Ayon CD-2 sonics? thoughts? opinions?

Bob, I will be making comparisons between the two in the CD-2 review. Sorry to keep you waiting, but I can't let all my secrets out of the bag. :)

I've got two or three at the moment, and you can bet I'll be futzing with them! Even though it might not be absolutely productive in terms of creating the cleanest signal path, I have found that testing such things can lead to helpful insights and sometimes very pleasing results.

Bob, you should try my suggestion to use two digital cables as ICs, and let me know what happens. I love common sense creativity in this hobby, as it can sometimes pay off big dividends!

I have a CD-2 unit in for review, and I am in the rare position of having extensive experience with all three Ayon players, most of it in side by side comparisons.

The CD-2 is a vast improvement over the CD-1; no contest. It would be wrong to consider them near equals in terms of performance. They are in completely different leagues.

The long term question will be how the CD-2 compares to the CD-3 (two chassis design). I have not gotten into direct comparisons with the CD-3 yet, but the CD-2 appears to be an assault on best attainable Redbook sound in a single chassis design. I will refrain from drawing any firm conclusions as my time with it has been short, and more will be learned as the review continues (The review may contain idiosyncrasies or caveats if applicable). However, I will say that the player does seem initially to be living up to the expectations I had for it when I heard it briefly at CES.

I do not know offhand if the Gabriel Gold was used at the show. The information I obtained on the room I posted a pic of in my CES report was that Ayon used the Clarity Cable power conditioner and the Echole Cables. Whether Gabriel Gold was used in that room I do not know, or if at all at this show. Contact Charlie Harrison at USA Tube Audio and he may be able to tell you.

I have not compared the CD-1S with the CD-2. I suppose it is conceivable that the single ended output would be similar, but I have serious reservations about that. My guess is it would be more a case of wishful thinking, "Oooh, I could get the performance of a $5.5K player for half the cost..." It certainly would not be wise of Ayon to make a player that was identical in single ended output on two players at big price differences. Ayon has never done so in the past, why now? What motivation would Ayon have to undercut their primo player with a nearly identical one?

In casual observation I see several differences in the specs, including tube complement, D/A conversion and number of transformers. In my thinking just the tube complement alone would be enough to substantially change the performance, let alone differences in the D/A conversion. I'm not going to spend the time going back to research it, but it seems to me that the CD-1 and CD-3 units shared a lot of similar specs as well, and they were separated by quite a wide margin in terms of performance. I certainly would not anticipate these two (CD-1s and CD-2) to be identical in single ended performance. It looks like the transport and some of the topology is similar, but that's a long way from identical.

An additional thought; I have not found the sound of an economical sibling player used as transport to be identical to the more expensive model when shunted through a DAC. Though the laser assembly is identical in many cases, the difference in topology is such that the performance is significantly different (let's say, with $40K rigs as a baseline) even when the player is operating as a transport. Whether such differences are worth it to you - well, that's your call.

Questions such as:

Will the performance of the less expensive player operating as a transport exceed that of its internal DAC? (possibly, depending on external DAC and Digital cable)

Will such a CD1S with external DAC exceed performance of the CD-2? (Doubtful; you may come closer, but then you're spending nearly the cost of the CD-2)

My guess is that the CD1S with the Cambridge Audio DAC Magic might be a really fun, good performing combo. It's a combo I might try if I had the time. You might end up finding that it's not significantly better than the CD-1S alone. It's extremely difficult to cobble together economical sources which are hugely better than a primo cdp.

Absolute answers to such questions would only be found by actually doing the comparisons.

Never heard of this; I'm going to discuss with Ayon.

Gerhard Hirt, the designer at Ayon says this is doable with their cdp. I will likely try it out.

The CD-2 review will not be for a while; I just received the unit two weeks ago, and I will not have a final copy for several weeks. Then it undergoes the process which leads to publication. It will take some time, but I aim to make it a worthwhile read.

I have not found the "looped" digital cable trick to work on the CD-2. It seems when "Digital Input" is selected the transport is inoperable. Just as well; one less thing to confuse me. ;)