its awesome...enough said....So many say that at this price point.....its hard to find a better player...I have to agree and disagree. Depends upon the tubes living within it. I think it would be hard to find a better sounding player at any price point. This is a recent epiphany for me having owned this unit for 5 years. Bought this unit off audiogon from an Australian living in Canada...hmmm go figure...it had Sovtek 6922 tubes in it at the time and sounded nice...with these tubes I knew other units might sound better..Got some RCA Jans from Kevin Deal...they're nice too. Having recently retubed my Sunfire Classic tube preamp with Amperex Bugle Boys...I was tickled pink with the B boys improving the Sonic performance of my sytem. Alright..thought I'd try some in this player.....OMG!!! WOW! NICE!!!!!!! The Bugle Boys in this unit are a sonic match made in heaven. Reallyreally. A couple of points tho on the unit I might address is that the players upsampler is a bit fragile. When you socket the pins into place, BE CAREFUL!
Also, I have replaced the upsampler twice now...this last time a pretty little penny.....is this player worth the occaisional upsampler swap? YOU BET! Kevins tubes are a bit pricey tho....I've found my Obewan / Tube Guru and am now getting some interconnects from Da Man...........RCA Analog Xhadows...can't wait!

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
Like many here, I upgraded from the Tjoeb 99.

That player was a sound bargain that is hard to match. The 4000 is a much better player. It starts with a better donor unit, it uses higher tech, it has several new tweaks that positively affect its presentation, and you can buy a very good upsampling unit that plugs in ahead of the tube output stage. I wouldn't use this as a preamp, since its volume control occurs in the digital realm and by cutting volume you are cutting resolution. I used my '99 quite successfully as its own preamp. But I have a bigger budget now, so I took the plunge a year ago.

There are a lot of transports out there now, and just about everybody gives you the opportunity to play cds in your dvd player and decode them in your processor. If it's really good, you may get great cd sound without having to buy a great cd player.

That's not what I use this for. It's in my office with a Musical Fidelity integrated amp and a pair of fully restored KEF 104/2 floorstanders, hooked together with competent cabling that is not out-of-this-world expensive. The system sounds really, really good. Remember there is less than 3000 bucks here. You can do a $3k office system in numerous ways, from simple like this to very elaborate. I find that the simple works great. I've always loved the top-to-bottom greatness of the best from KEF--and the 104/2 is their all-time best. I got these for $300 and got them restored for another $350. They sound like new and look very nice.

The MuFi does what MuFi does. It sounds great and provides enormous control, speed, punch and visceral slam. It is the most expensive part of the system and is worth it. I recommend you pair Ah! with any Musical Fidelity integrated amp. MuFi is reverent about tubes and its components play very nice with other tube gear.

The KEFs debuted at the height of the Marantz/Kenwood/Sansui mega-receiver wattage wars in the 1970s. They were a different breed then, when everybody was pumping JBL, Altec and Klipsch.

Compared to those hi-fi approaches, KEF is a lightweight--meaning champagne instead of beer. The big American speaker boys at Cerwin-Vega and the aforementioned companies would punch you in the gut. KEF could resolve complex musical passages in realistic ways and were not interested in blowing out your windows with overpowering amounts of bass.

There are speakers out there now that can destroy the sound of these KEFs, but you should see their price. Nothing in the $650 price point can compare. People think my stereo is an audiophile system. I tell them I'm an audiophile, but I can't afford audiophile gear, so this is what I have--and I really like it.

How many other $1k CD players are out there that can compete with the Tjoeb 4000? You know, I've looked. I don't think there are any. I've heard some mighty sweet sounds from CD players that would probably sound better than by 4000 in my system. But like speakers that can beat my KEFs, you should see the price. I haven't found anything--not ANYTHING--that can compete on the same price field as this player. I had that '99 for seven years and I'd still have it today if the transport hadn't started getting skippy and the display hadn't started wearing out.

In those seven years I looked for the budget player that would blow away my Tjoeb. There's quite a few tubed front end players coming from Chinese upstarts in the hi-fi world. Listened to some. They sound pretty good. But only their megabuck contenders could compare with my little Marantz-badged Tjoeb. So I stuck with it until I simply had to replace it. I didn't have my heart set on the 4000. I would have bought any player that sounded the best for my budget.

After about a year of searching, I settled on the 4000, and now, these many months later, I'm glad I did. If you like liquid midrange and non-fatiguing sound without the crazy price, here's your player. I'd say look for it in the used market, but that's a fantasy. Go to upscale audio and buy your own.

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
If possible, and if time permits, I'd like to thread 4 yellow rubberrings around my husbands erect manhood and walk naked through the streets of an high-income neighbourhood. In summer of course, or else the rubberrings might fall off.

Price Paid:  $0.00 from second hand

Summary:
Finally a new review of this great product! I was lucky to buy this Tjoeb for a very nice price, especially since it wasn't used that much cause the former owner used to listen more to his recordplayer. Thats why it was still in unmodified condition when i bought it, apart from the nice tjoeb-shoes.

