i've just returned from a couple of demo's at Radlett Audio in St Albans and Ultimate Sonics in north london, mainly i was demoing cd players however as neither shop could accurately duplicate my system it was more of a listen to some systems.... music for the demos centered around the blue man group - time to start & i feel love Safri Duo - Crazy benny Gomez - shot shot & in our gun Tricky - black steel Ozrics - holohedron joss stone - the chokin' kind EST - mingle in the mincing machine jackyl - the lumberjack. + some others. 1st up was Radlett Audio (RA) i mainly wanted to have a listen to the Tube Technologies Fusion 64, basicly a chord dac 64, without the ram buffer and with a transport built in. they also lined up a cd5i and a cdx2 with naim 202 / Hicap / 250.2 amps. speakers were pmc ob1's (i think, the tall floor standers anyway). first off i played the 2 blue man group songs and the safri duo on the cd5i. basicly what i got what i was expecting, slightly recessed bass and indistinct treble but rythmicly good. the sound was confined to each speaker, mirroring what dom experienced but not what i heard from mikes so i suspect the sample today was very cold. moving swiftly on to the TT fusion 64. This immediately gave a soundstage where there was none before, also it loved vocals, joss stone was just so emotional. Unfortunately the heavily rhythmic blue man group and safri duo were not kind to it at all with the bass getting very murky. it could on occasion get a bit agressive with the treble, surprising, as it has a class a valve output stage which i'd not immediately associate with this behaviour. also there seemed to be an amount of low level noise or hash which was very stongly highlighted when the cdx2 came out to play. The cdx2 had a more wall of sound aproach to the soundstage rather than the fusion's more traditional soundstage. it tended to hang the music behind the speakers where the Fusion moved things forward. To be honest i preferred the fusion in this respect but the cdx2 just killed it in the bass, bass lines were taut and identifieable where on the fusion they were a blurr. Also as i mentioned the cdx2 produced the cliched 'inky black' background in a very noticable way - even the moon mk1 i listened to later on didn;t match it in this respect. That said the cdx2 really didn;t seem like a big step beyond what i have at home, whether this was to do with the amps, the omega cable i use or what i don;t know but on the day it didn;t do it. So neither of these really impressed me enough to (potentially) spend money. back in the car to drive down to Ultimate sonics in north london. now a couple of people here have had dealings with them before and have experienced difficulties so i was 'en guarde' however the guys (and girls) there were nothing but polite and helpful so i can only surmise personality conflicts - they even had decent brewed coffee. I went here initially to hear a mk1 sim audio eclipse player - similar to robbos but an older version with an hdcd filter that does the sound no favours at all. fortunately this can be bypassed by linking the digital in and out on the back of the player - the difference this makes is not subtle! and i suspect i'd run it in this configuration if i went for this. unfortunately the system was even further away from my own than that at RA, with the eclipse running through a top end edge battery pre amp and edge laser biased power amp. speakers were big silverlines (not sure of the model). there was also a PS audio conditioner hooked up to the sim but i'm not sure about the amps. the sound was a very good mix of the Fusion and the CDX2, rythmicly it had both beat whilst the soundstage was better than the fusions. Detail is the overriding thing i remember from hearing the eclipse mk2 before and the mk1 is no different, however there is a level of low level noise / hash that can obscure some detail (this wasn;t the case with the mk2)- the cdx was letting me hear, clearly, little bits of the mix on BMG's version of i feel love (some echoing vocals at very low volume levels near the end) which neither the eclipse or the fusion let me hear well. i spent about 2 hours listening to the eclipse and couldn;t really fault it for much except the lack of ultimate detail the cdx2 showed. on the way out of the shop i was chatting to the bloke there and he mentioned the new 'g' range of edge amps that had just been released ('only' 6k the pair instead of the 17k for the ones i'd been listening to :eek: ). low and behold they were hooked up to some mid range silverline speakers and a cec tl2x transport and cec DX71 dac. the guy (senanu i think!) put on some audiophile sounding stuff and it didn;t sound bad... he then let me put on the safri duo.. well bloody hell it sounded good, a very liquid top end with no harshness and a very driving bottom end with plenty enough punch for me. unfortunately i had to leave so i didn;t get a chance to see if the BMG i feel love track had the detail dug out of it but i definately want to go back and have another listen to that one. the only problem is that the tl2x / dx71 is about 4 grand, way above my budget - but - cec do, do a cheaper transport and the dx71 is variable output...... and i've seen both at a reduced price and senanu is willing to 'deal'...... to be continued.... cheers julian