Anyone have their Audio Aero Capitole MKII yet?

. . it IS getting better and better as it burns in. Tonight I listened after approximately 50 hours of continuous play and the bass has already improved substantially. I also thought that out of the box it sounded a little congested at higher volumes and that too is changing. I have noticed that it sounds better if I DO NOT have the volume on the player all the way up and use my preamp at higher gain. I have a Lamm L2 Reference preamp that may be being overloaded when the volume is all the way up. When the player is fully burned in I am going to see if I can eliminate the linestage by going straight out of the Capitole either directly into my amps or using a passive.

If this thing keeps improving, it should be a great player.

Fmpnd: I see you are using your Lamm L2 preamp during the burn-in and may switch to running it direct when its fully burned. Any reason for this? Just clueless and curious...

Bryans, I too have experienced that tracking problem you mentioned where it won't access a specific track on a disc even once the disc has been playing. But it will play the track just fine if the cd is simply playing through the disc. Get this, I too found the problem and stumbled upon the cure. Try cleaning the disc with dawn dishwashing soap and water very, very well. The surface of cd's must not have any foreign substance or, are you ready, "topical treatments" like Auric Illuminator, Walker Vivid, Disc Solution, etc... Once I cleaned these off my cd's, all my discs play perfectly!!! Then just for kicks I reapplied any one of the products and the same tracking thing occured in the exact same spots on the disc! Well I'll be damned. I called the distributor about this too to tell them. Once I re-applied the topical stuff the discs actually sounded worse "on this machine". This is quite contrary to all my previous experience with topical cd products where I much preferred them after application. This player makes the treatments sound bad. That's cool too because treating the discs was always a pain in the rear end.

Gerryn, I had my Lamm L2 before the AA because my old reference Cd front end did not have the abiltiy to go straight into the amps. BUT, I have heard mixed opinions on whether the AA sounds better direct or through a high quality line stage (or, as Mike LaVigne uses it, with a Placette Passive).

So, if the AA sounds better without the necessity of a $14,000 line stage, I can sell it an buy LOTS of LPs or CDs or, God forbid, SAVE the $$$!! (NOT! I'll likely feed my addiction and illness and upgrade something else!).

Just tried to feed a Symphonic Line amp direct with my AA mk II (picked it up today...YEAH ! :)) and im getting awful static/background noise in the speakers. Is this usually the cause of impedance problems, or smthg else ? I have no problems when i put my AA in my Chord CPM 3300 (integrated).

Cheers