no difference between 4k meridian & 400 DVD?


hi,

i am really starting to doubt this whole damned industry. today, i tried a little experiment. i burned a copy of my favorite k. jarrett CD. i put the CDR into my 508.24 and the original into my 2-year old sony DVD player. i cued the players up simultaneously and did an extensive A/B for about an hour.

guess what? the differences in sound quality were so minor as to be almost inaudible. if anything, the 508 had SLIGHTLY better response at the frequency extremes and SLIGHTLY better dynamics. i'm not sure if i honestly could tell them apart in a double-blind test.

i always believed my main system was fairly transparent. meridian 508 CDP & 502 preamp, bat vk-75, AZ silver reference IC's, decent copper speaker cables (forget what kind), avalon arcus speakers. the IC connected the DVD to the 502 is cheap audioquest copper. i am using a monster hts-5000 power conditioner with vibrapods under the front end and BDR cones/pucks under my amp.

given that the 508 COSTS 10 FRICKING TIMES MORE, i wanted to hear a major improvement over my cheapo DVD but there just wasn't one. my ears are fine...for example, i heard substantial improvements after installing the pods and especially the BDR cones. so...wtf is going on here?
s2k_dude

Showing 2 responses by lordgorian

I know the differnce between my 37 36 combo from levinson and the theta miles was huge. No comparison that the levinson rig was better. It actually almost made the theta unlistenable. So i know there are differences..... thats for sure. There have been other times when i a/bd the denon 1650 AR a very good class B budget player to an old sony 5 disc cd changer and could tell no difference at all. Now the system i was using was pretty bad and that could be an issue. Also speaker wires are very important in showing the differences. Once i upgraded my wires differences were much more apparent. You might want to do the same and compare again. - Ian
Try to borrow some higher quality speaker cables from the dealer as well so you can experiment more faithfully. As for the two copy thing... I can not tell a difference between a cd copy and the real thing on my pretty revealing system, but then again ive never really carefully compared them.