The CD Player Lie?


Okay...the title is sensational, I know and it's NOT a lie of course, but read on.

Quite recently I had a chance to seriously compare a Jolida 100A, Rega Apollo and a low end modified Oppo. The oppo cost under 300 bucks. The Jolida was also modified and cost over 1500. We also tossed a Sony BD-320 Blu-Ray player into the mix.
Speakers were Magnepan 1.6 driven with a Odyssey Stratos, but we also had a one year old pair of Merlin TSM MMe's on hand along with Creek, Music Hall 25 and Rotel power. The Rotel 1080 was fed through a Rogue Metis (no mods) as was the Odyssey.

While none of this is ULTRA high end electronics, it's good stuff and the speakers are very much world class in transparency.

Here's what we found:

The best sounding player in the group was the least expensive in the Oppo. It had a shallow soundstage, but it's leaner mid-bass was truer to vocals, especially male. The Jolida sounded too thick by comparison, though it was smoother in the highs. The Rega Apollo came in second or first depending on what you wanted. It had a deeper soundstage, but also seemed a bit bright and overly crisp. It was a subtle issue and perhaps different interconnects would help. The Sony Blu-Ray player was a complete surprise. While it was bright like the Rega, it also seemed to extract more articulate bass info, to the point where we checked it's menu for any bass enhancement settings. In the end the Sony, which costs under 200 dollars, produced a viable and enjoyable sound that we certainly found livable, and downright fun.

After several hours of messing around we decided that ALL of the CD players had subtle differences, and all had weaknesses and advantages, especially switching to different systems. It was much like good speaker wires and MUCH less of a difference we had heard 10 years ago with various players. The rapidly improving technology has certainly shrunk the disparity between high end and mid fi by a large margin and you get an ever smaller set of diminishing returns when you step up to costlier CD players.
I had found this exact same result with my system last year, but this was a better test with more variety. My new system will be getting all new components, but I consider the new CD player the least important link in the chain, even compared to cables.

This is what we heard and agreed on. Certainly the "sense" of this hobby will generally not agree, especially if you just spent a fortune on a CD player. It probably DOES have different characteristics, but that's not always going to make it synergistic with the rest of your system. A Oppo beat the Jolida hands down with the Magnepans. There was no doubt. And the Sony did very well.

And that's the truth, at least according to our ears!

Cheers,

Robert B
NY
robbob
Aren’t all those CDPs close in price? I mean there was no $500 - $1,000 disparity among the lot, right? I’d think that a wise way to examine different CDPs personally.

I feel the Oppo are an over achieving line of digital products to begin with, and digital in general has made some really great strides in the past few years… especially in the past few years.

It’s no wonder each came off as different sounding, either. Different isn’t a bad thing BTW. Using a DV980 & a SCD xa777es with a Bel Canto DAC3 the disparity in sound did not show the disparity in their prices… $175 v $3000.

Without the DAC in play, the oppo IMHO was within a few percentage points, 15? 20? 10? And of course they were different sounding and had their own fingerprint on the staging.

I like or can live with, both sonic fingerprints of the Oppo and Sony line. I Sold the xa777, still have the 980, and now have the BDP 83. Using the BC D3 the BDP 83 comes a lot closer to the sound of the XA 777, but fails in the bottom end to completely cover it. From recollection Sony usually has a quite dynamic depiction and strong bass performance, generally speaking.

Money matters. A lot of money in a CDP and the nature of this digital age sets the point of diminishing returns lower, and the margins of gain smaller… but I doubt myself, if I had the jack to throw into a uber high end CDP, I’d say it was anything nearing a close race with it v any other CDP. My ego would be bruised too much probably. Gratefully that ain’t gonna happen.

Nice read … good thoughts… I’m sure that was real fun to do… and great that different types of speakers were in play too.. Thanks.
I'm not surprised, not surprised one bit-since I reached a similar but more diverse conclusion long ago. Consumer Reports,Affordable Audio, The Sensible Sound, Corey Greenberg, Julian Hirsch etc, all have your back Robert B.
room,amp and speakers with all the rest having a lesser degree of affect with better sound...
I think that we all know that every piece of audio equipment sounds the same. It has been stated many times that two amplifiers of equal power will always sound exactly the same. Cable upgrades are a conspiracy of right wing capitalists to steal from us and power conditioners are, well, thier just communist. Everything sounds the same. I used to have a pair of Magico Ultimates driver by all Japan Kondo electronics and pure silver wire and then someone brought over a bose wave radio and it sounded EXACTLY the same. I am currently in the process of selling off things to finance the new bose wave with MP3 capability, that is so new it must sound........... well, the same.
Davt, What Robert B was pointing out-was the tremendous amount of value to be found in rationally priced CD players. Nothing more, nothing less.