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Review 5 of 9
Price Paid:
$600.00
from India Summary:
I was looking forward to a lot of CD players in the market and settled for this almost an year old demo piece for the build & sound quality it showcased. Observing the pedegree of my setup, i drastically needed a mid-range player rather than those of the budgets offered by cambridge n rotel. I drew lot of the positive aspects that were coming in this box...
1. is the crystal DAC...CS4396. If you will see the Creek line of CD players, they all come with this DAC..and knowing the respect Creek has, i knew this was an excelllant DAC...better than the Wolfson Magic and Burr Browns. Only Marantz's latest high end SACD player comes with CS4397..so i knew the DAC was a good bet.
2. The build quality....when u r buying something like this u definitely expect it to sustain for a long time. I saw this CD player at my dealer for almost an year while i was scouting for a better cdp at my budget. There was no change in the cdp's performance...it could still read any dics in flat 3 seconds! it shows that the transport, the optics are all very precisely set.
3. Its the only player which is made in Japan along with Marantz's much expensive reference series. You can see the copper screws, the gold plated terminals, optical n coaxial outputs which also makes it the friendliest player today. No doubt, u can see the build quality, the weight of the player at almost 6 kgs and the platinum anodized facia...it indeed looks nothing less than a couple of grands worth.
4. .. the features it comes with. The best i see is the head phone! If u really wnt to hear that ur speakers or amp do not suck, use the headphone for picking up some notes in the song that u wnt to hear on ur fat tall speakers as well. Believe me it can shock a lot of people..i m happy though as mine are the B&Ws and they r no doubt the world's best. Period. Others like MP3, CD text, Non-finalized dics playability, pitch control and quick replay shows that its a serious audiophile player.
5. The grip on the CDs are so damn good that evn if u drop the player 3 inches before the ground, the CD either wont skip at all or evn if it does it will hardly be by 1-2 second.
6. Lastly but the most important...The Sound...let me tell u, all that harshness complaints that u hear is either because of an interconnect, speaker cable problem or ur amp itself....if u have a good 32 ohm headphone, try it out on the player directly n u'll hear no harshness...infact i fell in love with this player hearing the kind of detailing, life size soundstage, deep bass response and sweetness it produces with just that volume potentiometer. I m happy that my speakers arrived a couple of weeks late otherwise i wudnt have had the pleasure of knowing the capabilities of this player. Its very addictive...Something which rips n delivers so neutrally...u cant call it a harsh or a plum plum bass....bass is do damn good that u can do a one on one competition with Rotel or Cambridge's dual differential CDPs...this player simply sounds fantastic. I have heard the much much more expensive Musical Fidelity (seperate transport-DAC combo), next to it at the same dealer n i could not make out much of a difference, noticing that the MF was on a better platform of cables, pre-power amp combos and speakers. So, this player is a reassurance of a quality made audiophile grade mid range player that easily equlas MF, Arcam, Naim and Cyrus class of performance.
The sound is niether slow nor tend to skip with time....its accurate and very sophisticated. If u happen to hear the real class A high end equipment sound, then u will hear that this player sounds exactly the same.
I dont see any reason why people here are not satisfied...either they have never heard the good sound or they dont know what all cables and amps to use along with this guy....
with people complaining on the disc spinning sound...yes i do hear it at times when the disc is 75% completed....like it starts from song no. 7 on a 10 track 70 min disc....but more importantly i figured out that it happens with only few discs and not all of them...only dics which are not of good quality..quality in a sense the material is not distributed properly which makes the dics not centrifugally balanced...only such discs will create that sound..this is not distrubing for me though....infact u should be happy to know that the player transport is made very very precise...its a plus point.... Strengths:
Excellant soundstage, total detail n deep extended natural bass, audiophile feature rich player, excellant build quality, very durable and looks very very expensive, very precise transport, fast n quick in disc tracking.....plays any CD and with any amount of scratch on its surface...suberb timing and doesnot loose pace.....CD player and evn the discs never get warm or hot..... Weaknesses:
None at any pricepoint....one is the no-standby option for some folks....i think this is again a plus point as u remove a noise making digital circuit here....u can leave it ON for days non-stop....nothing will happen to it! Similar Products Used:
Marantz PM7200 KI series amp, B&W DM 603 S3, n a host of other leading brands...the list is never ending....in high end world they are all good n honest.....its ur taste n prefernce that rates them
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