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On the subject of the DV-50 as a transport, it's pretty good. At the same time, I use my other player (first a Classe Omega and then an Esoteric X-01) as the main transport (with a dCS Purcell DSD and Elgar Plus) and they are definitely better, but both cost more than twice as much. |
Guidocorona: I use the X-01 as a transport with the dCS units (with a Kharma Enigma cable) and, of course, by itself in SACD (and the DV-50 for DVD-A). Yes, the combination beats the X-01 by itself by a small margin--a bit more life and sparkle in the highs, a tad more transparency in the mids, perhaps a bit more detail in the lows. I'm not suggesting it makes sense financially if you're going to do it from scratch, just that I've had the dCS units for a while and am just as happy retaining them. Same thought process with the DV-50: as long as I've got it, it made more sense to keep it for DVD-A rather than go for the UX-1, which doesn't quite match the X-01. Obviously the order you buy things in governs a lot of your choices. |
Guidocorona: Hard question. I found the Verdi amazingly clean with the Purcell and Elgar Plus, but just a bit too bright and forward for my taste. I had the same reaction when I heard the EMM separates in someone else's system. Apparently making a great DAC doesn't guarantee you can make a great transport. (By the way, as a reminder, the firewire connections are Purcell to Elgar Plus and Verdi to Elgar Plus; the connection from transport (including Verdi) is always a PCM (RCA, XLR or BNC) connection. |
I thought I'd inject a bit of a reminder about one thing before your OK Corral shoot-out: personal preference doesn't necessarily equate to qualitative difference. Components are voiced differently by manufacturers to do different things. The X-01, UX-1 and DV-50 are voiced by the same people, so it is fairly easy to tell that the X-01 does what it is supposed to do a small but significant amount better than the UX-1, and a greater amount better than the DV-50. Add an entirely differently voiced component into the equation, and it becomes much harder to generalize. I sold the Classe Omega and retained the DV-50 because I wanted to keep DVD-A playback when I got the X-01, which I dearly love, but there are times, on certain discs, when I miss the somewhat warmer, sweeter sound of the Omega, which I also loved. I'm used to changing perspectives because I have Carnegie Hall subscriptions in the 8th row center and 26th row center, and regularly hear the same orchestra under the same conductor on back to back nights from different places in the hall, and sometimes you have a hard time believing it is the same group. Which perspective I prefer is irrelevant to the issue of how well the orchestra is playing, just as it MAY be irrelevant to which player is doing its job better. If that weren't true, we'd all make the same choices. Enjoy yourselves. |
Avguru: Boy, you ask hard questions, which I can't answer with a simple direct comparison. I didn't listen to the Omega in redbook much, and don't listen to the X-01 in redbook much now. They both (for CD listening) functioned and function mainly as transports for the dCS Purcell/Elgar Plus. [And boy, are they both fabulous transports!] The dCS units, especially in DSD, are extremely detailed, clear and spacious, and a bit on the forward side. In redbook, the X-01 sounds very much like them, without the absolute last bit of sparkle--for want of a better word--in the highs, and maybe a bit less detail in the very lowest bass--although perhaps the X-01, which has the best dynamics in SACD I've ever heard, has a tad more bass impact in CD as well. The Omega sounded very different. It was more of an analog sound, especially when its 24/96 upconversion, which I didn't particularly like, was off, with a definite sense you were seated further back in the hall, and perhaps the sound front wasn't quite as wide (which it isn't when you sit further back in a concert hall). You could easily forget whether the Omega or an LP (mine is an SME 20.2/SME V/Koetsu Onyx Platinum/Lamm LP2 set-up) was on--not that they were equivalent, just that they sounded alike in kind. You aren't likely to make that mistake with the X-01--it's a more forward, noticeably detailed sound, you are closer to the plane of the performance, the soundfront is huge, and this mother doesn't take any prisoners. For instance, on the Omega and the DV-50, I thought the JVC transfers of RCA material were superb; through the X-01, somehow some of them at least sound a bit over-engineered, as if somebody has been fooling around with the masters just a bit too much. This is the player if you really want to know what's on the disc; maybe not if you just want everything to sound good. But all of a sudden a CD which you never paid much attention to, sonically at least, really catches your ear like it never did before, and you understand why the X-01 costs $13,000. Hope that helps. |
Guidocorona: No external clocks; too much money, not enough space in my system. Avguru: well, I listen based on what I hear live, and because I go to so many concerts, I have never found any two channel system to sound anything like what I hear in the hall. However, the modern multichannel systems don't work for me either--too software-dependent, too many mikes, and when you are supposed to use 5 identical speakers, how good are any of them going to be? For years I've used a SONY 505 ES delay/ambiance unit from the mid-'80s, which only requires a small rear channel amp and two small speakers similar to the front speakers in overall character, and what I hear through that set-up is similar in kind to a real hall, although of course not in degree. In four channels, the X-01 throws a wide, close (to my seat) soundfront, and sounds extraordinarily like my 8th row center subscription seats. The Omega presented a more blended, slightly narrower soundfront, much more like my 25th row center seats for my other subscription. The turntable is somewhere in between. General preference? Well, I did buy the X-01 and sell the Omega, yes? If I turn off the rear speakers, I hear all the things reviewers and audiophiles obsess over--layering, imaging, etc., but they generally sound somewhat artificial, because there is no sense of the hall. Sorry, I'm sure that didn't help you. Last thing you asked: I find DVD-A, sonically, noticeably better on the DV-50 than SACD: greater dynamic range, clearer midrange, definitely cleaner in the low frequencies. Better playback or better medium? Don't know. Probably doesn't matter--as a purely audio medium to me DVD-A seems too clumsy to hang on except as a marginal foremat, and where's the software? |
