well, the search for a new cd player continues. this time i phoned the hi-fi guy in brighton and heatherdale audio in worthing and arranged to go an see their wares. first off was the hi-fi guy to see a sony sacd-1, wadia 850 and bat vk5se + whatever else he had in. when i got there the shop was shut so i wandered off down towards the sea, had a look in the brighton museum, looked at the old pier's wreck and other bits and bobs. tried phoning the hfi guys mobile but it was switched off. walked back up to the shop, it was open but only the music section. hung around a bit more but couldn't really be arsed waiting any longer so he won;t be seeing any of my money. so on to heatherdale to have a listen to the cec tl51 and dx 51 / dx 71. the system was the above components an ayre pre and power amp and thiel speakers. again not really comparable to my own naim gear but pretty ok stuff. Also i mentioned i wanted to take a listen to the ayre cx-7 at some point, he had one in, so he connected that up too. initially i listened to the cec 51 / 71 combo. it wasn;t quite as punchy as the tl 2x i heard last weekend but the circumstances aren't really comparable - very different speakers / amps and locations. the detail was the same although the background noise floor wasn;t as quiet as i remember. that said the cec's were brand new out of the box that morning so were no way run in. next up was the arye cx-7, this sounded very refined, balanced, neutral, detailed and nice. lots of soundstage depth but not really my cup of tea. so we went back to the cec but with the 51 dac this time this was a bit harder and less detailed than the 71 but grooved quite nicely. back to the 71 for another listen and things had improved slightly, there was more bass punch, the background seemed quieter and the treble was smooth but still detailed - more running in would help here i'm sure . one of my test tracks - tricky's black steel is very difficult to get right, there is a rhythm in the song but it's buried under a ton of off tempo noise and the main tempo seems to change several times during the song. none of the other players has been able to get it quite right ususally because of an abundance of treble forwardness. the cec did, it set out each rhythmic layer so that your could hear how they worked together while still making them seem part of the same song. another test track is blue man group's cover of i feel love. as i mentioned in the previous thread this has some very quiet echoey singing behind the main singing and percussive finale. the cec laid this bare too, not quite as well as the sim did but quite impressively all the same (and the sim was running through 20+k's of amps, power regenerators and speakers) all in all the cec was not quite as impressive as i first thought (although my first impressions were based on the next transport up and that one was fully run in through cracking amps) that said for the price being asked it's certainly in the top 3 cdp's i've listened to on my travels so far. the current positions are. 1= cec 51/71 1= sim eclipse mk1 3 naim cdx2 4 ayre cx-7 5 TT fusion 64 i'd rate the cec combo slightly over the sim at present purely down to the fact that the cec has switchable inputs and internal volume control whereas to sound it;s best the sim has to use it's only digital in to bypass the hdcd chip. soundwise the sim has more detail but is slightly harsh in the treble whereas the cec is nearly as detailed without the harshness. hopefully sometime in the comming week i'll get a listen to the bow zz8 (although there are some issues with the one i'll be listening to but we'll see). also on the cards are the metronome t1-i signature and possibly the oracle cd1500 (if one gets into the country and i remember to call the guy) to be continued..... cheers julian
