Help Me spend more money

Folks,
Many thanks for prev advice regarding cables but in a continual quest to lose money on forever changing hifi, I am picking up a 2nd hand Advantage CD1 tomorrow to audition.

The player has a dig volume control allowing me to plug directly to Power Amp (Sugden Masterclass) plus a remote - lazy, I know.

Am using a Benchmark Dac1 at the moment in Pre-amp mode but do find the sound a little lacking in weight even into the Sugden and LV Avatar IIs - however I do find the top end and dynamics do seem to complement the softer amp and speakers rather well.
I hoped the addition of a Meridian 500 Transport would add a little more weight/fullness but it seems to have had the oposite effect in this case.

Anyway, any thoughts on the Advantage CD1 ? I know the S1 is favoured rather well round these parts - how does the older model compare - what can I expect ? - If anyone can save me driving an hour to pick it up, great !

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

Steve

 

I found the CD1 it gave very similar results to my old Wadia/Perpetual Tech combination.

Used to drive powers directly you get a big, dynamic and spacious sound, tonal accuracy was spot on. I enjoyed it quite a lot and would definitely drive an hour to collect one for a demo it if I was in the market for one

 

Thanks for that Phillip, that's exactly the kind of results I'm trying to achieve.

Any idea how old these are ?, information is scarce to say the least on the website!

 

Not sure on the age of them, not that that really matters, my current CD/DAC is 9 years old and running just fine.

 

Only have experience of the S1 (which I bought wot with it being a grand beastie)..
if it's anything like as good as that it should be much better than a Meridian 500, with or without Benchmark DAC..
However, I also think the S1 sounds better through a pre-amp rather than straight into the power - seems to give more weight and body ( I know Mr. WM says the opposite!), at least into my speakers..
I'm afraid to say, though, if it was me I'd be ditching the Avatars as well as they don't help too much in the bottom end stakes, despite having a glorious rest of the frequency spectrum!!

 

Picked the CD1 up today - got to say it's a bit of a beast in the flesh so first impressions were good. Unfortunately it went downhill from there.

Got it home and hooked straight up to amp. The onboard volume control doesn't seem to be working and appears to be stuck on max gain - really glad I found this out after I pressed play !

Using the remote to adjust the volume seems to be working (output level is changing on the display) but there's no change in volume. So my question is -is this faulty or am I missing something ? - Perhaps there's an internal switch for fixed or variable ? Dealer couldn't really help as he only had it as a PX.

To top it off My Dac 1 couldn't lock on to a S/PDIF signal from it so couldn't try it as a tranport either !

Any thoughts appreciated or its back to T Wells on Tuesday.

Cheers

Steve

 

clean the sockets and your cables before looking at anything else.

 

Check for a set of varriable out sockets on the back of the cdp [a la quad 99cdp]

 

Cheers fellas,

Like Zanash said, my only thought is that perhaps you can only get a variable signal by using the balanced outputs on it? - Is that likely though?

Hooked it up to my Denon AV amp last night and got it running but difficult to tell whether it's any good though....