The Hunt for the ULTIMATE CD Player < $1000

Joey_V wrote:

D-

I wish you luck in your search for your CD player!

Any luck so far though?

Joey

Joey - my timeline for picking up my CDP is September 1, 2006 (b'day )

Right now, I'm just trying to get educated and do some research more for the fun of it. If I had to pick up a CDP today - it would either be the Rotel RCD-1072 or the ARCAM CD 73. I heard the upconverting Arcam today and it sounded heavely. Might even get that - as you folks know I'm CRAZY!!! I went way over budget in my quest for speakers and pre-amp/amp combo. Way, way over budget, so no saying I won't do the same this time around

Disclamer: This review is based solely on personal preference and I'm not expert so don't take this too seriously

I did my first A/B comparision today. As I'd mentioned earlier, I will try to use gear that is close to my current gear for all these auditions. As the auditioning CD, I've been used a compilation called "The Great Audio Experience"

http://www.greataudio.com/home.aspx

This is a great demo CD and almost all stores carrying B&W and other hi-fi gear usually have this CD.

The gear that I was using to audition the 2 CD players were B&W 804s speakers and a Mark & Levinson pre-amp and amp (I'll post a picture soon)

So without going too much into detail about the listening process, here the outcome IMHO:

The Rotel had warmth but it lacked clarity. The Arcam CD 73 on the other hand won hands down on clarity - it was a lot clearer and the sound was crisp. However, it definitely lacked the warmth of the Rotel. Sometime the music felt ... not sure how to describe this ... a little mechnical, not smooth.

My wife (who has a better ear for music than I) and I felt that the Rotel wasn't upto the mark compared to the Arcam. I thought that the Rotel was not a LOT better than a Denon CDP that I had auditioned earlier. Yeah, it was better, had better bass and soundstage - but not what folks have praised about it. I thought it was only marginally better than the Denon.

I did make the mistake of listening to the Arcam 192 which took the Arcam CD 73 clarity to the next level, but also added the warmth that was missing in the Arcam CD 73. What else would you expect from a player that is $1K more than the Arcam CD 73.

The good thing is that the Arcam CD 73 can be upgraded to the CD 192 through the Arcam factory.

If I had to make a decision between these 2, I would give the thumbs-up to the Arcam, which was clearly a superior sounding CDP.

Here's a break-down:

Looks

---

> Rotel
Clarity

---

> Arcam
Warmth ----> Rotel
High/Mids --> Arcam
Bass

---

> Tie (Arcam had better defined bass, but Rotel had deeper bass)
Value

---

> Arcam
Overall

---

> Arcam

audiobliss wrote:

Wow. Those look like some nice rigs. I like the atmosphere soft lighting like that can create.

He!, he! - I had to adjust my camera quite a bit to take the first picture since I wanted to capture the "mood".

The second and thurd pictures uses a flashlight - just to capture the details around the actual electronics. However, the 1st picture was taken without a flash with some minor settings on my camera.

Just to clarify things - this setup was at the store I visited.