Dave thank you for your feedback. I just realized that you have been posting on AA as well and I have devoured that thread (and Mike Lavigne's thread) with a LOT of interest. For you to say that it equals your TT is high praise indeed. I am interested in sourcing one for my own evaluation. Thank you again for reporting your findings.
Playback Designs MPS-5 CD/SACD Player
Category: Digital
I recently added the Playback Designs MPS-CD/SACD player to my system and now that I've got some hours on it I thought I'd share my impressions.
First, realize that I don't have any references in the same price band as the PD, so the comparison will be to a grossly different universal player (a modded Pioneer Elite DV-58AV with a Superclock 4 and beefed up I/O stages). The Pioneer was actually pretty decent with SACD, but I longed for much more with redbook CD. I found myself listening to lots of vinyl or listening to SACDs and DVD-As.
There are now two or three reviews out about the MPS-5, most notably Mike Lavignes, supplemented by an excellent addendum by Ted Smith. David Robinson is working on a detailed review, but gave a preliminary thumbs up.
Well, I listened and listened and went back and forth from the Pioneer to the Playback Designs. The PD was clearly superior, but how to describe it was my issue, other than use words like bigger air and imaging.
All became crystal clear when I ABd using Enrico Rava (trumpet) and Stefano Bollani's (piano) latest CD "The Third Man". (BTW, this is a fantastic, etherial, jazz CD. Rava is one of the worlds great jazz trumpeters IMHO). If the pictures on the CD cover and insert are accurate, this is recorded in a live studio with hardwood floor and just a couple of mics. One mic is stuck right in the piano, with the lid open and the other is stationed in front of Rava, sitting about five-feet beyond the foot of the piano.
The first cut, "Estate", starts with just piano. I think a touch of reverb is added because of the very close proximity of the mic to the strings. With the MPS-5 the image of the piano stretches from about three-feet inside my right speaker to two-feet outside. (That reverb might actually be very light "flange" effect or "chorus", stetching the image so far). That image goes from my floor to a foot or two above the right speaker, but it's focal point is about six-inches inside the speaker about three-feet off the floor.
In contrast, the Pioneer doesn't go outside the speaker at all and stops about a foot from the floor and at the top of the speaker. I'd matched levels, but I tried to expand the Pioneer's image by turning up the volume, but no go, it just got louder, not bigger and "fuller".
Let's talk about Rava's trumpet image. The engineer has placed him to the left of center, but not out at the speaker. His mic is about four feet from the floor in the picture and he's sitting casually and playing. His mic is where you hear the atmosphere of the room, with both direct and reflected trumpet sound coming through, stretching from the piano edge to the left speaker, with a real strong focal point about four feet high and 30-degrees to the left of center. Once again, the Pioneer nails the focal point of the trumpet. You can hear the room, but it's much less obvious.
Didn't I say "fuller" earlier? Let me talk about it more. With that piano intro that I mentioned earlier, there's an incredibly rich and complex set of overtones, strongest at the piano's focal point, but showering the surrounding area with a overtones that decrease in richness as you move away from the focal point. Unfortunately the Pioneer is lacking the best overtones. The piano sounds "clangy" and thin in comparison. With the MPS-5 it sounds like there's more bass, but there's also way more high overtones. It's not all steel sound, but you hear the wood sound clearly.
The trumpet gains the same luxurious coating of overtones, high an low, making it sound fuller and richer and less edgy.
I don't have Rava's album on LP, but I do have a couple of Nora Jones albums on CD and LP. I'd stopped playing the CDs after I got my Pro-ject TT. Now the CDs are back out. In direct comparison, the glare and edge I was hearing in Nora's voice on CD is now gone. The images are now as big as the LP. The improvement is VAST.
Still, I think it took a sparely recorded album like Rava's to clearly demonstrate to me what I was hearing. Everything sounded fuller, more dynamic and just plain better, but now I can explain better why.
The excellent Reference Recordings CD "Crown Imperial" shows a couple of other advantages of the MPS-5. When things get really complex, with everybody playing loud but different lines at the same time it's much easier to pick out each line. I've played this before as a trumpeter, so I have a very good idea what's going on. Even knowing that I'd lose lines with the Pioneer, where the PD kept each line separate and easy to follow.
The controls are simple and intuitive, with a nicely backlit remote. The drawer is solid and fast. Like most drawers, if you push on it when it's open, it'll close. The chassis is heavy aluminum plate. At this price you might hope for a chassis machined from aircraft billet, but instead you get a solidly made chassis that's attractive, stiff and heavy.
