CD Player 3 Way Shootout: Krell Evo 525a vs McIntosh MS 750 vs Pioneer Elite D9 MkII

nooshinjohn

This is going to be a head to head to head comparison between three very different machines. Up first is the Krell Evolution 525a CD player, which I just acquired at an estate auction. It sold new in 2011for the princely sum of 12k!!! Initial impressions of the beast is it is exceptionally well built, and very easy to use right out of the box. While it does not play SACD's, that is not a concern for me as I have less that a dozen of them anyway.

The look of the Krell fits nicely with my stack of Pass Labs X1 Preamp and the XOno Phono Stage. I find the blue lighting of the display to be a bit too bright for my taste, but it is clear and easily readable from my listening position. This is one seriously impressive piece of gear. I have listened to some very good music on it so far today and it sounds amazing, but more on that later as I get into comparing these players...






Images and brief descriptions of the other competitors will follow, then I will get into the showdown between them.

Tony M

WOW !!!!!
Very nice !!

Legender

Very nice... I look forward to this review as I'm interested in upping my player also.

nooshinjohn

Next up, the Pioneer Elite PD-D9MkII SACD Player. This one has been in my rig for some time now. I also had the original J model of this player, so for the better part of a decade now, a version of this player has been a part of my system. It is elegantly built, with a distinctive front panel that is largely devoid of buttons and such. Almost all functions are performed through the remote.

It is also the lightest and most compact player in this little competition, but that doesn't mean it isn't built like a tank. Where the Krell and Mcintosh weigh in at 29lbs, and 28lbs respectively, the Pioneer comes in at 25lbs. It is also smaller in every physical dimension. It is very well built. I wish it came in the brushed aluminum finish the Krell comes in, as from an appearance standpoint, it does not look as sleek in my stack as the Krell does...






Initial thoughts on the Mcintosh to come...

ZLTFUL

Love the D9 and wish I had a way to make one happen in my 2 channel rig.

nooshinjohn

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Love the D9 and wish I had a way to make one happen in my 2 channel rig.

I haven't seen one for sale in a very long time. Those that have them never give them up. Two of the three players will be sold after the comparison is done.

smglbrth

That Krell looks gorgeous, but, why oh why would you even consider one WITHOUT SACD? Ha, ha, just kidding as I have "zero" SACD's in my stash.

Looking forward to reading about your shootout!

nooshinjohn

Sorry about the long delay in getting this post up. Next, the McIntosh MS750 Music Server. This really is a nice piece of gear, and ahead of its time when it came out. The construction is first rate, very well laid out solidly built. The McIntosh glass face is beautiful to look at and the legendary blue-green glow is soothing on the eye when listening in the dark.

One of the most appealing features of this peice of gear to me is that it can store 750MB of music on an internal hard drive, as well as function as a CD player. For this rest, is chose to listen in both modes, but more on that later...

nooshinjohn

For this test, I set the volume level on the Pass Labs X1 at 10 and played the same cd on all three players at the same time, with the McIntosh being played from the hard drive. I checked the volume levels by ear and found all three players to sound pretty close volume wise. They were then left on overnight and not used until the following day.

I chose three CD's for this comparison, among those I have multiple copies. The first cd listened to as Ray Charles "Genius Loves Company", released by Monster Music. All three players sounded superb, and each had strengths and weaknesses.
The Krell was absolutely crisp and resolute in its task, delivering a clean, deep and entirely believable soundstage.

The McIntosh and the Pioneer were not to be outdone in that regard, keeping pace equally with the Krell. Musical instruments were precisely located within the soundstage and life sized in presentation. As I toggled between sources, I began to close my eyes as I listened. Subtle differences began to emerge.

Next up was The Eagles, "Hell Freezes Over". I focused on a couple specific tracks on this disc, the first being the superb rendition of Hotel California. It was here that I began to notice some differences between the Krell and the other players. While the music sounded virtually identical between the Pioneer and the Mac, vocals sounded a bit thin on the Krell. It was subtle, but vocals did not seem to have the same presence as with the other two players.

Linda Ronstadt's "Heart Like a Wheel"... here, the Krell showed its weakness once again when it comes to vocals, as Ronstadt seemed to loose some weight as I listened, her vocals shrinking considerably as I switched sources. I was surprised by how the music itself was seemingly not affected by this, only voices....

