2. digital
  3. 1266764419

The CD Player Lie?

Okay...the title is sensational, I know and it's NOT a lie of course, but read on.

Quite recently I had a chance to seriously compare a Jolida 100A, Rega Apollo and a low end modified Oppo. The oppo cost under 300 bucks. The Jolida was also modified and cost over 1500. We also tossed a Sony BD-320 Blu-Ray player into the mix.
Speakers were Magnepan 1.6 driven with a Odyssey Stratos, but we also had a one year old pair of Merlin TSM MMe's on hand along with Creek, Music Hall 25 and Rotel power. The Rotel 1080 was fed through a Rogue Metis (no mods) as was the Odyssey.

While none of this is ULTRA high end electronics, it's good stuff and the speakers are very much world class in transparency.

Here's what we found:

The best sounding player in the group was the least expensive in the Oppo. It had a shallow soundstage, but it's leaner mid-bass was truer to vocals, especially male. The Jolida sounded too thick by comparison, though it was smoother in the highs. The Rega Apollo came in second or first depending on what you wanted. It had a deeper soundstage, but also seemed a bit bright and overly crisp. It was a subtle issue and perhaps different interconnects would help. The Sony Blu-Ray player was a complete surprise. While it was bright like the Rega, it also seemed to extract more articulate bass info, to the point where we checked it's menu for any bass enhancement settings. In the end the Sony, which costs under 200 dollars, produced a viable and enjoyable sound that we certainly found livable, and downright fun.

After several hours of messing around we decided that ALL of the CD players had subtle differences, and all had weaknesses and advantages, especially switching to different systems. It was much like good speaker wires and MUCH less of a difference we had heard 10 years ago with various players. The rapidly improving technology has certainly shrunk the disparity between high end and mid fi by a large margin and you get an ever smaller set of diminishing returns when you step up to costlier CD players.
I had found this exact same result with my system last year, but this was a better test with more variety. My new system will be getting all new components, but I consider the new CD player the least important link in the chain, even compared to cables.

This is what we heard and agreed on. Certainly the "sense" of this hobby will generally not agree, especially if you just spent a fortune on a CD player. It probably DOES have different characteristics, but that's not always going to make it synergistic with the rest of your system. A Oppo beat the Jolida hands down with the Magnepans. There was no doubt. And the Sony did very well.

And that's the truth, at least according to our ears!

Cheers,

Robert B
NY
robbob

Showing 2 responses by blindjim

blindjim
3,092 posts
 
Aren’t all those CDPs close in price? I mean there was no $500 - $1,000 disparity among the lot, right? I’d think that a wise way to examine different CDPs personally.

I feel the Oppo are an over achieving line of digital products to begin with, and digital in general has made some really great strides in the past few years… especially in the past few years.

It’s no wonder each came off as different sounding, either. Different isn’t a bad thing BTW. Using a DV980 & a SCD xa777es with a Bel Canto DAC3 the disparity in sound did not show the disparity in their prices… $175 v $3000.

Without the DAC in play, the oppo IMHO was within a few percentage points, 15? 20? 10? And of course they were different sounding and had their own fingerprint on the staging.

I like or can live with, both sonic fingerprints of the Oppo and Sony line. I Sold the xa777, still have the 980, and now have the BDP 83. Using the BC D3 the BDP 83 comes a lot closer to the sound of the XA 777, but fails in the bottom end to completely cover it. From recollection Sony usually has a quite dynamic depiction and strong bass performance, generally speaking.

Money matters. A lot of money in a CDP and the nature of this digital age sets the point of diminishing returns lower, and the margins of gain smaller… but I doubt myself, if I had the jack to throw into a uber high end CDP, I’d say it was anything nearing a close race with it v any other CDP. My ego would be bruised too much probably. Gratefully that ain’t gonna happen.

Nice read … good thoughts… I’m sure that was real fun to do… and great that different types of speakers were in play too.. Thanks.
blindjim
3,092 posts
 
Mapman

All was well and then you brought in a bottle of wine.

Folks do in fact, agree on wine, BTW.... once they've had a couple bottles, they'll agree they're all loaded. Past that there
may be an argument or two on the sound of the music. ;-)

I think price does play a part in a thing being made well and performing well. So long as value is no consideration.

More importantly though is the synergy of the whole of things. The synergy of it all is also determined by the builder… and we all call that preffs.

Personally, I’ve heard boring rigs. Music which had me of a mind to leave it on only for ambience, or background as casual conversation took the lead. Music which sounded so bland as to simply not capture any part of me whatsoever. It wasn’t the music either… it was the rig playing it back. That was a system I’d not have bought with someone else’s money.

In general, price does indicate however broadly, it’s degree of performance. Wether that sort of performance is in fact your cup of tea or not, is another bag of worms.

Price also is a separator. It sets various devices into different boundaries. Lower the price and there are far more entries to be considered. Raise it and the air gets thin there pretty quickly. So too does the number of people who have gotten one for themselves. So there’s some degree of ignorance or a veil surrounding the more costly affairs in audio.

Mix in the invisible threshold of diminishing returns, which has value underpinned to it, and performance itself then begins to decrease, subjectively if not altogether objectively.

The thing is this IMO, there’s an awful lot of good to great out there, and it is made excellent by how it’s all put together a lot of the time.

Improving a piece’s setup into a rigg for one thing may mean you have to use different cabling, or isolation gizmos, than you would for another thing to see them at their best. If no attention to individual setting up of different components is a part of the undertaking, then the results of injecting several likewise items will yield several differing results… as one would expect going into such an event.

The cool factor is the attempt itself. The ‘let’s see what if we…’ approach. Curiosity fuels every past time withit’s devotees, to this degree or that.

A more insightful endeavor would have taken longer and more moves to see which could be made to be at it’s best,, irrespective of the costs for each CDP. With one CDP using tubes, the tubes themselves could have been roled, despite the arguments of it’s modifications.

Perhaps a more pertinent foray would have been to have a few CDPs all of the same topology and closer in costs with which ..to contend.

Nevertheless, some experience and more importantly fun, was the result. That’s always a good thing. That is too, what it’s all about right? That fun thingy?
More to discover