Law of Diminishing Returns - CD/SACD Players

>>Does the Audio Aero Capitole present a 8X's(800%) better musical image vs the Cayin 17?<<

Of course not but it is clearly superior in all respects. As Tvad points out the ancillary components must be complementary. I suspect the chance is quite high you would not hear the difference in your rig.

Tvad raises a good point. I've heard a big famous tube amp , $$$, and really colors the sound. It wouldn't make much sense to have a $15K Jadis DAC/trans combo hooked up, nor a Capitole. I've also haerd speakers that posses their own strong distinct coloring. A good player can only play "clean' if the other 2/3's of the system has purity.

Marty, you might not hear the differencec in those $2K-$4K mentioned, but its there. On the right system you can hear the difference. Small, but significant when you consider listening over an extended period of time. After a few days you'll know which is the A, the B, the C player. Maybe personal taste comes in on the judgeing, if slightly. .

Bob if you can't feel the $2200 player is the much better investment over the $450, then maybe your Arcam is overpriced?

Many audio dealers say that the quality of your source will bring the biggest difference in your end result. I don't know, as I certainly hear considerable differences between DACs.

Further, people say a great transport makes a huge sonic difference. This claim is based on the fact that if you loose information (bits), or the bits get altered in some way, this info is gone forever.

A great transport, by definition, should be rock solid, built like a tank, eliminate any vibration, pickup the information with precision, and have the smallest jitter. If you look at so many transports in high end players, they are cheap, run of the mill, plastic, flimsy affairs. It bothers me that any player at or above $2,000 is built this way, and I see it as greed. Spend the least on parts, and charge the highest amount.

So, I hope more audiophiles will bring some enlightenment to this difficult topic.

Saxo, I agree with your audio dealers who believe that the source component is the most important. A mid-fi system that is merely listenable with a CDP source, usually becomes quite musical after substituting a TT source. I don't think any other component swap can quite pull this off.

When modding a CDP, I always compare each change to two fixed reference points: at the low end of the scale, an old PS Audio Lambda II/Theta Gen 5a combo; at the high end of the scale, a nice Lyra/Graham/VPI TNT TT. After a certain point the comparison to the old transport/DAC combo becomes so hobbled as to be irrelevant. But the comparison to the TT is always nip & tuck. Each source reveals relative superiorities & deficiencies in distinct vectors of the listening experience. There is no clear winner without admitting to subjectivity in weighting & summing up the differences.

As remarked by Tvad, I think this nip & tuck also characterizes comparisons between the top CDPs, to the point that there is blurring of subjective and objective impressions at the top of the heap.

That said, when comparing components it may be useful to believe that convergence on "the absolute sound" only begins at 8 or 9 points on a scale of 1 to 10. There are few components these days that score below 5, but there are certainly many mid-fi pieces that cluster in the 6-7 range. I try to imagine a second 10-point scale that spans say from 8 to 10 of the first 10-point scale. Using this convention, a hi-end component that scores 9 on the first scale is perhaps 5x better than a component that scores 8 on the first scale. As silly as this method may seem, it certainly correlates well with the stratospheric MSRPs at the hi-end of the hi-end!