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Is my dealer lying to me?

This past weekend I went to listen to some speakers. I've been planning to buy CD player also, but that was not this weekend's purpose.

At first we were using a YMB player, McCormick amp, and Soliloquy 5.3 speakers. The speakers is what I was auditioning.

The CD player he is trying to sell me is the Cambridge Audio D500ES, I beleive. Price:400

Big difference I know between the YMB ($2500)and the Cambridge ($400). But it wasn't $2100 in difference in sound I can tell you that. What concerns me is the difference between his comments and the perceived opinions of people on this board. In other threads, there are quite a bit of "ditch the Cambridge" comments.

The dealers comments were "best player under $2000"... "chris sold his $2500 Theta and picked this one up because it's that good, and pocketed the money"... etc.

I'm not asking if this is the best player under $2000. But how does it compare to Arcam and Rega models at $500-700?

Obvisouly, he recommends the Soliloquy 5.3 also. I liked them but wasn't as impressed as much as I thought I would be. The guy has a small shop and seems honest, but it seems this cambridge is not very well respected in this forum.

I've gotten rid of alot of my gear. What I have left to use is a Yamaha RXV-995 receiver. An amp will come, hopefully sooner than later, but I need speakers and a CD player now unless I want to continue to use my DVD player for CDs.

Any comments?
gunbunny

Showing 1 response by say811

say811
27 posts
 
I've just run into something similar while looking for speakers on the various audio sites. A respondent told me that my Cambridge Audio D500-SE was nowhere near up to the task as regards to the speakers I was considering (Vanderteen 3a sigs, Theil 3.6, Von Sweikert VR4 GenII, B&W Matrix 802 S-3, Snell C/V, etc.) He said he wouldn't match this low of a quality cd player with speakers with a retail list price of $500.00 (good $500.00 speakers)
He did recommend however that I could get a pair of Mission 782's ($900.00 list) and upgrade my cd player later.
Is this cd player that bad? I'm pretty new to this stuff and don't really know much about it, although I try to research all components before buying. (I bought the Cambridge on recommendations from members of this site as well as others)
What I've got so far:
Citation 7.1 amp for music
Citation 7.1 amp for movies
Adcom GTP-760 Pre/proc
Cambridge Audio D500-SE
For me this represents an effort to step up from my Denon 2801 receiver.
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