There are balanced and unbalanced analog outputs (I used balanced into my Rowland Continuum 500 integrated amp). There is a wide selection digital inputs and outputs, but no HDMI either in or out. (My Pioneer has DSD-out via HDMI, so I miss the potential to use that with the Playback Designs).
Playback Designs' web site is not up yet, but it will be reasonably soon, I hope. I leave that to give you more technical details. I'm only here to talk about sonics.
Sorry that I didn't have any 10 and 20-thousand dollar players to compare the MPS-5. Mike, Ted and Dave have started that and there'll be more to come.
BTW, the retail price is $15,000 and there's an introductory price of $10,000. I have no idea how long that'll last, but I suspect it'll end soon, when the web site is up and marketing swings into full force.
Dave
I recently added the Playback Designs MPS-CD/SACD player to my system and now that I've got some hours on it I thought I'd share my impressions.
First, realize that I don't have any references in the same price band as the PD, so the comparison will be to a grossly different universal player (a modded Pioneer Elite DV-58AV with a Superclock 4 and beefed up I/O stages). The Pioneer was actually pretty decent with SACD, but I longed for much more with redbook CD. I found myself listening to lots of vinyl or listening to SACDs and DVD-As.
There are now two or three reviews out about the MPS-5, most notably Mike Lavignes, supplemented by an excellent addendum by Ted Smith. David Robinson is working on a detailed review, but gave a preliminary thumbs up.
Well, I listened and listened and went back and forth from the Pioneer to the Playback Designs. The PD was clearly superior, but how to describe it was my issue, other than use words like bigger air and imaging.
All became crystal clear when I ABd using Enrico Rava (trumpet) and Stefano Bollani's (piano) latest CD "The Third Man". (BTW, this is a fantastic, etherial, jazz CD. Rava is one of the worlds great jazz trumpeters IMHO). If the pictures on the CD cover and insert are accurate, this is recorded in a live studio with hardwood floor and just a couple of mics. One mic is stuck right in the piano, with the lid open and the other is stationed in front of Rava, sitting about five-feet beyond the foot of the piano.
The first cut, "Estate", starts with just piano. I think a touch of reverb is added because of the very close proximity of the mic to the strings. With the MPS-5 the image of the piano stretches from about three-feet inside my right speaker to two-feet outside. (That reverb might actually be very light "flange" effect or "chorus", stetching the image so far). That image goes from my floor to a foot or two above the right speaker, but it's focal point is about six-inches inside the speaker about three-feet off the floor.
In contrast, the Pioneer doesn't go outside the speaker at all and stops about a foot from the floor and at the top of the speaker. I'd matched levels, but I tried to expand the Pioneer's image by turning up the volume, but no go, it just got louder, not bigger and "fuller".
Let's talk about Rava's trumpet image. The engineer has placed him to the left of center, but not out at the speaker. His mic is about four feet from the floor in the picture and he's sitting casually and playing. His mic is where you hear the atmosphere of the room, with both direct and reflected trumpet sound coming through, stretching from the piano edge to the left speaker, with a real strong focal point about four feet high and 30-degrees to the left of center. Once again, the Pioneer nails the focal point of the trumpet. You can hear the room, but it's much less obvious.
Didn't I say "fuller" earlier? Let me talk about it more. With that piano intro that I mentioned earlier, there's an incredibly rich and complex set of overtones, strongest at the piano's focal point, but showering the surrounding area with a overtones that decrease in richness as you move away from the focal point. Unfortunately the Pioneer is lacking the best overtones. The piano sounds "clangy" and thin in comparison. With the MPS-5 it sounds like there's more bass, but there's also way more high overtones. It's not all steel sound, but you hear the wood sound clearly.
The trumpet gains the same luxurious coating of overtones, high an low, making it sound fuller and richer and less edgy.
I don't have Rava's album on LP, but I do have a couple of Nora Jones albums on CD and LP. I'd stopped playing the CDs after I got my Pro-ject TT. Now the CDs are back out. In direct comparison, the glare and edge I was hearing in Nora's voice on CD is now gone. The images are now as big as the LP. The improvement is VAST.
Still, I think it took a sparely recorded album like Rava's to clearly demonstrate to me what I was hearing. Everything sounded fuller, more dynamic and just plain better, but now I can explain better why.
