Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

First off, sorry for all the typos. I wrote BASE instead of BASS. LoL

My Bad.

GearD, I think Matt is more in the mode of ISIS than Ra, due to the visceral impact of the 15inch woofer.

If absolute MR/HF quality was not the issue, I would tell him to get a pair of FUN Silver Phantoms and call it a day! Heheheh

The Bass there is "WRONG", ie air pushing rather than vibration propagation, BUT they hit hard and are soo much fun. True plug and play with a dose of artificial intelligence as the units talk to each other and automatically adjusts their configutration to the new optimal. Imagine a club with 32 of these suckers hung on the wall and playing in Tandem! Ultimate in cool.

You know I was snobby against the Phantoms till I heard them but I must say I enjoyed the experience. Ultimate nervosa liberation. The only thing close would be the Goldmund Logos tower, but that is $60K a pair and goes down to about 40db while the SPs go down to about 30 in practical terms. The Logos will likely be more refined in mids up, but the price to improvement ratio is not very encouraging.

As was stated earlier in the thread, the Ras are simply a frame of reference Norman.

GearD, sorry, didnt see that understaood now.

On another note Ensign, belay that last order. I just good some feedback from a close friend about the Prologos Mk2, NOT the Prologos+.

Holy Moley, my pal is selling everything after he went straight for that! It was the most spectacular feedback I have seen from him or anyone for that matter. Talk about a happy camper.

He said it was even MORE spetacular at his home than his demo at Goldmund HQ and at the NYC dealer, as crazy as it sounds.

Mitch2- much appreciate your views on digital transports. I'll be following Matt's journey, which I believe will eventually get around to transport/DAC. I'm interested in the integrated storage transports- 2TB should be plenty for a music collection expected to reach 3,000 albums (80/20 redbook/hi-res) by 2020. I think?

Anyhow, I wonder if Roon's features will show up with Antipodes, Aurender, etc? I'd like to have that dynamic interaction of my collection with info from the internet. I'll try to be ready to buy in another year, which could be good timing. Meantime, I'll enjoy my Cary 306 SACD Pro and I'll continue adding to my music collection!

Finally, thanks again to all those contributing to this thread.

Cheers, Josh

Surprised you found the Pearl 3 bright... It is anything but that IME. Detailed, accurate, transparent, yes. This they are. Put bad in front of them, and you hear it.

I have never been able to assess sound at showrooms or at audio shows. It just doesn't work.

If you've found something that almost works, for a decent price, it will likely be cheaper to fix the room :) Then put any darn speaker you want in there.