MHZS Audio CD-66, Looks nice but is it any good ?

Hi Bob,

I actually have one. I use it with a pair of Jolida Music Envoy Monoblocks and Music Envoy pre-amp.

I also have a Jolida JD100S cdplayer and I feel the MHZS is much better.

I reaaly hadn't expected such a step forward in performance. I must point out however that the MHZS is not original anymore. I upgraded some parts (tubes, caps and opamp).
But also the JD100 was substantially modified. Even to a greater extend as the MHZS already had much of the good stuff in it.

It really is a great player and unbeatable for the price I think. Especially when upsampling to 176,4 KHz.

There are some dislikes. There are no gaps to put your fingers in, so grabbing the disc to change it is a bit difficult sometimes.
The play button on the remote is not as sensitive as one would like, but that might be a foult of only my unit.
On the asthetic side there's the upsampling button on the remote wich reads 176,4 HKz instead of KHz.

There's also a CD88 out now which has HDCD and tube rectifiers.

Hope this helps.

Kindest regards,

Vincent - EPVINCE

I have the CD66, which is a toploader. The CD33 is a frontloader.

I modified the player myself. I only briefly listened before I made the modification as I couldn't wait to open it up:) But straight out of the box it outperformed my JD100S (a JD100S is quite different from a JD100!), which is very tube-like and kind of unrevealing at times, but the Jolida won over my previous CEC-Wadia combo (which I used with a Spectral pre-power combo. The Spectrals were no match for the Music Envoys by the way...)
The MHZS is very detailed, I think the Jolida is somewhat more dynamic (this is what i can remember from the unmodified units). I intend to switch to the Jolida again in a few days, so I can compare them with the MHZS broken in.
Both models are modified, so my findings are of less interest to you perhaps.

Vince

Which caps would you change? The outputcaps are WIMA and judging by the size they are MKP10, which are, in my humble opinion, very fine caps. I've used them in the Music Envoy Monos (strangely the pre-amp comes with an all WIMA MKP10 interior, the power-amp not).
Mundurf MCAP supreme are probably better caps, but I wonder if the investment would pay of. 200 dollars also buys you a couple of good CDs. In the end it really is about the software, although I too can get cought up in the modification fever.... I sometimes find myself listening to the effects of a cable or mod instead of listening to the music.
With the Jolida I put Mundorf caps in the power supply, but I used WIMAs in the analog output section.
Bypassing the outputcaps with small, high quality caps is also an option perhaps.
With the Cayin, as with every unit, I would modify the power supply the most.

Changing the tubes is always an easy upgrade and fun. Especially the standard tubes in Chinese gear are quite bad sometimes.

The only one I know of is this:

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=220028415386&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=012

The main problem with the cd66 are the 10uF electrolitic capacitors in the signal path. Very strange for such a great machine. I've changed these to Mundorf MCAPs and at the same time changed the OPA2604 for two OPA627 smd opamps. This made u huge difference. The tubes are now goldpin longplates (ECC803S by JJ).

Buying gear from China sometimes comes with some problems (at least in my case). With the MHZS the tubesockets aren't that good and with one tube the heating pins didn't connect properly, resulting in a failing left channel straight out of the box. I also changed the sockets.

With modifying the power section I meant the caps. Bypassing larger electrolitic capacitors with mundorf or other. Putting little caps parallel to the rectifier diodes (or bridges), to reduce the 'clicking' of these diodes. Maybe even using special caps such as Black Gates.