What im about to say could so easily be dismissed as someone with no listening experience or someone who really hasn't heard what is possible - i have been a lower end audiophile for about 16 years - meaning i have purchased gear and tweaks that range in the $10 to $3000 realm. occasionally i have splurged on a higher end piece (vac renaissance amplifier 30/30) -
I have owned gear from arcam, music fidelity, creek, rotel, polk, spendor, kef, paradigm, yamaha, denon, grado, cambridge, xlo, tara labs, naim, gallo, california audio labs, diapson, avalon, cary, wellboune labs, antique sound labs, cayin, jm labs, ps audio, adcom, alpha core, audio alchemy, audiolab, bedini, cyrus, digital phase, grado, golden tube, jadis, jean-marie reynaud, kimber, klipsch, magnepan, monster, n.e.w, parasound, red wine, rega, toshiba, sonus faber, sony, sound dynamics, vibrapod and im sure i have forgotten a few.
One piece of equipment - that has actually touched me over the last 8 months - well it is actually two combined units
The Polk audio i-sonic and the cambridge 840c cd player (combined)
In other words I feed the cambridge into the inputs in the back of the polk so that the cambridge is decoding and the sound is coming from the polk. In all my years with so much equipment i have never been so touched by the
tone coming form this combo.
The polk
http://isonic.polkaudio.com/index.php doesn't image, or have a soundstage, or any of the audiophile type qualities. But what it does have in spades is an equisite tone that i have in all my years listening have never really expreienced so consistently.
I know this is hard to believe - but unless you have heard this combo and the tone that it is offered - you probably think im nuts.
One of the things i find addictive more than anything in audio is tone. (i never realized this)
What really looks like a tabletop radio (but don't dismiss it - you will totally miss the boat) is really an incredible room filling experience that i find quite magical time after time.
The i-sonic by itself also sounds very good and sounds better than half the stuff i have owned or listened to - but the real magic comes when you combine this with the cambridge. I have no doubt that other cd players or dacs would probably sound magical as well.
Im not sure anyone would deem the combo i have - practical or logical - but im telling you this is one of the most incredible sounding combos. In addition my denon turntable - i can feed into the the polk and it too has equisite tone and im sure even a better turntable would blow me out the door.
Im ranting - but i can no longer keep this to myself. - if i could have people over to listen to this - i know they would have their mouths permanently opened wide.
thanks for letting me ramble
smargo
