Art Dudley compares CD Players


In the current issue of Stereophile, Art Dudley compares the Metronome Kalistra DreamPlay One CDP, a 2 part unit that weighs 85 pound and, costs $43,000, to his standard , which is a  Sony SCD-777 SACD/CD player that is 17 years old.  His not so surprising conclusion is that  the newer and Uber expensive player sounds better playing redbook CD.
  Apparently Dudley is unaware that 17 years is an eternity in Digital Audio, that a good share of people who own CDPs are likely to be using them as transports into moderately priced but high performing DACs, and finally thatmost digital replay now consists of file based content from either PCs or purpose built renders.  Perhaps comparing a $43,000 CDP to a modern CDP, transport-DAC combination, or Music Server might of have been of more use to the majority of readers.
  Don’t these magazines have Editors?  Or if John Atkinson to busy tying himself up in knots trying to explain why MQA is necessary for us all, when his own magazine reports a trial from McGill (see Jim Austin ‘s column on p.13) that MQA failed to be perceived as an improvement in blind listening tests.
mahler123
Glad I am not alone!!! I follow AD writings since his Listener days and this is the first time that he made me cringe. I think he warned us from the start: "As I write this <<the 3rd sentence for the article>>, my copy deadline is three days away,..."
To be fair, at the end he did compare Kalista to his memory of Naim Audio CD555... Wish I had such skills, these last few months I torture myself trying to choose between CD555's little brother, CDS3, and Wadia 781i, and its tough! To do this from the memory? Wow!!!
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Reading Art Dudley reviews of cd players is a total waste of time. He’ll give a cd player a great review and then in the next issue he’ll write in his column about how lousy cds sound. 

I guess the people at Stereophile think that we can’t remember what they say from month to month.
@tomcy6 
My point exactly.  He’s a hypocritical idiot.  And if they want to meaningfully review digital product, don’t assign it to Dudley or Fremer
Well said!!! AD and Mikey are the reason I subscribe to Stereophile nowadays, but if your reference point in digital is sooo outdated, just let it go, not "beg for a review sample" 
I still (want to) believe that someone else wrote that whole nonsense for AD... "Exotic Beauty" for this contraption, and coming from someone with AN "ugliness" in his main-rig???!!! Something is not right here!!!
@tomcy6 I kinda get the idea of thrashing all and any digital compared to vinyl (which in my system and to my ears gets me the best sound), but here we got a few pages of paid ad!!
As far as digital is concerned, that $43,000 Kalistra DreamPlay will be nothing more than an uber expensive boat anchor in 3 or 4 years. Digital changes like the wind.
sevs, If someone prefers vinyl to digital, that’s fine. If a professional reviewer describes in detail how great cds sound on the player he’s reviewing and then states elsewhere that he doesn’t like the sound of cds, that’s dishonest.
I really like AD and his writing style but I never understood why he uses the Sony SCD 777ES in his reviews. This cdp was surpassed in quality at least a decade ago by most of the similarly priced players on the market. 
He uses a 17 year old CDP because he doesn’t give a crap about digital. He decided years ago that it all sounds bad.
He is therefore surprised that digital can sound good.  He doesn’t seem to realize that between a 17 year old player that now goes for $100 second hand and the $ 43K 81 pound behemoth that there are a huge range of products and alternatives in every price range 
I think it is important in today's world that we distinguish "cd players" from transports. A "cd player" has an on board dac which sometimes offers a  digital output for use with an outboard dac. A transport has no onboard dac and is designed specifically for use with an outboard dac. In my mind, cd "players" are dead and transports are analogous to a turntable albeit in a digital format.

elizabeth

earlier this year I did write an email to Stereophile and TAS asking them to review the Marantz SA-10.  I received a reply from both publications thanking me for the suggestion. Hopefully my request will go forward in the review process.


Happy Listening!