Has anyone heard the Gamut CD-1?

Although this player seems to be very popular at the moment, we used to be GamuT dealers and were not terribly impressed by the CD-1. We did like the GamuT amps a lot, but the CD player and preamp were not favorites of ours. I think for the money there are several better options. The Metronome CD-2V has been a very popular choice among our customers, and when we carried GamuT that was the main reason we did not do much with the CD-1. For about the same price the CD-2V smoked it.

Another excellent player is the ReVox Exception CD player which has a top loading transport and is fully balanced. This player is our best selling player in the $3k price range and for good reason.

There are of course many other good choices in this price range as well, and I am sure others will be quick to point out their favorites. As always I encourage you to listen for yourself, but the Metronome and ReVox are my top two recommendations.

I would have to concur with KF's remarks regarding the D-200 in certain respects. It always floored me with imaging, particularly lateral imaging. And yes it has a very nice tube-like transparency in the mids and highs. I think the lean character in the bass is both somewhat intentional from conception, and also partially the result of the amplifier's inability to drive lower impedance loads. Many speakers yield low impedance in the lower frequencies and an amplifier which cannot handle these loads is not going to drive the speaker to its full potential in the bass region. Thus part of the problem I suspect is that many folks are matching GamuT's with the wrong speakers. The amp will, as KF points out, shut down if you run it into a speaker with a consistently low impedance.

I do feel that the GamuT "sound" is lean in the bass because the CD player also sounds somewhat anemic in the bass and this has nothing to do with amplifier/loudspeaker interaction in terms of impedance, etc. The bass was one complaint I had about the player, but there were others. The review (I believe it was TAS) pointed out that the user interface is quirky in terms of the button positioning, and frankly while I don't particularly care one way or the other, many customers found the thing to be dog ugly. It was a hard sell in all respects, and we found ourselves selling other players at the same price point in far greater numbers.