trying to decide between Cary 303/300 and BAT CD

Allegro12:

Did you buy brand new or used? When did you buy it?

If there's a manufactoring date on the unit, that should be an indicator. I believe any unit after 2004, is the 24 Bit dac, and any unit from 2004 and back is the 20 Bit units. But I'll have to double-check the exact year BAT started using the 24 Bit.....I could be off by a year or so.

Tjpj...
I bought it used,,it was definitely manufactured well before 2004....

I owned a VKD5se for years...nice organic sound...I switched last year to a Consonance Droplet....cost half as much and I liked the bass and soundstaging better, no loss of detail....
Larry

Having heard the BAT several years ago, I have a hard time believing that the Cary won't whoop it's ass. The BAT is definitely getting long in the tooth, while the Cary is a recent design taking advantage of more recent lessons in digital technology.

IMHO, the BAT was just OK, and was easily bettered by a Wadia 860x, which was easily bettered by my VSE modded Sony.

One of the nice things about the Cary 303/300 is its ability to be "tuned" to your listening preferences in different ways. You have the obvious choice between SS and tube output as well as multiple upsampling choices - all on the fly, which is very nice. In addition, the tube options for this player are both plentiful and affordable. And finally, you can choose to run the Cary direct to the amps or through a pre, which provides more options.

I have found that in my current system, I prefer the sound direct to the amp, tube output and lower or no upsampling. For some music though, I prefer the SS output and upsampling.