CDX vc CDS2

Posted by: louis_lx on 10 January 2001

Pros & cons while upgrading from a CD3...

Rest of the system: 72 + 140 + Rega XEL

Posted on: 10 January 2001 by Martin Payne

I have upgraded through CD2, CDX and now CDS-II+CDPS. This with 52/6x135s/Isobariks.

When I sold the CD2 I heard it (cold) against the CD3 in 72/hi/250/Monitor Audio system. No contest - better in every way. Bigger, cleaner, clearer, tighter, more informative and involving, more depth, better bass. Immediately obvious. The CDX is even clearer and better layered than the CD2. Also, the CDX through 72/Hi/250/Isobariks held it's own very well, giving a powerful, musical performance.

My CDS-II is an upgraded CDS-I with the original power supply (perhaps 70% of XPS performance) and black Burndy. Having heard the CDX/XPS against CDS-II/XPS in the past I was concerned that the CDS-II might be soft, and was more than prepared to take it back to the shop.

Within a week of burn-in it was clear that the CDS-II did things that were completely beyond the aspirations of the bare CDX. Note shape, instrumental separation, musical interplay, fine detail in the bass and throughout the frequency range, dynamics that can genuinely startle if unprepared. All this with an unforced presentation.

By comparison, the CDX is unsubtle, two dimensional and unable to play with speed or genuine dynamics. Bear in mind that the XPS powered CDS-II is reckoned to be considerably better again.

Now, don't get me wrong - the CDX is a good player, but the CDS-II fully justifies it's price with it's performance, at least in the context of 82 or 52 type systems. Having recently heard 82/Super/135s swapped out for a NAIT2 (with SBLs and CDS-II), a lot of the basic quality still came through.

cheers, Martin

P.S. after a couple of months the CDS-II benefits greatly from a couple of hours powered down - this tightens the sound up nicely.

Posted on: 11 January 2001 by NigelP

Loius,

As always you should listen for yourself but I can tell you what I found recently. I am a 52/Supercap user with my LP12 front-end. I am now just venturing into the world of CD but I need a pretty special machine so I recently auditioned through a 52/Supercap/NAP500 into B&W Nautilus. Here's what I found:

Linn CD12
Awesome. As close as I've ever heard to music from CD. You can even adjust the jitter manually to get the best sound. £12,000 is a little much for what you get though. I reckon it's worth around £10,000 for what you get.
CDS-II
A lovely sounding machine that just gets better when it's burned in. I really felt this to be worth the asking price but not in the same league as the CD12.
CDX
Not good through the system I heard. This sounded very 2-dimesional and I couldn't live with this. It would be interesting to see what it sounds like through your current system.
CDX with XPS
I couldn't believe the transformation! This machine combination isn't quite up to the CDS-II but "it aint half good".

My vote is to go for the CDX/XPS and Hicap the 72 (Supercap if you can afford it). The CDX/XPS sounded great in the 52/500 combo and I am sure will give you a lot of pleasure until you can step to the CDS-II later.

Cheers,

Nigel

Posted on: 11 January 2001 by David Antonelli

I've never heard the CD 12 but would love to. I have a bit of a hard time with a) the price, and b) the manual dither(?) (not jitter as I'm not sure why anyone would want to adjust their music by adding jitter to their music unless they are masochists) adjustment. This seems in line with the old "tone" controls and graphic equalizers that naim did so much to remove from high end audio. I can see somoen wanting to add warmth to a bad recording to soften the edges, but then is this the musical truth (is there such a thing?)? The mid range Rotel CD players sound fine and have such an adjustment feature, but at the price point of a CD 12 it seems a bit unecessary. Perhaps Linn needs this feature to mask poor performance in other areas?

Anyway, I'd love to hear it and I'm sure I will be impressed with it. Just a few reservations.

dave◊

Posted on: 11 January 2001 by NigelP

You say dither, I say jitter. Let's call the whole thing off. Try listening to David Gray's new album and you'll see what I mean!

Posted on: 11 January 2001 by Andy S

quote:
You say dither, I say jitter.

Dither is adding 1s and 0s in the lowest bits before you convert to analog(ue) to get a better signal to noise ratio (IIRC).

Jitter is the difference in time that two clock edges can statistically be out from a nominal (true) value.

In CD players, jitter is minimised but different dithering algorithms (a "feature" of the chips used) can be used to alter the way the system responds to different (low level) signals.

I think you'll find that Dave is correct WRT the CD12.

Andy

Posted on: 12 January 2001 by NigelP

Yes dither's what I mean. Can't even blame it on a typo but it was a long time ago when I did my electronics degree! The CD12 still sounded good but not worth the £12K.

Posted on: 12 January 2001 by David Antonelli

Nigel,
Sorry if I came across the wrong way. I wasn't trying to be a forum cop. In fact, you have one up on me in that you've actually heard the CD 12! The only player I've used that has adjustable dither is the Rotel 971, which isn't bad at all for the 900 canadian price tag. Punchy, articulate, a bit warm sounding, but overall a very sound contender for the best buy onder 1000 in canada. I'm not as happy with the new cambridge player as I was with the CD4 SE, but this would be my other choice.

