E.A.R. Acute Reliability

I have had my EAR Acute for about 7 months and have had no problems.

I've owned one for about 6 months, no issues with the transport. Should be easy to replace if something does go wrong though, same as the Arcam.
As far as sonics, with the right tubes (I'm using 2 1960s Seimens CCAs), sounds great.

PS: I think the EAR Acute starts life as an Arcam CD36 CDP. Supposedly transport, display and DAC chips straight from CD36, all else changed by EAR.
Of course I stand to be corrected if wrong but I remember reading this, perhaps in a review.

I have had mine for just shy of 1 year. No issues
whatsoever. I will admit though, nothing about the
build quality does inspire confidence. It's an Arcam
rebuilt by Tim D..

That said, it makes me feel alot smarter after I push
play. Sound quality is definitely doing it for me. The
sound is doing/or not doing something very right. It
just gets out of the way , and allows me to enjoy.
When I put a Stealth Indra from the Acute> my preamp,
all I can say is wow!
So I would feed it a good neutral IC. Funny, the Modright
is one of very few that also peak my interest. The other,
Metronome. FWIW, my last player was Capitole 2. I liked
it, but do not look back. I have had too many system changes since the Cap 2 left, so please dont ask for
a direct comparison. I hope this helps, try and get an
audition on one. I think Music Direct is a dealer as well.

Hello. I've had my Acute for 4 months and my friend has had his for about 2 months. Both of us noticed that when you push the volume up OR down on the remote control it keeps going after you let go. Not too serious when decreasing volume, but can be VERY bad when increasing vol. Maybe 3 times out of 10. Usually when holding remote on an angle. When pointing directly at the unit, it is ok.
Since doing that, I haven't really had an issue-but to me, this is unacceptable for a $6,000 cd player. If it didn't sound so damn good, I would return it...