cd 94 marantz hotted up

[Hens]

Flemo, sounds like you have quite the system at your place at the moment.

It would be interesting to compare the cec with the cd94. I vote bringing the cd94 to mine though, haha, the CEC is too heavy to move around!

Maybe I'll bring the esoteric for fun.

[stevenvalve]

I must confess I was blown away this afternoon when Mario dropped of his spare modded CD94 for me to borrow for a while and compare to my CD50.

The results were astounding and dramatic. The bottom end was much tighter, top end resolution was the most dramatic improvement, and the mid range smoothness went to another level.  The openness and improvement to sound staging was staggering.  The music well and truly surpassed the width of the speakers but also gained what seemed another metre in height. The music was fuller, richer, and smoother with significant increases in top end and bottom end resolution.  The top end not only had more detail but also more weight, which is difficult to describe if you haven’t heard it. Detail and weight with no trade off, who would have thought?

The biggest overall sweetener IMO was the system seemed to suddenly just click. The CD94 added a sense of balance and overall harmony.  It was as if it took hold of the loose ends you didn’t know existed and resolved them as soon I pushed ‘play’.

I hope my CD85 can come pretty close to Mario’s CD94!

All the hype surrounding the CD94 is IMO well founded and justified.  

It is good that people are starting to realise that modern transports are not even close to the older stuff. Its not just the transport mechanisms, just as important is the chip sets they used to make. How can i put this tactfully, they piss on the junk made today. They are capable of making music

[vitavoxdude]

Hmmm, bit of a brave statement that one Steve.  Esoteric would probably dissagree with you there.  My Eso seems to extract the zero's and one's reasonably well and just as good as a CDM1, CDM4 CD12.2 all Phillips transports. The two dollar power supplies feeding them probably make a big differece in error correction etc to more recent transports; I loved the Cambridge Audio CD1 idea of showing error correction at work but Stan Curtis  :-*was way beyond his times in several of his unique implementations.  Lately his designs have been watered down a bit to be less hair shirt, shame.

[stevenvalve]

Hmmm, bit of a brave statement that one Steve.  Esoteric would probably dissagree with you there.  My Eso seems to extract the zero's and one's reasonably well and just as good as a CDM1, CDM4 CD12.2 all Phillips transports. The two dollar power supplies feeding them probably make a big differece in error correction etc to more recent transports; I loved the Cambridge Audio CD1 idea of showing error correction at work but Stan Curtis  :-*was way beyond his times in several of his unique implementations.  Lately his designs have been watered down a bit to be less hair shirt, shame.

The old ones are still going strong, the lazers are built to last, the chip sets used with them are much better sounding. People that i know with the late transports are changing lazers every 3 or 4 years. Some of the newer transport may sound good but for how long.

[vitavoxdude]

Fair enough, changing lasers every 3 to 4 years, they must be using them a lot then. With the throw away society we now live in anything more than a couple of years old is considered OLD by the younger generation lol and with Mp3 players being the norm what hope is there for the future of decent audio, its already a past time of the dedicated.

[stevenvalve]

Fair enough, changing lasers every 3 to 4 years, they must be using them a lot then. With the throw away society we now live in anything more than a couple of years old is considered OLD by the younger generation lol and with Mp3 players being the norm what hope is there for the future of decent audio, its already a past time of the dedicated.

So true, Its a shame we have formed a throw away society Just look at the quality in the old drivers like, Axiom 80s, Tannoy monitor golds, stuff today is built for a price, and we are paying the price.