But adjustable dither in a 30 K player? It just doesn't seem right. The engineers should have taken care of that. As I understand it helps retrieve low frequency data that would otherwise be discarded or ignored. But that's as much as I know. I see enough data and plots in my job as a scientist, that I try to be as non-technical as possible a music lover. All those curves in stereophile may mean something to some people, but I just shut off my mind when I see them. For me music is more for enjoyment and less for data analysis, although I am not disparaging those who are into such things.

Finally got news on my Wilson Benesch ACT 2 speakers. Due in early March, solid chery and carbon fiber with the 24 KHz (uh, oh, data! I've already contradicted myself) superrevelator scanspeak tweeter. I can't wait!

Dave7

Posted on: 15 January 2001 by Martin M

Dither is a low level random signal (ie noise) applied to the Least Significant Bit in a D/A convertor. It has the effect one decorrelating quantization noise from the signal. It actaully makes the player a little noisier (by about 3 dB) however this noise is subjectively more benign. The adjustable dither as actually a feature of PMD 100 digital filter - the same as that in the CDS2. Its just that Linn have made the adjustable dither user accessible and Naim haven't. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, I can hardly imagine you'll be rushing to the dither button to adjust it for different CDs. Anyway most CDs are already dithered either deliberately or by the fact they are analogue recordings which pumps a shed load of noise into the DACs in any case.

Posted on: 15 January 2001 by NigelP

Dave - you didn't come across as a forum cop. I was just playing on words earlier and it is dither that we are talking about. Thanks for putting me straight. Good news on your Wilsons - let me know how they sound.

Martin - thanks for the precise description and quite right, I am not going to mess about with this when I want to play CD. Afterall I don't do anything different each time I reach for the vinyl.

Lastly, getting down to the last candidates on my selection of a CD player. CD12 eliminated on the basis of price - great machine but not that great! Meridian eliminated, although technically competant and accurate, not musical for me. Also their dealer bombarded me with digital amplification and suggested that I would get a better sound from a Rega 3 with RB300 being digital converted and amplified than I do with my LP12/Lingo/Ittok/Klyde/Prefix into the 52/500. Yeah right! Posting a new chat on this one.
The Candidates
The Naim CDX/XPS CDS-II/XPS and the Marantz SA-1. Listening this weekend and will make my selection.

Posted on: 15 January 2001 by David Antonelli

Nigel,

Tell us all what happens with your cd player hunt. They are all great players and should make you happy.

As for adjustable dither it seems still like a strange gimick and not the sort of thing that you would want on a top end player. Imagine if every time you bought a case of Chateau Margaux they gave you a little packet of powdered tannins so you could adjust the tannin level, and hence the "structure', of your overpriced wine. The absurdity in this is that you expect the wine maker to take care of this on that level of quality and give you a product he feels is the ultimate expression of the "terroir" and his wine making philosophy. And likewise, if Linn really had a "vision" of what a CD player should sound like they ought to stick with it and maximize the performance of the chip in the CD 12 to what they think is the optimal expression of the "linn sound". But I guess Linn does have a vision: to be the B and O of the high end. So I guess to that end they are successful. Yet in spite of these complaints I wouldn't kick a CD-12 out of my system until I gave it a good hard listen.

I just did the unplug-replug routine on my whole system. Nice difference. More detail and softeness. It seems that every 3-4 months I have to re-make the connections on all my power chords and interconnects.

Dave.

Posted on: 15 January 2001 by NigelP

Will do Dave - added the Wadia 860x to the line-up. The proof will be in the listening!

Nigel

Posted on: 16 January 2001 by Adrian F.

I heard the Marantz at a small exibithion. It is a massive tank-like built device for 12500 SFR.

Although it was in a very uncommon setup for me (big Accuphase Integrated for 11K SFR with Piega Sat Sub System) it doesn't scratch the lacquer on my CDS2.

Even a CDX/XPS should be considerably better whether in standard CD or SACD mode.
Btw. it took ages to load the combined CD in one or another mode...

Clearly on "the round-side" - would be interesting to hear it with flat-electronics though?

happy listening

Adrian

Posted on: 17 January 2001 by NigelP

Wadia is now owned by Audio Video Research Inc from Ann Arbor. Anybody know them? Check out the Web site:

http://www.wadia.com

Nigel

Posted on: 17 January 2001 by Frank Abela

I don't know what the 2nd hand market is like in Portugal. Here in Britain, I think I would advise you to go for a CDX/82/supercap as opposed to the CDS2. It would be possible since you would get some money back for your CD3/72. This would improve things in many ways and provide you with a less expensive upgrade path.

Also, if you're in a big room and need more power, you could actually change the CD3/72/140 for CDX/82/hicap/250 for a similar cost. The result would be much more capable than the CDS2/72/140 in my view.

Regards,
Frank.