CD Player/Transport Reviews

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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Wadia 850 CD player
John Atkinson  |  May 02, 1998  |  0 comments
Back in my bass-player days in the 1970s, I used to do a regular cabaret gig, providing musical support for sundry British stand-up comic acts. I flashed back on those days when I recently watched Fierce Creatures, the John Cleese/Jamie Lee Curtis/Kevin Kline/Michael Palin vehicle, on satellite. There, playing the part of a zookeeper, was pint-size comedian Ronnie Corbett, whom I backed a few times. (He always bought the band a bottle of Scotch—you remember stuff like that!) Ronnie used to open his act with the old "They said Thomas Edison was crazy...they said Henry Ford was crazy...they said Albert Einstein was crazy..." gag, which ends with "They said my Uncle Charlie was crazy...actually, my Uncle Charlie was crazy!"
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Audio Research CD2 CD player
Wes Phillips  |  Apr 01, 1998  |  First Published: Apr 02, 1998  |  0 comments
A few nights ago, John Atkinson and I played host to a speaker designer and a turntable manufacturer. We were all chewing over the 1998 Consumer Electronics Show, talking about different systems we'd heard there and speculating as to which designs would be around for the long haul. The speaker designer said he'd heard no truly bad sound at the Show. Nods all around the table—none of us had. The turntable manufacturer asked if any of us could recall hearing any spectacularly bad products recently. We all shook our heads.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Krell KAV-300cd CD player
Wes Phillips  |  Dec 11, 1997  |  0 comments
You'd be hard-pressed to find a company more protective of its reputation than Krell. At a recent meeting of the Academy for the Advancement for High End Audio and Video, a motion was made to replace the phrase "High End" with the more purely descriptive "High Performance." Krell's CEO, Dan D'Agostino, objected—while he knew the description fit his products, he wasn't sure about those from some of the other members.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Mark Levinson No.39 CD player
Wes Phillips  |  Nov 26, 1997  |  0 comments
My next-door neighbor bought a late-'70s Porsche 924 last week, and I'm really glad he did. For one thing, it adds a little class to the 'hood—my 1984 Grand Wagoneer's peeling "wood paneling" is far more typical of the vehicles in my part of town. And Eric is just so obviously thrilled to own a piece of the legend—a real Teutonic driving machine.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Rega Planet CD player
Sam Tellig  |  Jun 04, 1997  |  0 comments
At last—a CD player from a company that doesn't like CD.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Mark Levinson No.37 CD transport & No.36S D/A converter
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 25, 1997  |  0 comments
We are now well past the era in which every review of digital playback equipment had to begin with an apology for the medium. CD replay performance may, in fact, now be bumping up against a glass ceiling. But that doesn't discourage high-end audio manufacturers from trying to advance the art, and tempt audiophiles (at least those among us who are not hopeless digiphobes) out of our minds.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Mark Levinson No.31.5 Reference CD transport
John Atkinson  |  Oct 26, 1996  |  0 comments
If there is a component category that causes the "objectivists" in the audio community to splutter uncontrollably over their cups of herbal tea, it is the high-end CD transport. For in their "bits is bits" world, all a transport is required to do is recover the digital data from a disc—much like a grown-up cousin of your computer's $25 floppy-disk drive. The thought of paying up to $10,000 for something so humble—and, in their eyes, unnecessary—typifies what these blinkered folks regard as the insanity of the High End.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsHistorical
California Audio Labs Tempest CD player
John Atkinson  |  Oct 01, 1995  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1986  |  0 comments
"A thing divine—for nothing natural I ever saw so noble."
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Radio Shack Optimus CD-3400 portable CD player
Sam Tellig, Various  |  Jun 30, 1995  |  First Published: Jun 30, 1994  |  0 comments
"You are not going to believe this."
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
C.E.C. TL 0 CD transport
Jonathan Scull  |  May 18, 1995  |  0 comments
Fantasy review time. I first heard about the C.E.C. TL 0 in the May '94 Stereophile (Vol.17 No.5), in Audio Mogul Richard Schram's Manufacturer's Comment to my review of the C.E.C. TL 1. I wasn't sure if he was kidding when he threatened the world with a cost-no-object $17,500 CD transport. Just what we all need!
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Linn Karik/Numerik CD player
Robert Harley  |  Jan 28, 1995  |  First Published: Jan 28, 1992  |  0 comments
When the Compact Disc was first introduced nearly ten years ago, many were critical of the sound quality from this medium that promised "Perfect Sound Forever." To many sensitive listeners digital playback was a travesty that paled by comparison to even modestly priced turntable/arm/cartridge combinations. Ironically, those listeners who first praised CD sound have been forced to recant when confronted by the huge improvements in digital to analog conversion (and A/D conversion) seen in the past few years.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsJ. Gordon HoltHistorical
Sony CDP-101 Compact Disc Player
J. Gordon Holt  |  Jan 23, 1995  |  First Published: Jan 23, 1983  |  0 comments
Our long-awaited laser-audio disc player (usually called the CD, for "Compact Disc") finally arrived, along with a real bonanza of software: two discs—a Polygram classical sampler of material from Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips, and a Japanese CBS recording of Bruckner's 4th Symphony, with Kubelik.
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