How good is my source?

mkaes: you, as many who post queries on the 'gon, apparently presuppose that there is a group of folks with golden ears who can describe for you what your preferences ought to be better than you can perceive them for yourself. alternatively, you might consider your own sonic senses so superior to others' that you want to review what the great unwashed have to say, so that you can ignore or critique their opinions. neither of these rationales, or their corollaries, is an excuse for your failure to listen for yourself and make judgments on your own. the answers you derive experientially are better by far than those that can be given by anyone else, here, there or anywhere. -kelly

Mkaes, I'm afraid Cornfedboy didn't get his cornflakes this morning! We realize that not all of us can afford this stuff brand-new and get in-home demos on it. Anyway, having relatively good ears, a very revealing system, and a CL-20, I feel the CL-20 is very good but allows a bit of that digital listening fatigue on CDs. For me, a Perpetual Tech P1/P1A/P3A combo proved less fatiguing. But much of the new CD stuff has improved filtering, upsampling, re-sampling, or what not that reduces that fatigue. Wadia has been a pioneer in this game. I've heard the 830 at the dealer from whom I bought the CL-20 and thought it did indeed sound better on CDs, but couldn't afford it at the time. Now I have a Philips SACD1000 and even after hearing the crappier SACDs it's hard to go back to CDs. But here's a test for you, if you can hear a significant difference on the CL-20 between a CD and one of Classic's or Chesky's (decent) DADs, some of the newer gear makes CDs sound almost as good as the DADs on the Cal. Hope this helps a little.

Mike R.

I heard a demo(they were just resetting up a system) of the Arcam FMJ $2000 cd player. It sounded pretty good. Then they put in the Linn Ikemi and there was a significant difference in sound quality. I think it lists for about $3500. A greater sense of real players in the room. Just a suggestion for checking out high quality players.

Heh...
Here is my chance:
Has anyone notice that Cornfedboy is trying to make everyone to look stupid and there is only Cornfedboy who is "righteous" in Audiogon?
As far as on my listening opinion, the digital fatigue described by Mrowlands is present in digitally recorded vinyls also. P1A/P3A combo is able to shade the digital fatigue meaning colour the sound to the analogue-like level.
I havn't listen to CAL CL20 DVD player, but I've listen to Meridian 508.24 and I've been impressed. CDs sound like digitally recorded vinyls.

cornfed, auditioning gear is helpful and probably essential for assembling your "ultimate rig", but unlike you I buy my equipment used, afterall this is a used equipment site, I assume you buy your equipment new, if not you must waste a lot of dealers time, my reasoning is this, my first system cost about $4000 buying new, closeout or dealer used product, it consisted of a $700 pair of paradigms, an Acurus L10, two acurus A80 amp, a cal alpha and kinergetics transport, cabling was audiostream and tributaries, these were components that local my dealers told me would work well together and it was a fine system, my current system I bought used, a Marsh 400 ($1350), a CAL CL 20 ($850), Anodyne passive ($200), AQ Diamond x3 ($260), Kimber Bifocal($450), a Richard Gray 400 ($400), two Tg audio cords HSRa and HSRi ($250) Blue Circle cord ($75) and a pair of Castle Severn 2s ($750), total about 4600 including major shipping charges. Before buying this system I figured that I could assemble a better system buying used without my dealers help than he could sell me for similar cash, which would you prefer? I prefer to buy used and take my chances on getting a piece of equipment I don't like, it can usually be resold at minimal loss and sometimes at a profit. Either way I do not intend to go waste a dealers time auditioning something I have no intentions of buying from their shop. To try and minimize making poor decisions I sometimes ask for the advice of others, I sometimes get very helpful responses like that of mrowland, what I usually get is someone like you who spends way to much time at the local audio store and takes it a little to seriously for my taste, spouting off some crap about the invalidity of reviews or the opinions of others, like yours. -mike k