Well, What's the Verdict on the Cary 308T


Would appreciate any feedback from those who have audtioned the new tube Cary Cd player (308T) -- especially in comparison to the 303/200. Is there a difference and what is it? Thanks.
fullrun

Showing 3 responses by peter_s

Well, I've had the unit for about a month now. I placed a comparison of it, the Heart CD 6000, and the Arcam FMJ CD23 on bottom of the following forum:

Cary CDP Comparison

To summaryize about the Cary (worth reading the whole comparison): This unit is warmer sounding than the Arcam. The upper mid and treble are more present, thus providing a more substantial soundstage and a better sense of 3D. The music envelopes you and provides more spatial experience. Yet the upper treble and midrange are a bit thick, like someone inched up the reverb knob just a bit. There is bit less detail. The bass is very solid, like the Arcam, and a joy to listen to.

I've had a few problems with my unit. They needed to ad a resistor to mine because inactive digits on the display were flashing gently. Apparently a few units got through without that this problem being corrected. Also, the tray is very flimsy, and about 30% of the time when I load a CD it says "no disk" - unless I give the tray a little help. Hopefully this is just a problem with mine, and I will send it back for repair.
Sorry about that. I didn't realize what the "T" standed for. I'll be interested in hearing if anyone upgraded from the standard to the tubed output, and how it changed the sound.
I just wanted to clear up the problem I was having with the tray. This isn't a problem common to all CD-308's. On mine, the front plate on the tray (semi-transparent blue plate to match the LED display) was mis-aligned by about a millimeter. The plate is glued to the front end of the tray at the factory. To fix this, I sent the unit back to Cary and they put a new plate on it in the correct position. This corrected the problem with reading the disk.