Best Rock Player... Jupiter??

First, I own the Cary 303/200 and about 90% of my library is rock 'n roll. Trust me, the Cary TOTALLY rocks and I've never noticed anything "slow" about it. The Jupiter is also good, but it is less detailed than the Cary. I guess it depends on your taste. As for the EMC-1, it sounds OK, although I'm not thrilled about the transport - you have to physically attach the clamp magnet to the disc and then close the drawer. Also, I believe the EMC-1 has fixed/permanent 192 upsampling, which means you can't turn it off if it's either too detailed or if the sound is too compressed. You CAN turn off upsampling with the Cary.

This is something I've noticed about upsampling, at least to my ears. On older discs or even older stuff that's been remastered, the upsampling gives a nice boost - after all, a lot of the older stuff was originally recorded on less than desireable equipment. OTH, upsampling makes new recordings sound too compressed and they seem to lose a lot of the "air" and three-dimensionality.

I'd go with the Cary. You will not be disappointed.

get the jupiter. i've heard the naim and i think that the naim does sound marginally better, but only with the power supply upgrade. with the upgrade, it's timing is amazing. otherwise, the jupiter is certainly the way to go. (and the way i did go)

most of my collection is rock, as well.

i also tested the planet, naim cd5, jolida somethin', 47 labs, and a few others

Save your money and buy the Cambridge Audio D-500 SE !!! I will blind fold all of you, and guess what ? The Cambridge Audio D-500 SE will win !! God Bless Music.....

I'm not a Cary fan, but I know that it's fast enough for any rock and also tooo revealing for the bad mastered digi-records. As to EMC-1 it's quite a bit more costly than Cary although excellent machine for hard rock and classical music at the same time.
As to Rega stuff I'm not realy friendly since I realy did NOT like the performance of Rega Planet and Rega Planet 2000 after although never heard Jupiter. Is it just a transport? Planets used as transports never pleased my ears as well. The appearance of Planets aren't also pleasing and seems that CD-tray looks like a tray from pocket CD-player.

Since we've gone far afield from the players you initially mentioned as rock-friendly, I'll chime in with my own surprising recent discovery. I bought a used CAL Icon Mk II (without Power Boss upgrade) for about $400 as a back-up CD player to my EMC-1. The CAL is absolutely phenomenal as a rock CD player!! It is much more up-front and dynamic than the EMC-1, and sounds like it was built for rock music. My roommate will only use the CAL now, even for jazz. I still prefer the EMC-1, but I don't listen to too much rock anymore and have to agree that if I did, I would play it on the Icon instead of the EMC. Icons are always available used on this site, for around $400.