Can any player challenge Audio Aero Prestige SE ?

Audiooracle: you are heartly invited to our next shoout-out in May in Hamburg, Germany. I have to agree with some of your findings: AA players are top notch, with some reliability issues and a crap remote (as with most of the players, except Esoteric and the optional Wadia metal remote). System dependency is as always a great issue as well as cabelling etc. We were aware of that fact as two of the guys where dealers themselves.
The AA Prestige in our shoot-out came with Shun Mook resonance damping, a Black-Cap upgrade and was connected with all Omega Micro (active planar) cabelling - the same set-up that was used at several trade shows were AA partnered with Ascendo and CAT. The unit was very well played-in.
All players except the GNSC modded Wadia had more than 500+ hours on them. The Wadia roughly 200.
All of us were simply blown away from the performance of the Wadia and two of my friends exchanged their players (AA Prestige SE and Esoteric X-01) after the shoot-out with the Wadia which is quite a bold statement as they run systems in the above US $ 80.000,00 range.
The nice thing is that this hobby keeps a lot room for any taste and thats fine with me and good for the industry. But nevertheless there are always some manufacturerer who stand a top of the crowd and this for sure is AA, Wadia, CAT, Boulder, Ayon, German Physics, Barclay, ACapella just to name a few.
Happy listening!

02-07-07: Audiooracle writes:

As per the comments on my non-exsistant website it is non exsistant because I paid $4,000.00 to a guy who did a rotten job and we scraped it.

Ouch. That's a bummer. Good luck getting it rebuilt.

Regards,

To Mrtenis,

If one of my customers has a contrary opinion he or she is right to have one. I can not force someone to like a particular product.

Frankpiet, your set up for the AA may or may not have been optimal. I use an HRS base and it makes a gigantic difference with most CD player, also a Margio damping disc is stellar.

The Omega cables may be the culprit in losing bass, I tried a similar cable and it is fast but thin. I would love to be there and join your testing session, but alass it is not meant to be.

While the customer is always right, it is up to the dealer to do the insightful presentation. Had i depended on my local dealer's ability I would never have bought the Audio Aero as he had a new one that was only plugged in for demonstrations...not enough capacity for multiple plugs in his brand-new show room.

Also, he didn't believe in the product.

As a Prestige owner,I am quite happy. I have it setting
on a 1" thick Black diamond shelf. I alternate two different power cords(jena Lab and Jtinns new cord).
I feel the balanced output works much better in my system. I also use a Marigo disc(nice definition). I'm going to audition a pair of Vitus interconnects. I currently use
Tara 0.8 (nice). My unit does have the new transport. I might be able to help a new Prestige owner sort through cables and power cords as I have gone through a lot of them, so if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.