Digital reproduction wise, I use a Modded sony scd-777es for a transport and an audiomeca enkianthus X dac for red book. (see my profile for my full system) I am EXTREMELY pleased with my system, but a shocking thing happened today. I was just messing around with my new $200 zenith hdtv upsampling dvd player (Much better picture than my old toshiba sd9200, but nowhere near my dvhs dtheater getup, but a PHENOMINAL value) and I popped in a CD. Now, my zenith feeds into my CAL CL2500 pre/pro and then into my joule pre; basically, the CAL functions as a DAC with digital volume. When the CD started playing, I couldn't believe how nice it sounded! Now, it didn't best my modded scd777es/audiomeca setup, but it still sounded very, very nice, certainly besting the modded sony by itself when playing red book. I then fed my sony into the cal as a transport, and the CAL shone even brighter, still not besting the enkianthus by any means, but very, very nice.
The CAL pre/pro can be found for around 1.5k, and based on my experience with even a cheap dvd player as a transport, it would make a fantastic bargain if it were just a dac. But, factor in the fact that the CAL functions very nicely as a pre-amp (not as nice as my joule by any means, but nice nonetheless) and does a marvelous job with dts/dd decoding, the price of 1.5k is a STEAL. The zenith dvd player is a steal as well, as it provides a very, very nice 1080i upsampled pic in via EITHER component or DVI out and obviously can function as a competant transport.
Has anyone else ever had an experience where they rediscovered an older piece of gear only to find how competitive it still is?
Jason
