I have to apologize in advance. There won’t be much detail in the reviews below. I had intended to properly review these items but never found the time. I’ll have even less time soon (I recently joined a different team at work that is way behind and working major overtime – I’m going from kernel work to CIFS work; if you know what that means then you understand my pain). Anyway, here are some totally personal, biased, and possibly useless reviews of the Resolution Audio Opus-21, the Audio Note CD 3.1x, the RAM CD Player (a modded Music Hall CD-25), and a modded Shanling CDT-200 (beautiful CD and 2-channel SACD player).
OK, I evaluated these the way I evaluate everything. I play tracks from “Jazz at the Pawn Shop” (for the clarinet, sax, and xylophone sounds), “Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite” (for the bass, sax, kick drum, and vocals) , Norah Jones CD (for her voice), and the Matrix Soundtrack (for insanely fast and deep bass and really grungy guitar sounds). Basically all the stuff I like.
First, all of the CD players are very good. They are not your run-of-the-mill low-end high-end audio gear. They are all good. But to be honest, I was looking for something that could beat the DAC that a have, an Analog Research Segue. So that was my criteria.
The first thing I tried was the Shanling CDT-100. I’ve written about this before so I won’t repeat myself here.
Next up was the Opus-21. I had a strange experience with it. When I first hooked it up a terrible noise came out of my speakers. This was on a Saturday. I sent an email to Resolution Audio, and minutes later they called me! We couldn’t find anything obviously wrong, and I had to run to dinner, so I just shut everything down and left the system off while I ate. When I came back I turned everything on and the scary noise was gone. I have no idea what was going on. Nothing like that had ever happened before with my system and has never happened since.
I let the system burn in for about 2 weeks and then started to listen to it. It sounded quite good but had some odd things about it. The sound was very open and extremely clean. But it did not sound natural. It was very pleasing in every way except that it was too clean. It’s like how in the real world there are germs and people get sick, but in an ideal world that would not happen. The Opus is a CD player for that ideal world, but in my world I want the music to sound like the world I live in. I want it to be real. It’s a great player but just not my cup of tea. Oh, the player has a split design with the transport in one box and the DAC in the other. For a $3000 player it was amazingly cheap looking. But it had absolutely the best shipping box I have ever seen. It was basically a small crate that was lined with some kind of foam padding. It was very easy to unpack (and very easy to repack when I sent it back).
Next was the Audio Note CD 3.1x. I bought this used from a guy on Audiogon and got a very good price. I really expected this to be the player I would stick with based on things I had heard about it. When I first hooked it up I was disappointed. The sound was quite warm. I like a bit of warmth, but this was too much. In every other way it sounded great. Played through the VMPS RM 1’s that I had, the warmth disappeared and the sound was very good, but only to the extent that the RM 1’s could deliver. I wanted a CD player that would work with my Tetras. The sound of this player is very lively, open, with lots of detail. It was fun and enjoyable to listen to, but the warmth bothered me. Again, not my cup of tea.
I decided next to try the RAM CD player, which is a Music Hall CD-25 modded by Dan Wright and sold by Response Audio. This was the best player that I had tried to this point. It is amazingly well made given its price point. I like its build, its display, its controls, and its remote better than any of the other players. After break-in I did a ton of listening and found the player to have a very quiet background, revealing lots of little details in music, and very natural tonal balance (not overly clean like the Opus-21 and not overly warm like the CD 3.1x). The bass was tight, fast, and tuneful. The presentation was a bit laid back. But it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I really like this CD player and really wanted to be satisfied with it, but I just wasn’t. I still have it though and can’t make up my mind what to do with it. I am quite attached to it!
At this point I decided to shoot for the moon. I ordered a modded Shanling CD-T200 from underwoodwally on Audiogon (Walter Lieberman). We spoke on the phone a few times and I really liked what I heard about the player. After a brief wait I had the player. Like its little brother, this player is BEAUTIFUL. Very, very well made. Makes the other players look cheap (well, not so much for the RAM CD Player). It also plays SACD (two channel only). After 200 hours of break-in I put it through its paces, and … was quite unhappy. The player was excellent but the tonal balance was off. Everything sounded kind of dull. I found myself still listening to my DAC, but with a beautiful transport! But as much as I like my DAC, I wanted something better. I was looking for something through this whole saga that I couldn’t describe, but I knew that I was NOT hearing it! A couple more weeks passed and I entertained thoughts of selling the Shanling and using the RAM CD Player as a transport (and possibly upgrading it with further mods). Then I decided to listen again to the Shanling, and OH MY GOD! I have NEVER, EVER heard such good sound! It must have needed more time to break-in! The sound is glorious! Whatever it is I was looking for, it is here in abundance! Thank God!! I was going crazy trying to find whatever it was I was looking for.
I got some of Wayne’s Inline Bybee Purifier thingies and a GW Labs jitter reducer, which I had ordered before the change in the Shanling. I was going to see if I could get my DAC to step up to the sound I wanted. So I did a lot of testing of those things with my DAC and also tried out the Purifiers with the Shanling. The jitter reducer and the Bybees made a very noticeable improvement in the sound of my DAC, but it still fell considerably short of the Shanling. Add the Purifiers to the Shanling plus the clock upgrade I will be getting soon, and I have to say I have found my CD player!
I guess that is the end of my story. I’m sorry I don’t have more audiophile jargon in here. I’ve reached a point where I just don’t have the patience to analyze endlessly. I just listen for the things I care about. I don’t care much about soundstage and imaging. What I care absolutely most about is tonal balance. If it’s not highly realistic then I don’t like it.
As usual, this is all just my opinion and may not at all match your impressions of the same equipment under identical conditions.
