World's Best CD Player?

JackD201 · « **Reply #40 on:** 25 Aug 2010, 03:52 am »

Hi Joey,

We just officially sealed the deal with Didier of Eera. You'll see two models at the Hi-Fi show.

Keith will contact Ultrabit if you like.

Jack

JoeyGS · « **Reply #41 on:** 26 Aug 2010, 12:16 am »

Dear Jack,

Wow we'll be at your room during the hifi show.

Would appreciate getting a kit of the ultrabit.

Thanks and regards,
joey

Quote from: JackD201 on 25 Aug 2010, 03:52 am

Hi Joey,

We just officially sealed the deal with Didier of Eera. You'll see two models at the Hi-Fi show.

Keith will contact Ultrabit if you like.

Jack

shep · « **Reply #42 on:** 18 Sep 2010, 08:13 am »

Any further thoughts or impressions now on this machine? I live in France so this is of more than passing interest to me.

JackD201 · « **Reply #43 on:** 18 Sep 2010, 08:27 am »

Hi Shep,

I should be able to give my impressions in a month or so. We put in an order for 3 models of EERA players. Ceedee has been using them for a lot longer so I'm sure he can go right now.

I've been studying the specs and the engineering. On paper they look quite promising as well as very impressive.

Jack

ceedee · « **Reply #44 on:** 18 Sep 2010, 09:34 am »

Bonjour Shep,

Since you live in France you can visit the Paris Hifi Show next month and meet EERA 'live'.

http://www.hautefidelite-hifi.com/

As Jack just wrote we use the EERA for more than 15 years now and we are very satisfied with the analog sound.

EERA is connecting the KR Audio Kronzilla and Albert von Schweikert's speakers at the show in Paris.

Also you can meet us with EERA's Tentation in Brussels next month 9 & 10.
Here we are present in the Marriott with our Virtual Reality Musicsystem.

http://www.audiovideo2day.be/index.php?page=index&id=6921&title=New Music Belgium Hifi Show 10/5&ln=NL

Feel welcome.

Regards,

Cor

jhm731 · « **Reply #45 on:** 14 Oct 2010, 10:17 pm »

Has anyone received a unit, if so what do you think?

JackD201 · « **Reply #46 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 05:29 am »

I've been using the Tentation for about a week now. They were evaluated against the rebook playback of my two favorite players, the one box Accuphase DP-78 and my Emmlabs CDSD/DCC2 combo. The Tentation is not a player that jumps out and begs for attention. It's quite the opposite. It tends to pull you in rather than hit you over the head and drag you in. I'd say it's strength lies in it's subtlety. It is very natural sounding being practically devoid of mechanical grit or electrical haze. It was pretty much that way out of the box. Yet it isn't colored the way say some CD players are that have tubes at the output stage.

It seems the way the Tentation deals with harshness is by just resolving the waveforms better instead of smoothing it over as is the case with the Zanden. Given the limitations of rebook on the resolution front, I suspect the proprietary algorithm has a lot to do with it. I also now suspect that the output stages of many CD players are overwhelmed by peak signals coming from their DAC chips leading to stridency that sounds an awful lot like hard clipping. Well, that's just a theory and not a very educated one, if I might say so myself but the Tentation never displays that kind of compressed/clipped behavior even with an orchestra that goes from 0 to 200 in 1/100th of a second.

In english, I'll try to explain it this way. In every disc I know quite well there are always parts when I know that harshness will rear its head. It was unnerving with the Tentation because as I would gird myself for those moments, the harshness never came out as badly as before. Some Pop CDs are beyond redemption but there were quite a few recordings that weren't actually as bad as I had earlier thought. It turns out that the jumble of confusion was just beyond the playback chain's ability to reproduce cleanly. In some instances the harsh confusion was simply replaced by individual musical threads. It took a good 3 or 4 hours but eventually I stopped flinching as I came to trust the Tentation.

Beethoven's Emperor Concerto performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra (Entangled Devotions - Pope Music) is a torture track if ever there was one. Gene Pope hates compression and his recording label is a casualty of the loudness wars. The dynamic range is so high that to enjoy his CDs you really need a very quite room and a system with copious amounts of dynamic headroom lest you be stuck with a remote in hand turning it up at soft passages and getting shellshocked when the loud ones break loose. Luckily I now have both a very quiet room and lots of juice. Unluckily Pope Music is reportedly no more.

During the quiet piano solos, I heard how the Tentation had presented the decay of individual piano strings. This is something I have only ever witnessed with very, very good LP playback on very highly resolving systems.

The Tentation is handicapped by a lack of functionality. It doesn't play SACDs and doesn't have the ability to accept digital signals unlike my two reference players. It is however in the same league with these two when it comes to rebook but surpasses them in the naturalness of definition and texture while giving up a slight bit of punch.

