i agree on Mike from Audiofederation.....he is as even-handed with his comments as they come.....whether he sells it or not. there have been times in the past when he has disagreed with my opinions but over time i came to pretty much see his viewpoint....and yet he was never 'over the top' defending his position (even if i may have been).
i do own the Meitner combo and before that the Linn CD-12. both are in that 'top class' of redbook players. i have plenty of mid to late 80's cd's that did almost peel the paint off my walls when i owned my Levinson #37 and #360S. with the CD-12 and even more the Meitner.....a certain refinement is extracted from those brittle bits......somehow this latest generation of top redbook performers has somewhat broken thru the prior ceiling of performance on redbook. why? possibly the transports and jitter handling approaches of these machines overcomes the sloppy mastering and pressing of early cd's.
i put the Audio Note and Audio Aero cdp's in a different catagory.....they do some things to simply avoid the resolution and frequency extention that allows that 'digititus' to happen.....at least that is my perception from listening. that is possibly not totally fair.....it may be better to say that those two cdp's don't have a digital edge.....but also don't quite have the resolution or frequency extention of the very best current cdp's and dac's that also don't sound 'digital'.
i do own the Meitner combo and before that the Linn CD-12. both are in that 'top class' of redbook players. i have plenty of mid to late 80's cd's that did almost peel the paint off my walls when i owned my Levinson #37 and #360S. with the CD-12 and even more the Meitner.....a certain refinement is extracted from those brittle bits......somehow this latest generation of top redbook performers has somewhat broken thru the prior ceiling of performance on redbook. why? possibly the transports and jitter handling approaches of these machines overcomes the sloppy mastering and pressing of early cd's.
i put the Audio Note and Audio Aero cdp's in a different catagory.....they do some things to simply avoid the resolution and frequency extention that allows that 'digititus' to happen.....at least that is my perception from listening. that is possibly not totally fair.....it may be better to say that those two cdp's don't have a digital edge.....but also don't quite have the resolution or frequency extention of the very best current cdp's and dac's that also don't sound 'digital'.