First i've listened to it at my brothers place in combination with a Sony TA3ES amplifier, Cardas crosslink interlink, Tannoy R2 loudspeakers and Kimber 4TC loudspeaker cable.
Here it was already much better in all areas than the Sony 505ES it replaced. The main thing that i notiched was that the music was much more alive with a greater soundstage en depth and a clearer seperation of sounds and instuments. Also basscontrol improved a lot and sounded tighter.
After a couple of weeks i bought a new pair of NOS Philips E88cc goldpins.(Heerlen, Holand 1964 production, O-getter, for the freaks)
Now things really improved to another level! The hights and the mids became much more detailled but never bright or harsh. The soundstage was even deeper now with even more separation between instruments and sounds. It was a bit like as if the true nature of the player was reveiled from behind a thick, dark coloured curtain! It easily outperforms my heavily modified 1994 Creek CD60.

What i like a lot about the Tjoeb is the concept of using a good basic CD-player with a very good mechanism, the VAM 1204, also used in marantz own CD14, and change all the parts wich have a big influence on the soundquality. Things like the complete analogue outputstage, the powersupply, the mutingcircuit and the clock/crystal are all changed for new and better parts. The only thing the Tjoeb has in common with the original Marantz CD4000 is the outer case, the remotecontrol and the cd-mechanism. Due to this concept an excellent player can be delivered for a very reasonable price.

Every Tjoeb owner should change the very poor sounding original Jan Philips ECG88 tubes for something better or you'll miss a lot of the sonic qualities of the player! So if you own a Tjoeb and still use the Jan Philips tubes, go find a matched pair of nice(New Old Stock) tubes. BUT be careful with the expensive, much praised Siemens E288CC tubes! They sound quite bright in the Tjoeb 4000, and like a lot of the Siemens-Halske tubes, they are not as good as often said and certainly not everybodies taste. Try Amperex, Philips SQ and Miniwatt or Mullard.(Ecc88,E88ccE188cc,6DJ8,6922,7308 types). Even the Sovteks can be nice.

The same can be said of the standard opamp which still is in place in my Tjoeb. This Opa 604 from BurrBrown is proven by a dutch audio-engineer to be one of the worse sounding opamps used in audio-gear,oeps! The more expensive BB opa 627 is much better. Hope to change mine for something better very soon! Changing the opamp is very easy cause its placed in a socket. This is not an option when your Tjoeb has the upsamplerboard or you have plans buying one in the future cause the upsampler uses the sockets of standard opamps and has its own dedicated opamp.

Strengths:
Marvelous value for money. Very lively, natural sound with a great sense of space. Upgradebility

Weaknesses:
Soundquality depending on used tubes and opamps, Upsampler is a bit expensive.

Similar Products Used:
Sony CDP505Es, modified Creek CD60, Arcam CD72, Marantz CD5000

My system; Sony TA3ES amplifier/Musical fidelity A1, Dynaudio Contour 1.1 with Ocos cable, QED Qunex2 interconnect

Price Paid:  $650.00 from Upscale Audio

Summary:
I purchased the Ah Njoe Tjoeb 4000 largely because of the high praise it recieves from users on several sites. Over time I have grown to appreciate the subtlety that tubes can provide. It is a fact that tubed equipment can give additional headaches but they provide opportunities to contour the sound for a sort of easy mod too. The Ah Njoe Tjoeb is already a hot rodded commercial player, but with upsamplers, tubes, op-amps etc., the player becomes an audiophile's haven for tweakdom. I have done little to the player, but I have come to appreciate its qualities so much that during a period when the player broke, I found that I could not return to my Sony ES CD player because the sound seemed so lifeless and dull compared to the Ah. The Ah is not short on bass , detail nor extention. However the player does seem to take quite a while to open up when new. The final result for me has been that the Ah is involving, smooth, and detailed, and has punch or slam. It is quite a bargain as audiophile products go, and now has received such wide aclaim that even Stereophile mag has it as a recommended component. It's reputation is well deserved. I tried the original Marantz player on which the Ah is based and let me say that I found the original flat. The evolved Ah is nothing like a stock unit and has led me into learning to hear more as I have spent time with it.

Now, Upscale Audio and Kevin Deal are as pleasant to deal with as the the Ah is to own. As I said I did have a problem with the player after the warrantee expired. Kevin treated me as if I paid a few grand for the player. He sent me components to try out so that I could swap them out in order to diagnose the problem. The cost is much less than it would be to send the unit and pay for labor and shipping and insurance. The price I paid to fix my own unit was so little that it was laughable. Big cudos to Kevin, and many thanks.

Strengths:
Detail, delicacy, slam, smoothness, involvement and better than average soundstage.

Weaknesses:
Poor display.. flimsy chassis. (Needs ropecaulk and deadening panels.. easy to do.)

Similar Products Used:
Just other Cd players. Most of them in the under $1,000 range are not anything to rejoice about.