difficulty finding CD player match for Magneplanar

A number of people have said that my Maggies might be underpowered. My Adcom amp is 60w/ch into 8 ohms, but the Maggies are 4 ohm (and less sometimes), so my Adcom is probably providing more like 120w/ch into 4 ohms.

The second thing I wanted to bring out is that the Maggies with the Adcom and my CAL Icon Mk II can easily play at realistically live volumes with the volume knob on my preamp set at about 11 o'clock.

I like my CAL Icon Mk II CD player. It has plenty of bass for rock and jazz/fusion to suit me. Lots of "drive". When I say the Saturn and the Arcam CD players didn't have enough "power" or "drive" to suit me, I don't literally mean the player didn't have enough power. I'm talking about the feeling of "power" driving the music - maybe dynamic range, maybe bass. One thing I like about my CAL is that is sounds pretty "even" across the frequency range, while the Saturn and Arcam have detailed midrange but the midrange seems way to forward, in most cases, compared to the rest of the sound. Maybe this is just a lack of solid bass in those players.

I'll post some more responses to your great and very helpful posts when I have a little more time, probably tomorrow evening.

Hmmmm. A lot of people have said that I don't have enough power at ~120w/ch. into 4ohms for driving the Maggies. But they can be played very loud without any distortion that I can notice and I have plenty of bass with my CAL CD player. If I were underpowered, why would it only show up with the Saturn or the Arcam CD players? If I were underpowered, wouldn't this show up with my CAL with the Maggies sounding like it was lacking bass and drive also?

In response to Onhwy61's question, "why are you using the Maggies for rock & jazz/fusion" - I love the way they sound. I get a really "big" sound with them, and they're not too bright nor too laid back and they have a rather unique sound.

I listened to some Thiel's when I was evaluating the Maggies and, at first, I thought the Thiel's sounded great, but after listening for awhile they began to get on my nerves and I kept turning the volume down. They were just too bright and fatiguing for me after awhile. After listening to the Thiel's, the Maggies sounded dull, but after I adjusted to the difference, I found the Maggies sounded very nice and I could listen for a long time without getting fatigued.

Now I can't imagine owning any other type of speaker. Put on a live album and it feels like I'm really there in the audience. The sound seems to come from all around me - not just from the speakers in front of me.

Al Dimeola's "Scenario" CD has a song called "African Night" that has some jungle sounds at the very beginning. With the Maggies, this just surrounds me and is just amazing.

That's why I bought the Maggies. They help bring music to life.

everyone recommends more power for my speakers. My Maggies are rated at 85db, which means they will produce 85db sound pressure at 1 meter using 1 watt of amplifier power. According to the inverse square law (and an article I read on the internet), power usage is like this:

decibels watts
-------- -----
85 db 1 watt
88 db 2 watts
91 db 4 watts
94 db 8 watts
97 db 16 watts
100 db 32 watts
103 db 64 watts
106 db 128 watts
109 db 256 watts

If my normal listening level is 85db, then I would be using 1 watt of power. At 90db, I would be using about 4 watts.

My amp is capable of producing 120 watts into 4 ohms, so my peak volume level without distortion would be somewhere between 103db and 105db. That's pretty loud, and I don't n normally listen to music that loud. 103db is as loud as a power wrench like they use to get the lug nut off your car wheels.

Assuming all the above is correct, I should be able to get close to 105db with my 120 watts of power. Supposedly this amp has further reserves for brief peaks (according to the what I read, written by the manufacturer, when I bought it centuries ago). So it seems like I have plenty of power.

Okay, guys, thanks for the advice about amps, but for now it is a moot point. The CD player is dying; it has to be the first item to be replaced. I can put in a 500w/ch. amp but if my CD player goes out, I can't listen to music.

I had sufficient bass and the undefinable feelings of "power", "drive", "fun" from my system.

I replaced my CD player with two different CD players and the feeling of "power", "drive", "fun" was gone.

Since I only replaced the CD player and nothing else, replacing the CD player must have been the cause of the change in the sound of my system.

ince I didn't change the amplifier, the amplifier is not the cause of the change in sound of my system unless there is some interaction between the CD player and the amp. Since CD players are designed to work with any pre-amp or integrated amp, this interaction seems very unlikely to me.

Analog circuitry differs from one CD player to the next. Seems to me that the analog circuitry in a CD player would be the cause of most of the "sound" of the player. There are only a relative few manufacturers of CD transports, but there are many analog circuit designs. The DAC chip could contribute to the sound too, I guess.

No one else in this thread has experienced a change for the worse in the sound of their system when they replaced their CD player with a newer and supposedly better player?

I have had seen recommendations for the Jolida CD player, which I have read very good things about, the Ayre, Muse (I don't know much about the Muse player). The Jolida I can probably swing, but the Ayre (unless used) is out of my price range.

I have a CD player I like a lot already, and has many good qualities, but it is dying. It does not have the clearness and detail as the Rega Saturn, but I like the bottom end with rock/jazz/fusion/etc. much better than the Saturn. The Arcam was so forward in the midrange it just about drove me out of the room and it wasn't "fun" to listen to.

I have a chance to listen to Naim CD5X and Primare CD21 and CD 31 players at a local audio store. I'm going to take my player into the store so I can compare on their system (they will have plenty of amplifier power). I can listen to my player and get sort of "tuned in" to their system, then switch my player out for the Naim or Primare and compare. If the Naim or Primare have comparable bass/drive/punch whatever it is to my player and I take one home and suddenly it sound weak, then maybe power is a problem too. I'm not convinced yet.

This thread is pretty old now, but if anyone is reading this now I have learned more about powering Maggies lately.

The folks on this thread who said that my amp was underpowered for the Maggies are absolutely correct. I hooked up a pair of PSB Alpha speakers which are 89db efficiency rating (twice as efficient as the Maggies). I put on a CD and very slowly turned up the volume until the clipping lights on the amp started to flicker, at about 11 o'clock on the volume knob. (I would have done this test with the Maggies, but they are at Magnepan being repaired).

From this I would guess that if I set the volume knob at 9 o'clock or so driving the Maggies, I am probably at or near the threshold of clipping. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but there it is.

I am going to find a much beefier amp now.

As for the CD player, I "fixed" it by adding DAC for now.

I have thought about playing music directly from my PC through a USB port into my DAC, but am not sure yet if that's the way I want to go.

My main concern is if USB output from the computer can provide CD quality sound. I bought a ~$100 U.S. headphone USB DAC that the audio mags and a lot of people on Amazon raved about. I plugged it into my computer at work, plugged in my Grado SR-325i headphones and found very little difference. Listening to the same music in my CD player at home us hugely better than the USB headphone DAC through my computer at work. I tried plugging the DAC into my laptop USB port and listening through my headphones again, and it actually sounded worse - I was getting noise as well as crummy sound quality. That, and some things I've read on-line, suggest to me that USB audio is not really ready for prime time.

I'd be very interested to hear what you find out if you decide to make the leap, and would be interested in hearing comments by others on this topic.

That said, you may get better information from people out there in a new thread on this topic.