The excellent Reference Recordings CD "Crown Imperial" shows a couple of other advantages of the MPS-5. When things get really complex, with everybody playing loud but different lines at the same time it's much easier to pick out each line. I've played this before as a trumpeter, so I have a very good idea what's going on. Even knowing that I'd lose lines with the Pioneer, where the PD kept each line separate and easy to follow.
The controls are simple and intuitive, with a nicely backlit remote. The drawer is solid and fast. Like most drawers, if you push on it when it's open, it'll close. The chassis is heavy aluminum plate. At this price you might hope for a chassis machined from aircraft billet, but instead you get a solidly made chassis that's attractive, stiff and heavy.
There are balanced and unbalanced analog outputs (I used balanced into my Rowland Continuum 500 integrated amp). There is a wide selection digital inputs and outputs, but no HDMI either in or out. (My Pioneer has DSD-out via HDMI, so I miss the potential to use that with the Playback Designs).
Playback Designs' web site is not up yet, but it will be reasonably soon, I hope. I leave that to give you more technical details. I'm only here to talk about sonics.
Sorry that I didn't have any 10 and 20-thousand dollar players to compare the MPS-5. Mike, Ted and Dave have started that and there'll be more to come.
BTW, the retail price is $15,000 and there's an introductory price of $10,000. I have no idea how long that'll last, but I suspect it'll end soon, when the web site is up and marketing swings into full force.
Dave
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- 65 posts total
I think if you ask Mike, reading between the lines of his review, he'd say that he still prefers his $50,000+ TT system. I'm not certain. He has a thread here on A'gon, so you might see if he'll respond to a direct question there, in case he's not watching this thread. I'd be curious to see how close he considers the two. Dave |
Yesterday I travelled up the mountainside, literally, to visit Neli and Mike at Audio Federation. I’d ordered some HRS isolation bases through them and the main purpose of my trip was to pick up my new HRS bases (review to come). Neli suggested that we also use the visit for me to hear their other products and take the opportunity to compare my Playback Designs MPS-5 to their Meitner CDSA-SE (with the latest German transport). I spent a total of two-hours checking out their wares before we got around to comparing the CDSA and MPS-5. This was a very informal comparison that lasted just over an hour. We didn’t precisely match levels and we physically swapped out the Meitner and the Playback Designs in the Meitner’s position on their very nice and substantial HRS rack. We used the same power cord and ICs into a Lamm system driving $295,000, 70” tall Marten Coltrane Supremes. The room had good volume with about a 20’ ceiling and easily handled the big Marten’s. Neli and Mike thought that they had over 1,000 hours on their CDSA-SE and I think that I’m between 300 to 400-hours on my MPS-5. Both units have stout chassis and look to be very well built. Neither is out of billet aluminum, but the chassis are thick enough that RFI containment and rejection should be at a high level. The PD does have the advantage of a full complement of digital inputs, which the Emm totally lacks. I already use the PD’s digital inputs as a DAC when playing DVD-A and other oddball disc formats that the MPS-5 can’t handle on its own. I also plan to make the DAC the foundation of the music server system that I plan to build or buy in the next year or so. (See the Stereophile review of the Sooloos and the poor performance of that $10,000+ unit’s DAC). If you’ve already got a really good standalone DAC this wouldn’t be an issue, but those digital inputs are a big plus to me. The DACs within both these machines are both in the top echelon of DACs, so it’s nice to be able to use them in different contexts. The reader should treat the following comments as “first impressions”, since there was no rigorous matching of levels and we only switched the players in and out twice. We played a wide range of CDs and SACDs and we’d all hear something, but not investigate further to totally define what we were hearing. The PD was cold when it was thrown into the home of the Meitner, etc., etc. Despite these shortcomings, I feel like the differences were actually relatively obvious and deserve to be added to the comments already made by Mike Lavigne, Ted Smith and others in other threads. Let’s start out by talking about what both units do very well; they both remove the digital glare that plagues so many otherwise good CDs. One of my favorite CDs for demonstrating that is “Trumpets in Stride” with five trumpets, tuba and piano playing old songs in stride style. A great cut is “Cornet Chop Suey” which gives you all five trumpets, solo trumpet, solo tuba and solo stride piano. Played on lesser machines this wonderful music just eats up your ears with trumpet blare and piano jangle and edge everywhere. It’s clearly a digital artifact added somewhere along the chain to mastering. Before the CDSA/MPS comparison we listened to this cut of this disc on a couple of lesser players in lesser systems and the edge was