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EMM Labs CDSD / DCC2 - Initial Listening Session

With only 48 hours of burn-in on these pieces, this review is hardly definitive- but here goes...

I think old Ed (Meitner) has hit the cover off the ball with this, his latest offering in CD/SACD playback equipment. The following comments are based on comparisons to my previous front-end: Meitnerized Philips SACD 1000, Meitner DAC6, Meitner Switchman II and apply to both SACD & CD playback.

The CDSD & DCC2 - compared to the previous Meitner rig---

-Much deeper soundstage, much more layered, as well, width about the same.
-Hall ambiance retrieval is vastly superior.
-Tonal and timbral qualities are unsurpassed in any digital gear I've experienced. Piano reproduction is absolutely stunningly good!! Acoustic guitar has the string interaction/wooden resonance of the real thing.
-There is a "Bloom" to instuments, even voice, that seems typically absent in digital playback. This quality is very "Analog" like.
-So far, I sense not even a suggestion of stridency or digital fatigue- It is just not there. This new gear is just plain musical. That word is overused- but there is no other word to better describe the overall experience. There is a natural seamlessness and natural bloom to the music, as a whole, which reminds me of a live performance within a live venue. All of the elements of that live experience seem reproduced faithfully by the CDSD & DCC2. This is no small feat. In quantitative terms I'd say the new gear is 25%-35% better, in every listening category (it is about the same in soudstage width), than the earlier 3 piece set-up I had.

As the new gear continues to burn-in there will certainly be changes and refinements, probably for the better, which I will try to keep track of. But so far- Ooh, La, La!!!

ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT:
Kharma Midi Grand
Tenor 300 HP
Jena Labs Pathfinder
Shunyata Anaconda VX & VX Alpha
fbhifi

Showing 1 response by lakefrontroad

lakefrontroad
302 posts
 
S..t!

I need a freekin education. Half of you are my friends and I need a Oxford dictionary and grammer lessions just to read this thread.

Could you tone it down so that an old, under-educated feller just looking for great music can understand, without substantial investment in further education, what the hell you mean?

And who is lucky enough to actually get a CDSD? Most of us just get stories about one day we'll get ours.

I'm listening to a DCC2 with a Panasonic H1000 DVD player as a transport given the Philips doesn't play after 25 hours.

I think that when the room is tuned, we should have the good, the bad and the ugly all bring their digital gear and have a shoot out.

Then, each of us can lie about what happened.

The stories should exceed the number of people in the room. Friends, who heard from someone they trust and know that what they heard that they heard was better than what they heard someone else heard, but haven't heard.

I can't believe I need a dictionary to read a audio thread!

Bill E.
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