I went through quite a few cdp's before I got this one. This was going to be my "lifetime" cdp. And in terms of the "ultimate" (for me) it was.
The thing is that now, I'm totally hooked on vinyl. This cd player is overkill for the few times I listen to cd's these days which is mostly as background music when I'm cooking or doing other stuff.
It was hailed as quite a bargain for what it offered when new at a price of $1595:
Outstanding Features
Top loading vacuum tube machine with sliding door and disc clamp
Rugged and beautiful aluminum chassis
Premium Philips CDM-12.10 transport and CD7 II servo system
Single ended and balanced analog outputs with OPA627 op amps
S/PDIF RCA coaxial and AES/EBU balanced digital outputs
Advanced Burr-Brown PCM 1794 D/A converter chip --one for each channel--and SCR4192 upsampling chip
Selectable 24 bit / 192 kHz upsampling
Dual transformers for analog and digital power supplies
Specifications
Frequency response: 20Hz – 20kHz – 0.5dB
Output voltage: 2.2V
Dynamic range: 100dB
Signal to noise ratio: 105dB
Distortion: < 0.05%
Cross talk: > 96dB
Dimensions (L x W x H): 380 x 482 x 128 mm
Net weight: ~13kg
The sound is very very nice. I was astonished at how much better this player was than the others I had used: vintage Kyoceras, Regas, NAD's and then a new Emotiva ERC-2 (the Emotiva came closest, btw).
It's in what I'll call an 8/10 condition only because I'm the second owner and there's small (~2mm) scratch on the top. It was hard to catch in the pics, but you can see it in the last photo. Otherwise it looks perfect at least to my (admittedly quickly aging) eyes. (You'll see a small "marred" spot at the back of the top, but it's actually where one of the original packing decals was located. I was just too lazy to remove it with some googone.)
I bought this from Wally at Underwood HiFi September of 2012. I've put about 50 hours on it since then.
I have all the original packaging, the manual and the remote (which I never used). It is double boxed, and will be packed into a 3rd box for shipping. I'm a packing fanatic.
Check out my feedback at audiogon, ebay and audiokarma at wes_in_va
$500 plus shipping, we split the paypal costs.
