Accustic Arts

Pubul57, I agree, of course. I do think, however, that there has been four or five years experience with hard drive sources for cpm. I can remember hearing a first VRS unit at a show in Silverdale Washington at least five years ago. It was awful. But as in everything involving computers, next year's products obsolete those of today.

I have not personally done an a/b. My best friend just sold his accustic arts combo (current models on the dac/transport combo) with stealth sextet cabling in order to buy the amr. He said it's the best cd player he has ever heard. I listened to his accustic arts combo and thought it was very good. I thought the build quality was excellent, but i didn't think it was worth the money. I swapped out my Meridian 808 in his system and thought the sound was as good, more dynamic from top to bottom, but i thought the accustic art combo was maybe ( I mean maybe) a tad bit more analog like. His amr player arrives any day so I will comment when I hear it.

Thanks Optarchie, that lends some context to your comments. I get the feeling that we are talking about several pieces of gear, all of which are first rate. I also suspect the preference for one over the other might be dependent on the rest of the system and its sound signature. If one little cable can make a "big" difference, I would think that the choice of pre/amp, cabling and speakers would have a large influence on wheter one would prefer on CD player over another in a given system context. I going to work hard to stop thinking in terms of best this or best that - I think it is much more realistic to think of a choice of top flight alternatives for a given component that on should consider, and that system matching and room acoustics also play a large role in assesing equipment. The AMR does seem interesting, especially at its price point. Thanks.

Can anyone talk in detail about of the function of the DAC1 mk4's 66 bit/1536 kHz upsampling and digital filter? What are the sampling options and is the filter linked to the upsampling? i.e. does the filter perform noise-shaping on the signal it has upsampled or is it an interpolation filter that can it be employed at lower sample rates as on my elgar+?
Has anyone compared it with 176.4 or 192kHz signals from other dacs?

I heard the AMR at CES and learned that it used the old TDA 1541A chip as does Zanden. I liked the looks of the unit, but the sound like in all the rooms on the mezzanine was pretty awful. I lost interest.

I know how much difference the post dac filtering can make as I had the Exemplar 5910 with the initial mods and later with the post dac filter mods. The filter mods were a substantial improvement. Zanden, of course, spent a good deal of time dealing also with the issues associated with the TDA 1541A chip. I had the first version and found it quite good, but I think it is uncompetitive now.