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Blind Shoot-out in San Diego -- 5 CD Players

On Saturday, February 24, a few members of the San Diego, Los Angeles and Palm Springs audio communities conducted a blind shoot-out at the home of one of the members of the San Diego Music and Audio Guild. The five CD Players selected for evaluation were: 1) a Resolution Audio Opus 21 (modified by Great Northern Sound), 2) the dcs standalone player, 3) a Meridian 808 Signature, 4) a EMM Labs Signature configuration (CDSD/DCC2 combo), and 5) an APL NWO 2.5T (the 2.5T is a 2.5 featuring a redesigned tube output stage and other improvements).

The ground rules for the shoot-out specified that two randomly draw players would be compared head-to-head, and the winner would then be compared against the next randomly drawn player, until only one unit survived (the so-called King-of-the-Hill method). One of our most knowledgeable members would set up each of the two competing pairs behind a curtain, adjust for volume, etc. and would not participate in the voting. Alex Peychev was the only manufacturer present, and he agreed to express no opinion until the completion of the formal process, and he also did not participate in the voting. The five of us who did the voting did so by an immediate and simultaneous show of hands after each pairing after each selection. Two pieces of well-recorded classical music on Red Book CDs were chosen because they offered a range of instrumental and vocal sonic charactistics. And since each participant voted for each piece separately, there was a total of 10 votes up for grabs at each head-to-head audition. Finally, although we all took informal notes, there was no attempt at detailed analysis recorded -- just the raw vote tally.

And now for the results:

In pairing number 1, the dcs won handily over the modified Opus 21, 9 votes to 1.

In pairing number 2, the dcs again came out on top, this time against the Meridian 808, 9 votes to 1.

In pairing number 3, the Meitner Signature was preferred over the dcs, by a closer but consistent margin (we repeated some of the head-to-head tests at the requests of the participants). The vote was 6 to 4.

Finally, in pairing number 5, the APL 2.5T bested the Meitner, 7 votes to 3.

In the interest of configuration consistance, all these auditions involved the use of a power regenerator supplying power to each of the players and involved going through a pre-amp.

This concluded the blind portion of the shoot-out. All expressed the view that the comparisons had been fairly conducted, and that even though one of the comparisons was close, the rankings overall represented a true consensus of the group's feelings.

Thereafter, without the use blind listening, we tried certain variations at the request of various of the particiapans. These involved the Meitner and the APL units exclusively, and may be summarized as follows:

First, when the APL 2.5T was removed from the power regenerator and plugged into the wall, its performance improved significantly. (Alex attributed this to the fact that the 2.5T features a linear power supply). When the Meitner unit(which utilizes a switching power supply) was plugged into the wall, its sonics deteriorated, and so it was restored to the power regenerator.

Second, when we auditioned a limited number of SACDs, the performance on both units was even better, but the improvement on the APL was unanimously felt to be dramatic.
The group concluded we had just experienced "an SACD blowout".

The above concludes the agreed-to results on the blind shoot-out. What follows is an overview of my own personal assessment of the qualitative differences I observed in the top three performers.

First of all the dcs and the Meitner are both clearly state of the art players. That the dcs scored as well as it did in its standalone implementation is in my opinion very significant. And for those of us who have auditioned prior implementations of the Meitner in previous shoot-outs, this unit is truly at the top of its game, and although it was close, had the edge on the dcs. Both the dcs and the Meitner showed all the traits one would expect on a Class A player -- excellent tonality, imaging, soundstaging, bass extension, transparency, resolution, delineation, etc.

But from my point of view, the APL 2.5T had all of the above, plus two deminsions that I feel make it truly unique. First of all, the life-like quality of the tonality across the spectrum was spot-on on all forms of instruments and voice. An second, and more difficult to describe, I had the uncany feeling that I was in the presence of real music -- lots or "air", spatial cues, etc. that simply add up to a sense of realism that I have never experienced before. When I closed my eyes, I truly felt that I was in the room with live music. What can I say.

Obviously, I invite others of the participants to express their views on-line.

Pete

petewatt

Showing 4 responses by mceljo

mceljo
1,357 posts
 
Sabai - After reading a few of the previous posts I went back to read your original post in this thread and it seems that you're taking this comparison far more seriously than you should be.

It seems that comparing multiple pieces of gear in a single system changing nothing but the component being compared is a more than fair way to do it.

It sounds like you would prefer that each CD player was somehow compared in a seperate system that was custom built to make that particular CD player sound it's absolute best. Not only would this require a different system for each player, but likely a slightly different system for each persons personal listening preference.

While your concept of a fair comparions would be ideal, it's so far beyond impractical as to make it impossible. Who's to say the exact point that each CD player has been maximized? Should we try different padding/carpet combinations to see what works the best?

Changing nothing but a single component is the only way to get an idea of the differences between the components being compared in a reasonable way, but is certainly not the end all for the best and greatest in every situation. This is evidenced by the fact that every vote was not unanimous. I doubt that even if each player was synergized to your likeing that a unanimous decision would ever be reached.

When I read the original post my only thought was that, as a novice audiophile, comparing "modified" equipment doesn't really provide me with any useful information, but that's my problem and nothing that should concern the group of people that took the time to do a comparsion, likely as a form of entertainment as much as anything else.

I missed it if anyone said that any of the players sound badly? I'm sorry that your personal preference, based on not being at the comparison, differs from the majority that were there.

Enjoy the new year!
mceljo
1,357 posts
 
Mrtennis - Is it possible that shootouts are more valid in the, for lack of a better description, MidFi than it is for HiFi? It seems that as the system gets more refined and revealing the "signautre" of any individual component becomes more obvious within a particular system.

If a system is revealing enough that changing speaker cables and/or interconnects makes a significant difference then any shootout using that system would be suspect because each component was not optimized in the system.

My system, for example, likely isn't revealing enough to note a distinct difference with interconnects between the SACD player and receiver making it more likely that a shootout done with my system might provide useful information for other systems of a similar level. Sort of a macro comparison vs. a micro comparison.
mceljo
1,357 posts
 
"If you happen to find yourself in my part of the world one day I invite you to listen to my EMM CDSA SE. You will immediately recognize that the sound is anything but flat and 2-dimensional. It is 3D and layered with a wide and deep sound stage." - Sabai

I find it interesting that you didn't think that the blind comparison among 5 CD players interchanged in the same system was an acceptable method, yet you suggest that listening to your system will reveal the way a single component within the system sounds.

It seems that interchanging a single component (i.e. the blind shootout) would provide a better indication of the relative sound quality of multiple components than listening to a system and assuming that the wonderful sound was someone directly related to a single component.

If I've learned one thing on this forum, it's that a system is more than the sum of individual components.
mceljo
1,357 posts
 
"Mceljo, what I am saying is that if, for example, you hear the EMM in a blind shoot-out and the sound is 2-dimensional and it is dismissed as not being capable of sounding 3-dimensional, but in another system it produces 3-dimensional sound then one must question the set-up in the blind shoot-out which obviously fell short vis a vis the EMM." - Sabai

That makes some sense to me. The description of a component in a comparison shouldn't be considered an absolute as it's really intended to be a judgment relative to the other components in that system used for the test. It's possible that the same comparison using a different system would result in the same findings or each one could have different results.
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