For what it's worth, I listened to the Scarlatti for a couple of hours under show conditions. It was set up in a larger room with the large VTL amp and Sceana speakers. At the time, I strongly preferred my APL NWO-3.0SE for its superior coherence, realism, dynamics, refinement and musicality. I came to the same conclusion after hearing a few other top-tier CD/SACD players in dealer showrooms. My recent upgrade to the NWO-4.0SE is a significant improvement over the 3.0SE.
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Rtn1 - Sound advice (no pun)...and have made contact with Avalon. Such also prompted me to get exact on the dimensions. Usefully, the listening room box is somewhat larger than I had thought : 17ft x 13 x 8 (LxWxH). The Indras currently sit 2ft into the room, 3ft off the side walls, with the primary listening position about 8 ft from the speaker face. At least to my ears, this works. Am quite curious as to what a room analyzer will indicate. Thanks again. |
Wflm, how could you isolate the Scarlatti form the rest of the system and room?The only way to isolate a CD player is to ideally compare it head-to-head with another one while keeping all other elements in the chain unchanged including the room. (Even then you have the synergy variable: player A may be preferable to player B in system X but not in system Y.) That is not always feasible, especially for the rare top-tier components. Before posting above, I've followed this thread for 10 days and it appears that the original poster has not had much luck yet in getting any ideal head-to-head comparisons (except for Stereophile's). So, I figured my non-ideal comparison may be of some use, since it also re-enforces Perrew's observation. I was careful to preface my remarks with the qualifier "For what it's worth", I explicitly stated that I heard the Scarlatti under show conditions (which are usually not ideal), and I expressed my conclusion as my "preference", not some absolute statement. I believe that my statement is reasonably qualified. When I was shopping to upgrade my speakers and amp, I traveled around the country to audition top-tier components. On some of the trips I even took my NWO player, cables and power cord with me. As I said above, I strongly preferred my previous NWO-3.0SE to all other players I heard (in systems worth up to $500K). My recent upgraded NWO-4.0SE is a significant enhancement of the 3.0SE. I'll post a review of it soon. If your current assessment of the 6 players you listed above entails head-to-head comparisons in the same listening room, then your observations may be valuable to the original poster, provided his sonic preferences are similar to yours. Peace |
Murataltuev, I posted the link to the Scarlatti system I heard previously. With Focal speakers and ASR. Ive heard the Focals on several occasions all the models, I attach a link where you can see some of thesystems Ive heard including some of the sources mentioned. Since Ive heard all the Focals and the ASR on several occasions I think I have a pretty good grasp of their "sound" and can dissect the Scarlatti sound pretty well. So I second Puremusics finds, the NWO-3.0-SE was better than all the other sources Ive heard and the NWO-4.0-SE is significantly better. As for cheap price tag Im not sure what youre referring to but if you mean the APL has a lower price than the DCS stack and therefore should not be better. I would take into account what the DCS costs factory direct, I figure a lot less then what the dealers charge. Anyway the thing with the APL is that people that havent heard it cant imagine how good it will sound and I havent seen any APL NWO-4.0-SE owners looking for another DAC like some other owners of the so called top dacs do. The only ones that dont seem to like it are the ones that havent heard it. Many owners of the NWO dont post and read this site and own or has owned pretty much all of the mentioned machines and thinks one of them is far superior. Im really looking forward to Puremusics review! |
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