Many times highly refined equipment needs highly refined associated carefully matched equipment to sound good. I'm listening to two mid-80's NEC CDP's which sounds awfully good especially considering I paid $10/$44. One of the CDP's, a mint one-owner CD-650 which I paid the $44 for, sounded so good I decided to sell my CAL Icon MkII. It's all about the music...not the gear as Dave said.
Details don't mean a thing
After experiencing with different hi-end CDP that supposedly gives you a load of details, I was to say the least very disappointed. Details don't mean a thing unless they can make some sense. After awhile, it just gets too chaotic. Wit upsampling and super high resolution DAC out there, it's very tricky to make a high-end cdp. I just don't understand some of the thought going into making cdp from some of the high-end cdp makers. How can any sane human can listen to all those details without going insane?
I am going back to low-detail more musical CDP.
I am going back to low-detail more musical CDP.