As my auditioning continued, I was really impressed by the McIntosh and its hard drive. I have never given much thought to using a computer as a source, and as a parting shot to my listening, I burned a couple discs from my session to my computer for the very first time, comparing the computer copies to the Mac. I was shocked to find that the copies made were indistinguishable to my ears from those stored on the Mac, or the cd being played on the Pioneer.

More to come..

nooshinjohn

The Krell, for all it offers, simply did not measure up to the Pioneer in the listening that I did. While I found it to be engaging and dynamic for instrumental music, it seemed to reduce vocalists to two demensions rather than providing a sense of presence the other two players did. It has been said that Krell is unforgivingly transparent and true to the material, and that the Evolution series performs best when paired with other components of their line.

The Krell is no slouch, but for my rig it could not compete with either the McIntosh or the Pioneer. I found the McIntosh and Pioneer to be almost note for note matched in performance, so close in fact, that I cannot say one beats the other in any way. While the D9MkII might be seen to occupy the bottom of the ladder in terms of this test, it was not a cheap player(1500.00 when new), it is very well built.

The McIntosh, however, is also showing some age when it comes to the server side of its performance. It is slow to respond to commands, and can take a significant amount of time to be useful after loading music to it. Further, and to my dismay, this is one of the only products McIntosh has made that they no longer support, and its ability to access data from the internet has permanently been shut down due to there being no servers for it to connect to.

For those reasons, the Pioneer is the winner here. If is a truly great player that holds its own quite well, and still gives listening pleasure after all this time. When the law of diminishing returns is applied to audio, the Pioneer Elite was money well spent. To replace it with something better would cost easily ten times the money to get only a very small improvement. For that, I will keep the Pioneer.

The bigger surprise here for me is the performance of my computer hard drive using JRiver to play music. From FLAC and APE files. It was indistinguishable from BOTH the Mac and the Pioneer, and will certainly become a new source of music for me. So impressive was the computer trial, I have transferred nearly 25,000 files to JRiver from the Mac and my hard drive already.

In this comparison, I set out to prove to myself just how good the Krell was. Instead I have been forced down a new path that I never was coming.

Viking64

John, do you suspect that the vocal issues with the Krell might not be so noticeable on a more modest rig than yours? It sounds that there isn't much to justify it's $15,000 retail price, which is 10 times that of the Pioneer? As nice as the Mac sounds, it being a bit dated seems like it would make one wish for more modern features at it's $6000 price point. Lastly: (1) Do I see a puppy dog tail in the second Mac pic? (2) "Krell Karma" sure has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Anywhich, I am considering buying an SACD player and your review was very helpful and interesting. Thank you.

nooshinjohn

All of these players were purchased used by me, so retail pricing doesn't matter much here, and keep in mind the Mac was state of the art at launch. A lot has changed in the past 8 years since it was built.

Viking64

Y so srs?

Upstatemax

Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

Curious, was the Krell in use at the estate, or was it boxed up?

If it was NIB, could it just need more time to open up?

nooshinjohn

The Krell had been used, but looks new and has all the stuff that came with it new. Break-in should not have been a factor.

mantis

Inside secret, Pioneer build most of the drives years ago for most of the the higher end players.

nooshinjohn

I may end up selling all three players and going pure digital. I am looking at DAC and storage solutions now.

F1nut

mantis wrote: »

Inside secret, Pioneer build most of the drives years ago for most of the the higher end players.

Got proof?

F1nut

John, keep the Pioneer and save yourself a lot of headaches.

txcoastal1

F1nut wrote: »

John, keep the Pioneer and save yourself a lot of headaches.

One of the reasons I have kept my pioneer DV79 avi, my not be the best
Built like a tank, takes a licken', and keeps on ticken'

produces great sound

nooshinjohn

I can see some wholesale changes taking place in my rig, but before I make any radical moves, serious thought will go into those descisions.

smglbrth

Nice write up on these! I have read that about Krell equipment in general at times, dynamic and analytical but not much in the warm arena. As with all things audio, synergy...

tonyb

F1nut wrote: »

John, keep the Pioneer and save yourself a lot of headaches.

Agreed....nice write up btw. Once again, price doesn't always reflect better sound.

gce

nooshinjohn wrote: »

I may end up selling all three players and going pure digital. I am looking at DAC and storage solutions now.

That's the way to do it John.