to SACD or not

Tmsorosk,

I am not familiar with the Salons, but I seem to remember reading that they require a lot of power. If 110 watts/channel is not enough, you may want to consider the Lamm M2.2, which puts out 220 watts, if I recall correctly. It's Class A/B while the M1.2 is class A.

I'm very happy with M1.2s in my system. I love their tonal balance with just a touch of warmth, low level detail, dynamics, and rich fullness. Unfortunately, they seem to yield their best sound with the $$$$ Purist Anniversaries. I hope this helps. Happy to discuss more in an email if you like.

Ed

I have an Exemplar Denon 5910 (a Denon 5910 extensively modified by John Tucker including conversion to tube output, silver wire, better caps and clock, etc). Until very recently, I had an Ayre C-5xe which I sent back to Ayre for the MP upgrade. Before the MP upgrade, the Exemplar was much better than the Ayre. After the MP upgrade the two players were very close, although different. The tubes give the Exemplar a bigger soundstage with a richer, fuller sound & it brings out the power in the music. The Ayre is much cleaner sounding with less distortion, tighter bass, lower noise floor, more low level detail.

I recently bought an Ayre DX-5, which in addition to CD, SACD, DVD-A, also has a USB input to serve as a DAC for a music server (I'm using a modified 2010 Mac Mini (8 GB RAM, SSD, and linear power supply) with a Locus Design Nucleus USB cable) and it plays blu ray and DVD video as well. I bought it mainly for the USB input and the blu ray video capability, expecting only an incremental improvement in sound quality over the C-5xeMP. I was very wrong. It is a whole lot better than the C-5xeMP and is also better than the Exemplar (though the Exemplar still has that big soundstage and rich, full sound). I have never heard digital sound anywhere near as good as it sounds with the DX-5. It does some things better than my vinyl rig and really narrows the gap between digital and analog. When fed from the Mac Mini with the files loaded into RAM Disc and played through Ayre's Airwave application instead of iTunes, the sound is so distortion-free, fast and right there in the room, it seems almost real.

If your budget goes up to $10K, you should consider the DX-5.

Tmsorosk,

Wow, your listening experience is radically different from mine with C-5 & DX-5. My DX made my C-5 sound thin and less real in my system. I do think that the DX sounds a bit more like the old D-1 in that it is smoother and less forward than the C-5, so I can understand that some would prefer the way the C-5 presents the music.

Ed