Cambridge Audio 840C

Thank you Dejanm for that comparison, which goes to show how very crucial the circuitry and resulting transparency is of the jack that we plug high resolution headphones into, be it a well regarded intergrated, the player itself or another headamp.
True enough that the differances between the two models maybe audiably subtle, but I would still fault the lack of transparency of the headphone jack/amp if the conclusion is that there is no differance to be heard.

Although I do sincerely appreciate the comparison, and your opinion.

I completely agree with Finthen. I have listened to some great players that sounded only mediocre through their headphone jack. Dejanm, can you hook it up to a speaker system for comparison?

Hi,

The headphones have been hooked to the headphone out on the CA 840A amplifier. The comments that you put guys is something that is quite possible. I was surprised myself. I took several other CDPs that were laying around (Audiolab CD8000 and Denon DCD 1500) and there were also no differences in reproduction - maybe a little bit in case of Denon.

I used during this test also Warf EVO 30 (the result was the same as with headphones) but you might say (and I would agree) that these loudspeakers are also not good enough to register major differencies between the players. That is why I didn't mention it in my first post.

But if that is true about EVO 30 and not good enough headphone output of CA 840A, that means that differencies between CDPs in a price range until 1000 euro are very subtle and that we need very good system to be able to notice it. The question is then: why should we put a CDP under 1000 euro in a very good system ? Or to put it in another way: if you have a system where the components are between 1000 and 2000 euro, probably various CDPs are not going to make a big difference, if any at all.

But it is possible that there are some other experiences - I haven't compare all CDPs that exist and it is quite possible that there are some other that do make a difference. Naim CD 5i does. So, I am not making here any generalizations based on only one test case ...

Thanks for your comparisons.

Once I thought I might get a CA 740 or 840C, but lately I've been thinking of getting a player for the long run. I've been looking at Naim. Would you mind describing the difference you heard between the CA and Naim players?

I've been thinking particularly of the CD5X or CDX2, but would be very curious as to how the CD5i stacks up nevertheless.

Dejanm, Thanks for the extra information.