apparent. With both the CDSA and MPS-5 the glare and edge was gone. Highs weren’t chopped off, they were cleaned up instead. The imaging of both units is stellar, rendering a bigger soundstage that “ordinary” CDPs and giving coherence to the presentation. Odetta’s performance of “America the Beautiful” on the CD “Strike a Deep Chord” can sound disjointed on lesser machines. Dr. John’s out of tune piano solo can sound harsh and jolting. With both the Playback Designs and the Emm the image and performance was a whole solidified. Yes, Dr. John’s piano was still out of tune, but it fit into the studio and had a full image of a complete piano. With regard to lack of digital glare and consistently throwing complete, musical images, I’d rate these two players very, very close. Removing that glare and replacing it with natural sounding music with smooth, realistic, sweet highs, makes either acceptable in a fine system. Without naming names, the improvement from typical $3,000 to $5,000 players is close to monumental. Now that I’ve heard this level of playback (no pun intended), I could never go back to those lesser machines. Some great CDs sound great on almost any machine, but average CDs and the worst CDs sound just nasty to me when played on lesser machines than either of these. Let me talk more about imaging. When you throw “Dark Side of The Moon” at either, or Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” you get HUGE images, extending well out in front and to the sides and over the speakers. These images literally filled the end of Neli and Mike’s demo room, all the way up to the top of the 20’ ceiling. The Coltrane Supremes didn’t strain in the least in throwing these huge images. I’d rate these types of images as very similar, but different. So many sounds are coming at you from so many angles that it’s hard to keep track of them. Mike thought that the CDSA-SE kept better track of such things, with more stability. Perhaps that was because he was hearing what he was used to hearing. We all agreed that the images were different, yet both were very attractive. Of course with heavily manipulated studio masterworks it’s really impossible to say what’s right. If you like “blow your mind” style images, then either player delivers in spades. A little more down to earth is Odetta’s “America”. The MPS-5 placed her higher and to the left in a larger space than the CDSA-SE’s similar placement. If the CDSA-SE presented a 6’ sphere of sound, then the MPS-5 was a 10’ sphere. What’s right, who knows? While still on the subject of imaging, let me jump to the end of the session when Neli put on one of her favorite recordings by the Portuguese singer is Cristina Branco. OMG, it starts a capella with the song, “Sonhie Que Estavea El Portugal”. Both the artist and song are totally new to me, but the vocal floored me. With the Playback Designs it was like she was elevated between the two speakers with a voice that was several feet tall and wide. I asked Mike if he knew how they had miked that cut and wondered aloud if they had two mics and she’d stood between them. The timbre and richness of her voice was overwhelming. What really confused me was when we put the Emm back into the system as I prepared to leave. One of us said, let’s listen to that again. When we did, the image was more like you expect, covering less space and seeming to come from one point rather than a much larger area. This difference was very large. We turned the volume up on the Emm to make sure that we were just hearing a gain difference, but the image stayed where it was. We were at a loss to explain these imaging differences. When we listened to orchestral, or piano the images were much closer in size and placement and seemed “correct” on both machines. I’m thinking that there may be a little studio trickery in the Branco recording. It’s seems to be recorded in a very reverberant space with either one or two mics for the vocalist and maybe a touch of some processing added. I wonder if that processing is playing with the phase information on the disc and the two players are interpreting it differently. All I know is, they presented this disc very differently. Both were very pleasing, but considerably different. One thing that we all noticed immediately and totally agreed on was the midrange presentation. On the Playback Designs singers and solo instruments are slightly more forward. There was only a step or so difference, but you notice this easily and quickly. Piano has slightly more body on with the MPS-5 and solo instruments had slightly more prominence. What can I suggest to anyone that is choosing between these two machines, but doesn’t have the opportunity to compare them? First, you should rest assured that both are very good. Neither is obviously and clearly “righter” than the other. I can only offer this; if you like a lighter presentation with slightly more emphasis on detail, then go for the Emm. If you like a little more body and forwardness and you like bigger images, then go for the Playback Designs. You can take comfort that neither machine does anything wrong. If you could use an excellent DAC with external sources, then the Playback Designs has a clear advantage in this one regard. Thanks to Neli and Mike and Audio Federation for their hospitality. Dave |
- 65 posts total