April Music Aura Note V2 CD receiver
Described by manufacturer April Music as an "all-in-one music center," the Aura Note Version 2 ($2500) is a 125Wpc integrated amplifier with a built-in CD player, USB DAC, and FM tuner. The Aura Note is further enhanced by a Bluetooth receiver, a pair of line-level output jacks, and a headphone jack.
The hackneyed but not inappropriate comparison to a Swiss Army knife comes to mindbut where that well-loved tool does a great many things with less than perfection, I've now heard the Aura Note V2 do at least two different things well enough that no excuses need be made on its behalf.
Arcam Alpha 9 CD player
Recently, we've seen the digital "horsepower" race accelerate with the arrival of digital sources and devices with 24-bit and 96kHz sampling capability. Much of this has been spurred by the 24/96 labels emblazoned on the newer DVD players—and, within the purer confines of the audio community, by high-end DACs with this same ability. Indeed, it's possible that the dCS">http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/259">dCS Elgar DAC, near and dear to John Atkinson's heart and a perennial Class A selection in Stereophile's "Recommended Components," performs so well with standard 16-bit/44.1kHz sources because its wider digital bandwidth permits greater linearity within the more restricted range of regular CDs.
Arcam Alpha MCD 6-disc CD changer
Think about it for a second: If you could buy a six-disc CD changer that sounded every bit as good and was built just as well as a similarly priced single-disc player, would you be interested?
Arcam Delta 170 CD Transport
The Arcam Delta 170 is one of the first examples of an entirely new product category: CD transports. The concept of different CD transports having different sonic qualities is vexing. It is a simple matter to prove that the bit stream contains identical data from virtually any CD transport (see "Industry Update," Vol.12 No.8). According to Arcam, development of the Delta 170 was spurred by audible differences among transports heard by dealers, customers, and Arcam staff. The possibility that CD transports have their own sonic signatures is intriguing.
Arcam FMJ CD23 CD player
It is so tempting.
Arcam FMJ CD33 CD player
"Commoditization leads to the death of a specialty industry!" Hearing this at what I'd anticipated would be a sleep-inducing seminar on marketing, I pricked up my ears. The speaker was management guru Tom Peters, author of the best-selling In Search of Excellence and The Pursuit of WOW!. "Once your product is commoditized, all that is left to compete on is price," Peters continued, as I frantically scrawled down his comments, "and a small company will always lose to the big guns on price!"
Arcam Solo CD receiver
Here we are, back to the Arcam I know and love: a company that not only invents good products, but good product categories as well. Like the Arcam Black Box of the 1980s, which gave so many people fits at the time—yet which, once you heard it, made good musical sense. It made good marketing sense, too: With that one stroke, teensy, weird, nestled-away-in-the-English-countryside Arcam did nothing less than create the domestic market for outboard digital-to-analog converters.
ATC CDA2 Mk2 CD player-preamplifier
In the early 1990s, the Compact Disc was all the rage, and vinyl records were being executed en masse. Thirty years later, and oh, how our tables have turned. Mint first pressings of tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley's 1957 album Hank Mobley (Blue Note BLP 1568), which once could be had for $40, now bring upward of $8000. Each. Vinyl continues to enjoy a global resurgence of popularity, while CD sales have plummeted to all-time lows.
What happened? Apparently, yesterday's pops and ticks are today's "warmth," Record Store Day exclusives, and skyrocketing vinyl values. All things old . . .
Audio Note CD-4.1x CD player
For a manufacturer to squeeze money from the stone that is my CD-player budget, his products would have to be both exceptional and affordable. And as long as I'm reporting from Fantasyland, I'll ask that they also be obsolescence-proof.
Audio Note CDT One/II CD transport & DAC 2.1x Signature D/A processor
I don't know much about horses, but I've been given to understand that dead ones don't respond to even the severest beating. In light of that, I'll make only this brief statementEven with the best playback gear of my experience, I don't derive as much pleasure from CDs as I do from LPs.and move on to a simpler truth: Regardless of what I think, CD players are still a necessity for most music-loving audiophiles.