I really have to take issue with Aplhifi's statement that "the actual transport is not that important. Meitner used (and still uses in their new $7K transport) a flimsy $100 or less Philips digital transport...." Right, and it sounds it. When I heard the EMM separates, with the new transport--in someone else's unfamiliar but excellent system--I was astonished at the range, depth and width of the soundfront and the image clarity. I would have bought the DAC in a flash if it could have been used to its full potential with another transport. At the same time, I was very troubled by the thinness, aggressiveness and lack of impact of what I heard. The same is true of the dCS separates; in DSD the Purcell and Elgar Plus are extraordinary, but they are compromised by the Verdi, which is not a great transport, in very much the same way the EMM system appeared to be. Put an X-01, which has an absolutely superb transport section, or something comparable in to feed the dCS units, and you hear what they are capable of (in redbook anyway), and I bet the same would be true of the EMM DAC. I said it above, and I say it again; making the greatest DAC in the world does not guarantee you can make a good transport, and probably the opposite is true as well. People used to sell turntables (some of you may remember them) short also, with the same result. You want an interesting test: hook the X-01 and whatever you fancy up to a good external DAC with the same cable type, and compare them. |
Aplhifi: "It will turn out very expensive"? Read this thread--you did notice that we are not sane people you're talking to, didn't you? Build it and they will come, as someone said in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". |
I hate to keep harping on these little points, but personal playback taste and accuracy are NOT synonymous. Jayctoy: you said "what you are hearing on the Sony Mod, is exactly whats in the CD, I am very familiar with this PLAYER." Maybe, but how do you know that it is accurately conveying what's on the CD? You like what it does; maybe your taste is superb; but that's all you know. Maybe the CD sucks, and this player sweetens it up a bit. Is that good? What about when it does it on a CD which doesn't suck? I once had a conversation with Wilma Cozart, who produced most of the great Mercuries, during intermission at Carnegie Hall, about various tape, LP and CD transfers of recordings she had made and then remastered, and she said that if every person who commented how close to the master tape some recording sounded on some playback device had ever actually had access to the master, it would have crumbled into dust years ago. |
Avguru and Jayctoy: If you go back and look at everything I've said, I have never claimed that anything I have or have heard is the best there is or can be. Usually what draws a comment from me is someone else's suggestion that something is "the best" or really gets what's on the source. And this skepticism extends to reviewers as well: a friend of mine who distributes a couple of well known and pricey products assures me that if you saw the listening rooms in which many reviewers listen to new products you wouldn't believe a word they say. As to specific questions:
1. I have heard very few modded products, but I have no reason to believe that a talented modifier can't work wonders with a stock product, most of which are built to a price point. If a manufacturer wants to sell something for $2000, but would need to charge $2200 to sell it with a better internal component and therefore chooses not to use it, why shouldn't a modifier be able to put one in, charge you $500 for the mod, and achieve better sound? [Of course, the problem is, is it better or just different? There are tradeoffs, remember.]
2. In fact my Classe Omega SACD player was in actuality a $12000 reworking of the $5000 SONY SCD-1, and was noticeably superior in every respect. Was that a modification, even though done by a major manufacturer? Depends how you define modification. I heard some mods of the SCD-1 and they were pretty good, but did they come close to the Classe? Not hardly. But the starting point of all of them was an absolutely superb transport mechanism.
3. Would I buy a real modded unit? Maybe, but it would have to be a modification of a stock unit I would have considered buying anyway, and for me that means the build quality would have to be very good. I have heard people rave about the sound of components which were lightweight and flimsy and supposedly sounded good despite their construction, but I've just never heard one I liked--something was always compromised about the sound as far as I was concerned.
4. Hello, where on earth did you ever get the idea that I own anything I wouldn't consider replacing? Certainly not from me. When this thread started back in the 19th century I had just replaced my Classe with an X-01, mainly because I had just received DSD-capable versions of the dCS units, and had listened to the Meitner gear on someone else's system, and wanted something that could do in SACD what dCS and EMM had accomplished without having to put up with what I didn't like about their respective transports. So three of my four digital components are new this year, and the fourth is eighteen months old. Of course, there are limits. Some time next year the three-box Esoteric digital system is going to role in, for about $40,000, and of course I'll want it. But no, I'll have to do without; for now I'm through. Life is full of hardships, I'm afraid.
5. What do I like best about what I've got? That it sounds more like what I hear in the hall, at least in kind, than anything I've heard (which I can afford, if I suck it in hard enough) so far.
6. Me a guru? No one is a guru who doesn't understand how things work, and for all I know there is concrete and spaghetti in them thar boxes. I know what I like, and I don't confuse that with anything else.
All from me, I think. This thread has been fun, but it's getting old. |
Avguru: I never found anything further on the DVD-A performance of the UX-1, because I switched my attention to the X-01, and I really have to believe there was something off with the demo machine for two foremats to sound so good and one to be so questionable. I would actually be very (intellectually) interested in anyone else's experience of DVD-A on the UX-1. I don't know anything about multichannel output on the X-01. All I can tell you is that the front channel only output sounds far better than the 5.1 downmix, whether I'm listening to the front channels only or, as usual, with four channels in delay/ambience mode through my '80s SONY rear channel unit. |
Avguru: No. If I could permanently turn off the video I'd be happy to. |
