Audio Research Source - CD3 mkII, CD5

I spoke to Chris at ARC yesterday about getting a CD3 here and sending it in for the MkII upgrade and he said basically the CD3 MkII was discontinued and that even though there was no mention of it on their website, the CD5 was in production. Obviously the CD5 will be an improved (and more expensive) version of the CD3 MkII.

Gene

At the Montreal HiFi show, I was told by the Montreal dealer that the new CD5 will be launched in Canada in May 2008 at the price approx 500$ higher than CD3 mkII

A related note.Audio Research was acquired recently by Quadrivio SGR an Italian company who also owns Sonus Faber.
George

will the 5 be a top loader as well?
and yes, indeed it is hard to imagine that a CD5 will be a big step up from CD3MkII. I doubt there were any major advancements in digital since the introduction of the MkII version of CD3. But we shall wait and find out!

The CD3mkII is discontinued. The CD5 is just coming out now. Yes it will have the same top loading transport as the CD3mkII and CD7.

The new CD5 is more of a clone of the REF CD7 but uses FETs in place of vacuum tubes. Remember, the CD3 was designed over 7 years ago and the mkII did not make any major design changes but benefited from resonance control through extensive strategic damping and some parts upgrades. The REF CD7 was a completely new design based upon the REF3. This resulted in dramatic sonic improvements over the CD3mkII. The CD5 should much more closely resemble the performance of the REF CD7 only with a solid state twist.

I think its also important to remember that the digital portions of these pieces are basically the same. It's the power supply and analog circuitry that makes all of the difference.

I am an ARC dealer.