The Best CD player in the world? I honestly don't know. One of the best? A conservative maybe. The best I've heard? In the here and now. I'd say yes, by a few hairs but also at just a little more than half the price of my references. Fortunately my CD collection is many times larger than my SACD collection.

Zero · « **Reply #47 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 06:21 am »

That was a wonderful short synopsis Jack. Thanks for sharing.

jhm731 · « **Reply #48 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 08:49 am »

Jack-

Thanks for the info.

Spent some time listening to a friend's DCC2, so the Tentation must be pretty
good if you think it's a few hairs better.

He now uses a BADA, which he thinks is better than the DCC2.

Don't see much on the inside (see below) to make the Tentation worth $12K.

Compare the build quality to the $5K BADA's:

As you point out, the Tentation is handicapped by a lack of functionality. If
I was in the market for a CDP over $10K, I think I'd check out the Playback Designs MPS-5.

JackD201 · « **Reply #49 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 09:17 am »

It's a hair better than the DCC2 using the ATT Glass and linked master clock but I think quite a bit more than a hair using S/PDIF. I wasn't able to try AES/EBU as my Tascam Pro conked out a long time ago.

There's a BADA at a friend's house just minutes away. I'd love to do an AB of the two. The single box Eera would be going against the BADA and a Flatfish though so again price wise, I dunno.

I've heard a lot about the PB but haven't heard it. A friend from another forum says that the new X series Emm just stomped the PB into the ground but again you'd need to add 10 grand to get it.

I am so impressed with the Eera DAC that I am seriously hoping for a stand alone or a model with digital inputs. The DAC looks ready to receive 24/192 but I'm not holding my breath for Hi-Rez to be widely available. I've been holding my breath since I got my first 24/96 DAC is 1996 or something. I'm very blue now.

That functionality is something I enjoy with my Accuphase and Emms though where I feed them via Airtunes. As it stands, the accuphase will stay for DSD and Streaming and the Emm goes to the bedroom system.

I'm just happy my CD collection has a new lease on life. I've been listening to maybe 95% LP in the last three years. I also think that despite the Eera being very good, I'm not going to be quitting on analog.

As for the pics, no player looks impressive on the inside, well except Alex Paychev's maybe.

mikeg1 · « **Reply #50 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 03:27 pm »

I'm using the new Nova Physics Memory Player which can upsample 24 bit 96K hdtrack downloads to 32 bit wave files and align the bits and bites using the on board MP IDEAS program. I bet the Nova Physics MP would smoke the Tentation.

System: VSA Uni3, VSA Sig cables, Ayon Audio Triton, and Nova Physics MP.

jhm731 · « **Reply #51 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 05:36 pm »

Jack- If you get a chance to compare the BADA to the Tentation, please let us know your finding.

I agree with you on Hi-Rez availability. Some folks over on the Computer
Audiophile forum, like the BADA with the ART Legato USB-SPDIF Asynchronous Converter, which operates only at 44.1 kHz.

"As for the pics, no player looks impressive on the inside, well except Alex Paychev's maybe."

The Ayon CD-5 which costs less than the Tentation sure looks impressive inside:

some young guy · « **Reply #52 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 05:48 pm »

Quote from: jhm731 on 15 Oct 2010, 05:36 pm

"As for the pics, no player looks impressive on the inside, well except Alex Paychev's maybe."

That's my reference.

Zero · « **Reply #53 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 06:25 pm »

I dunno... I think the AMR CD77 looks fairly impressive.

JackD201 · « **Reply #54 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 08:06 pm »

Well guys, it sure looks mighty complicated but for someone that can't appreciate circuit design and layout, I really can't make anything of it much less be impressed

srb · « **Reply #55 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 08:40 pm »

Quote from: JackD201 on 15 Oct 2010, 08:06 pm

Well guys, it sure looks mighty complicated but for someone that can't appreciate circuit design and layout, I really can't make anything of it much less be impressed

What struck me was the perfectly symmetrical (mirror-image PCBs) dual-mono layout, substantial copper sheet (not foil) chassis lining, and what appears to be a heavy machined aluminum disc tray.

Steve

some young guy · « **Reply #56 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 09:44 pm »

This is still the most impressive transport mech. I've seen.

Fife · « **Reply #57 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 09:59 pm »

I would lean towards the Esoteric's and Accuphase's as the top CD Players

Esoteric K01

Accuphase DP700

some young guy · « **Reply #58 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 10:57 pm »

Here's the inside of my APL 2900. I think it can hold it's own with any of these players...

underdog64 · « **Reply #59 on:** 15 Oct 2010, 11:10 pm »

I have the Esoteric DV-60.My previous cd player:Lector cdp-7t smoked it badly.I had the silver transformer mod with ultraclock done at Reference Audio Mods and NOW it beats the what the Lector sounded like especially in PRAT.