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Tube or solid state CD player

I am putting together a 2 channel system separate from my HT setup. I will be using Meadowlark Kestral2 speakers driven my a solid state HK 6650 integrated amp. Not sure on the source yet. I am considering the Ah Tjoeb Model CD 4000 with upscaling. Stereophile had a pretty nice article on this player. It is basically a modified Marantz player, but uses tubes. Another option is the Philips DVD963SA. While I do care about price, I am willing to pay the extra for the Ah Tjoeb ($1,200 vs $500 list for the Philips) if it is truly a better sounding unit. Both have upsampling (I assume that does improve Redbook). Since it is only for audio, I do not care about the video capabilities of the Philips DVD player. I do like the SACD capability, however. So which would any of you choose? Any opinions you share will be appreciated.
jswallac

Showing 1 response by marakanetz

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marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Infact there's no such thing as tube CD player.
There's no tube circuit that could be designed for digital clock.
The presence of tubes at output of CD player looks like a differential input stage of preamplifier i.e. sort-of extra input stage. It's good to have if you have no preamp and going directly from player to amplifier.
Ah's variable output you can feed directly bypassing HK preamp part if that is possible to reach more transperent sound.
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