Another CD Player Comparison Post

There is another Chinese unit from East Sound that is well under $1000, and has been getting rave reviews from the source nuts on HeadFi.com

I went another diection, but I nearly pulled the trigger on the East Sound. Check it out....

I have heard the Apollo and the CD25.2. The Apollo was the better of the 2 to my ears. Having said that, I listened to them at 2 separate shops with different equipment. I did enjoy the sound of the Apollo more. It's the closest thing to vinyl I've heard.

I'm also intrigued by the Jolida, but have not had the opportunity to hear one.

of the units listed, i choose the jolida 100a (with mod 1 level) that will kill all the others listed. i owned the jolida and a few of the others mentioned, and when you change tubes to an amperex bugle boy, that machine will outshine many of the big-boys. i now own an ARC cd3 player that cost 5x the amount and i will say that the jolida was very close. cheers!!!!

I have said it before, but it is worth saying again: Even the first CD players sounded very good, and they have had over 20 years of development since then. The conclusion is that any CD player you buy is going to sound excellent, especially if it is >$200. Granted, there are very subtle differences, but no CDP is going to "blow away" any other.

Really? Complete wth scratches, dust noise, static pops, and warps?

Funny you mention that. I was cleaning some vinyl yesterday, so I decided to play a few cd's so I wouldn't have to get up and flip some vinyl every 20 minutes. When I got done I spun the vinyl I had just cleaned and can say without a doubt, I prefer vinyl to cd. Of course this is just IMO.

As far as warps and scratches are concerned. I don't buy vinyl that is warped or scratched. With a decent turntable, cart and phono-pre, static pops and noise should be minimal.

You forgot poor FR, dynamic range, etc

If CD sounds so fantastic, why do people bother with SACD and DVD-A?

Multi channel sound? A belief that higher sampling and more bits are better? Marketing?

Apperantly they don't,[both formats are "dead"] vinyl still outsells them both combined by 2:1, and people would pay more for I tunes downloads then vinyl sales for the last 5 years total.

How is this possible? I have not even seen a major store that sells vinyl records in at least 5 years (longer, I think), just a tiny handful of speciality shops. You are right about itunes, though, which is sad considering the apalling quality.

Mail order!
Music Direct and Accoustic sound sells 'ton's" of vinyl. Large cities also have some specialty shops, that mostly sells vinyl, not CDs. Having said that it's only a fraction of how many CDs being sold ,which makes DVD-A, SACD even less relevant.

So where did the statement "vinyl still outsells them both by 2:1" come from? Clearly CD and mp3 are the biggest sellers by a huge margin.

I think he is saying that SACD and DVD-A are not selling as well as vinyl, combined. I have no info on the validity of his stats

Bingo, it was reported in Stereophile awhile ago, and things were better back then.Now it maybe 3:1.

Have you made a choice yet? If not, two CDPs I am looking at myself are the Consonance CD-120 (there are two versions; an upsampling player and a "linear" - non-upsampling) which I heard in numerous rigs at the Vacuum Tube Valley show last month - and I was impressed. Also the Eastern Electric Minimax CDP has a tube output stage (with tubes placed so that tube rolling does not require you to open the case) and HDCD decoding. Reviews from users and web-sites have been positive for both of these players, which are in the $900-$1100 price range. If you have a serviceable transport with a digital output, you could also consider an outboard DAC. Brands I'd look into are April Music, Pacific Valve (which mods Lite DACs) and a few other boutique manufacturers - all priced under a grand.

I compared the Planet 2000 to the Arcam when I bought a few years back.

Despite being very impressed with the Rega I too went with Arcam. Have been happy ever since. Upgraded it to an 82 a couple of years ago.

Just to reiterate: Today's mass-market CD players for around $200 (or even less) reproduce the signal on the CD with a degree of accuracy that is already beyond what the human ear can distinguish. Spending more than that is a waste of $ as any "benefits" are pure placebo effect. It would be much better to spend the extra $ on speakers, as they make a real audible difference.

Or room treatment. www.auralex.com.

I spent a grand total of $80 on room treatments. (2 small rugs for the walls. 1 large rug for the floor, 4 oversize pillows for the corners.)

My two-channel setup uses stereo receiver which takes only analog inputs. Do you think the more expensive player with top-notch DAC does not help?

What I am saying is that the DAC in something like my $200 Onkyo changer is so good that any "improvement" over what it can do is beyond the ability of the human ear to detect. (Even the cheapest entry-level players today are better than the price-no-object models from a few years ago.)
People think they hear differences in sound quality when they are really hearing differences in expectation as a result of price and appearance. All you really get for lots of $ are looks and build quality. (Nothing wrong with that.)

Since a few months I own the Spark Cayin CDT-15A from China, it's quite cheap (from HK) and sounds fantastic- defeatable upsampling, choice between tubed and ss outputs, you name. Only difference with the more expensive CDT-23 is the latter has 24/192 oversampling instead of 24/96, but I prefer std sampling- mellower sound and better staging.

On the Esound:
Several buyers in Holland and Germany had transport issues, like drawer wouldn't open etc.
Sound was great though, par with the Cayin I'd say.

I have no doubt CD can sound fantastic, but a well-produced SACD/DVD-A can take it to a higher level. And I say this in context of 2 channel stereo playback.

Did you do some sort of test that an intensely rational person could agree with, or did you conclude that it sounds better because it "technically has better specs?"

Multichannel music is definitely a good reason to go with one of the new formats, but DSD isn't necessarily AUDIBLY better than CDs. The human ear/brain combination are not unlimited in resolution capability, so to decide that something actually sounds better you have to do three things:

1. Determine the threshold of audible distortion

2. Show that the distortion exceeds the audible threshold

3. Confirm it with a listening test with the minimum possible number of variables.

I.e. minimum number of senses in use (just your hearing, no sight), no level differences, same source recording, etc etc etc. This is not a conclusive list of the variables to eliminate, but they are some of the more important ones. This must be done so that cause and effect are properly attributed.

Once someone follows this procedure, I will trust the results whether they agree with what I've observed or whether they disagree.

This is more or less a direct application of the scientific method, I just kinda skipped the "make an observation/hypothesis" part because I know everyone here has already done that.

And I'll add that this methodology doesn't have to be rigorously used any time you make a purchase (as sound quality doesn't HAVE to be the only criteria you use to make a purchase decision). The important part is that step 2 of this would indicate that many "audible" differences are subconsciously fabricated based on non-audible cues like brand name and visual appearance.

I find that disagreements with "blind testing" seem to be a knee-jerk reaction caused by the conflict between people who "swear" they heard a difference and the people who suggested what they heard may have had nothing to do with their equipment at all. Testing without sight is simply an attempt to remove one variable from the process. To call this unscientific would be to lack an understanding of how science works at all.

I respectfully disagree.

While it is true most modern cheap CD players do a very decent job if compared to models manufactured 10 years ago, there's still a big chance that a $200 CD player can not compete against a more expensive CD player.

I mean, sonic improvements can still be noticeable if you compare my H/K FL 8385 CD changer (250 dollars) against my modified Rotel RCD 1072 CD player (1,100 dollars). Both players use the same Burr Brown DAC, BTW.

Nevertheless, I have challenged some friends to identify my Rotel against the Wadia 861, the Rega Planet, The Berensen CD or the Arcam Diva CD 73.

None has been able to tell the differences

My conclusion (based only on my limited experience) is that for the time being, many people can still differentiate a 200 CD player against a 1,500 CD player. But a 9,000 CD player is extremely difficult to differentiate if compared to a 1,500 CD player.