£2k to blow

Tony

Here is my suggested route based on good recent second hand gear.

1. Sell your CD3 you will get about £450

2. You now have £2450 to play with

3. buy s/h CDX say £1700

3 buy s/h SBL's for 750

you have spent you money

sell your old speakers

Buy more cd's

or decent rack such as Mana/hutter or whatever takes your fancy.

Regards

Mick Ps if you buy hutter do it quietly or expect loads of abuse from viciferous Mana philes.

Just go to your local record shop, in a few weeks their'll have their Christmas sales, last year HMV had a deal where if you bought £100 worth of CD's or vinyl you got £20 off. I spent about £500 and got all The Doors albums i didn't have, all Led Zeppelin's albums i didn't have, all Iron Madians albums i didn't have, all The Beatles albums i didn't have, plus alot of other stuff. Best £500 i ever spent, much, much ,much better than any component upgrade ever, of course you could spend one grand on music and the other on upgrades, if you do this try and get 2 Hi-caps for the CD3.5 and 72, you maybe able to this if you buy s/h, this would be a large improvement.

Simon - Mad About Physics

Tony

Just been through some dems to help me with a similar situation.

I'd suggest:

Sell CD3 for about 450 and 140 for about 350

Buy a CDX if you can get one s/hand (for about 1700) or so.

This leaves 1100, which I'd spend on a HiCap (450)and a 180 (650).

I just went from a 140 to a 180 on Abbotts and was amazed by the improvement - much more than I thought. The 140 produced somewhat sloppy, loose bass in my room; the 180 is tight and more dynamic.

In fact, if you can't get a s/hand CDX, I'd try to get a 3.5/HiCap s/hand instead and then still get the Hi/180 amp combo.

Richard

System will seem more powerful, be sweeter sounding, more detailed, much deeper bass. A no brainer.

#2 is upgrading cd player.

--Eric

tony,

buy a turntable (LP12, rega P9, P25...) and some LPs !!!

cheers
jean-christophe

Tony

Hey - Hi again!

Sounds like the source but ...

.. I suggest you listen very carefully to a CDX. I recently did this and decided not to buy one. Saying that, I also listened to a CDS2 and am now saving hard!

Seriously - the CDX sound is good, but the gap between the 3.5+hicap (shame you haven't got a 3.5 instead of a 3), although big-ish, combined with the slight 'harsh' sound of the CDX talked me out of it. Other people have said as much - though many others love their CDX's.

I would seriously suggest you have a really, really good listen - along with the amp changes you would also be able to afford with the 'X. Think about long term listening prospects. Could you live with the sound for, say, 5 hours a day?

IMHO I think in general the 3/3.5/5 is a no-brainer for the money and so is the CDS2 and predecessors, but the CDX is a bit more of a "personal taste" thing when compared to some of the competition at this sort of price.

This is really a matter of personal taste - and this is just a bit of a warning. It may well be that you just love it!

If you do get to do the above, I'd like to know what you thought.

Jonathan

"We're just making plans for Nigel"

It's a big of a 'consumable' rather than a 'consumer durable' - but what about some cocaine? I hear it can make the music sound better ??

Jonathan

(I AM joking )