Jolida JD 100 vs. Simaudio Moon Equinox

Let us know what you think! Arthur

Goatwuss,

Thanks for the reply. I own a Cary V12i and have a tube pre-amp as well. I think you could be right about overdoing it with the warmth. I am slowly coming to the reality that the mods may be overblown and that less is more. The mods Readster did to his unit seem to be enough along with tube rolling and the use of a good cable and powercord. The Sims have a great rep in the CDP world, no doubt a high class player, problem is I don't necessarily want to pay that much for digital sound. I'm looking for a local Sim dealer that may let me do a home audition. I guess the only way to tell is to put the two side by side and let them fight it out.

I own the JD100 (various NOS tubes, mullards greats many 5751s great, new varieties are probably fine too) and have spent a LOT of time with Sim amps and cd products...

Definitely disagree with the poster who commented above about a tube lover not liking the Sim...(own supratek syrah, have owned bottlehead foreplay, paraSEX, anthem EL34, EE Minimax, MG head, Jolida amps, ah tjoeb, etc) Sim, yes, is a very high energy, detailed, resolved sound... but all in a very good way that makes music very intrigueing to listen to. Very airy. The Jolida sounds very, very good (go un modded, if for resale value alone + going for the mods is a big risk, based on many varied opinions on these forums you may or may not like the change to the sound), but cannot compete with the Sim in many areas such as prat, resolution or neutrality and soundstaging in a high end system. If your system is already thin sounding, I'd go for the Jolida, for the extra body and warmth to the sound. If your system is neatral or borders on the warmer-than-neutral side, def. go for the sim if you can afford it. It is a higher class player.

Note- only sim amps I've worked with are w5 and w6. Both AWESOME amps. Similar signiture to CD players. I have no experience with their preamps or integrated. Actually yeah, I spent some time with the P5. I didn't like it. Maybe their pres aren't as good as their other stuff

sorry about the late reply, my unit is not really "heavily" modded, the shop that did mine, mainly replaced the stock tubes with the electro harmonix, switched out the output jacks with more heavy duty rhodium plated jacks, and rewired the output with silver wire, then damped the unit very heavily, which i think makes a hugh difference in the bass extension, the tubes and damping probably do the most sonic improvement, the jacks, i like, simply because they fit tighter, and provide a better connection. anyway, hope that helps.

Readster,

Why do you prefer the modded units? Do you have a preference for Underwood mods or some other shop like Sound Odyssee. It seems a basic mod package might be enough to improve the sound but not enough to dramatically change the unit. Any thoughts on this? BTW - United Home Audio really is against the mods, but I hear they are owned by Jolida so I'm not sure how much credibility I'll give them. Many people in the forums just like to tube roll, but I'm really curious about the mods, especially replacing the clock with a Trichord or Audiocom.

Kck,

The Sim Equinox lists for $2200 I believe. I saw one on here for $1350 but decided against it. They are very good quality players, but my thoughts now are that if I go with Sim I would want the Moon Eclipse, which currently is out of my budget range. I am leaning towards the Jolida and testig it out against a transport/DAC set-up. The transport would be the CEC TLZ51 and the DAC Audio Mirror which is non-up/oversampling. I'm searching for a very analogue sound as I am really a vinyl junky and my SOTA TT which I am refurbishing won't be back for a month. So I have some time to play and compare.

I own the Jolida, and would highly, crazily recommend it, especially the modded units, with upgraded tubes, it is a beautiful machine, sonically and esthetically. can't go wrong imo, especially for the price.

I am seeing the conventional wisdom slowly shift to the side of NOT modding the Jolida. Mine is unmodded and am very happy with it. Rolling tubes is the way to go; try different ones to find your flavor, and you don't have to go NOS although there are some very nice ones there, GE and RCA come to mind.

Perhaps one reason there are so many mod shops doing this player is that it is darn good to begin with, and every mod afaik changes the tubes, so you DO get a different sound. Will you like it? Maybe.

Isn't the Sim more expensive? I have not heard it.

If you like tubes, you won't really like the Simaudio IMO. I have only heard their integrateds but they definately weren't tubey sounding - very much SS. I went for the Jolida with upgraded NOS tubes and couldn't be happier. Replacing the stock tubes added $1000 worth of value to my CDP. Arthur

Thanks for the responses. It's a tough call on my end. I would be running the Jolida or Sim with the following gear: Cary V12i stereo tube amp, N.E.W. (Cary) P-3 tube pre-amp, Spendor 1/2e speakers. I currently have a Quad-77 cdp and have been testing it with a Musical Fidelity X-10 v3.

Get the Sim

i own the equinox,its a very nice sounding unit.clean and clear cd playback,very happy with purchase.