Arcam fmj cd23 vs cd33

never owned the cd33 but have owned the cd23 twice. missed it so bad after a supposed upgrade, I bought another & it shall remain until it croaks at which time I'll locate another. i have owned players in the $3K to $5K range in the past & it hangs right in there with them.

I have not heard the 33 but I still say go for the 23 for the HDCD. It is exceptional with HDCD. If you have never had an HDCD capable player you probably have more HDCDs than you think.
I think I sold Pehare his second CD-23.

yesiree, thanks TIM. happy listening

I am also leaning to cd23.
BTW, what's wrong with Arcam CD players? Their used price is far lower than their competitors.
It would work for me though since I am not going to spend $2000+ for a new CD player. However, if they were good at their price point (over $2000) and still used ones can be purchased at under $600, it would be hard to beat.

Ihcho - I've never listen to CD23 but I know that they stopped making it because of yield problems in production of ring DACs. Arcam bought license for Ring DACs from DCS.

Idea behind Ring DAC is that at certain point you cannot cross resolution of 18-20 bits because of component tolerance (in sigma-delta you can but timing will eventually give same restriction). Ring DAC shuffles randomly bunch (I think 5) resistors of the same value (in each position of the ladder) to get much better tolerance and increased resolution. Effect of this shows as "dithering" on the output but after filter provides for extra bits of resolution. At least that's what I heard.

I think that they stopped making FMJ-cd23 only because of production yield problems.