Can any player challenge Audio Aero Prestige SE ?

thanks frankpiet for your explanation.

i have one question. if the modified wadia resolves more information than the audio aero and the bass is more articulate with the wadia than with the audio aero, how could the audio aero sound thinner than the wadia ?

i would think the audio aero would sound more veiled, rolled off in the highs and more euphonic (subtractively colored).

Mrtennis: don´t really get your question ? Resolving and controll can go greatly hand in hand (e.g. Wadia, Lamm, Boulder, DartZeel, CAT, Kondo) and don´t have to exclude each other.

Hello Guys,

Here is the infamous Audiooracle to add some clarity to the above thread. Yes I am an Audio Aero dealer, and the reason I didn't disclose that I am, had to do that my initial post was about the setup of the player and nothing more.

What you guys need to understand as a dealer, I have to purchase my demo pieces just like you do and as so I believe in the merits of my products. A good dealer doesn't push products they don't believe in. I didn't think my disclosing that I am a dealer had anything to do with my initial point which is not to rush to judge a component until you know what you want to get out it by setting it up and tunning it to get the sound out of it you are striving to accheive.

I was a Remiyo CDP 777 owner and dealer, the Remiyo was one of the most amazingly musical cd playback systems out there and I would never have moved into the Audio Aero if the Remiyo was still available, because I don't need two reference class CD front ends, but alass the Remiyo became no longer available, and thus my search begain.

I went with the Prestige because my fiends at Audio Federation as well as numerous others in the industry said that the Prestige is an amazing player that does battle with $20,000-$30,000.00 front ends and has a great collection of really cool features.

My inital expereience was the the stock Prestige sounded good but was not as musical as the Remiyo, the low level resolution was better, but I was not blown away by the player, so being an artful tweeker I went about making the player sound more liquid and more like the Remiyo. I did this by:

1: Removing the Black Diamond Feet and trying two other sets of footers.
2: Trying three different power cords.
3: Trying two different isolation bases
4: Adding one cd damping mat.

I repeat the stock player was good but hardly amazing sounding! The well tweaked up player started sounding like a good analog front end!

This was the very point I was trying to illustrate, far too many Audiogoners keep on switching out components without applying the art of tweeking to bring out the good things a product does while minimizing the things that a product does not do.

As to the comments made about both the Memory Player and the AMR I am awaiting both in for testing and if they are indeed better products, than I will sell them over, or next to my well tweaked up Audio Aero Prestige, depending on the merits of each player. Sometimes the grape vine is right while other times it is wrong!

As per the comments on my non-exsistant website it is non exsistant because I paid $4,000.00 to a guy who did a rotten job and we scraped it.

Look in the last few issues of the Absolute Sound and my full page ads are in there. We will have a website up shortly and I invite anyone in the Northeast to come in and see what I have on display, it is all there.

The other point I will make regarding Frankpiet's comments is that these are the results in his system which may favor one player over another, and may or may not be the same in mine or anyone elses systems. We do not know the conditions of the demo, also is the Audio Aero player fully broken in as they take 1,000 hours to do so.

I have listened to and sold Wadia's, and Accuphases and Esoterics, etc, for many years and the mechanical construction is excellent for many of these as for the sound they tend to be mechanical sounding, I am not discounting his finding which may or may not be the same as mine or anyone else's. There are no absolutes in Audio, or anything else, it all comes down to your experience and how experienced you are at setting up a system to make magic.

I would have to hear all these players set up in my system to verify his comments, he might be right in his findings in his demo. I would have loved to be there.

Hi,
Sorry to hijack the thread, but Audiooracle, I have a Prestige SE, and I'm wondering what specific tweaks did you end up performing on your player to get it more analog sounding. I just got mine from Jody and am in the process of breaking it in.
Thanks.

hi audiooracle:

as a delaer, do you believe in the expression "the customer is always right?"

if a customer comes into your store and compares 2 cd players and prefers one over the other and says the one he prefers is better than the other and you disagree, do you try to persuade him or deny his perceptions ?

as a dealer, aren't you in the business of providing products that a customer wants to buy, as opposed to producvts that you personally like ?

one of my objections to many dealers is that they try to tell a customer that product a is better than product b.

what this thread implies is that player a is or is not better than player b. citing the facts about performance does not deny the fact that the word "better" is subjective, not objective, it is applied by human beings to render value judgments. intrinsically, one can make a case about construction and parts, but as for performance, i.e., sound. "better" is in the ear of the beholder.

there are many posts on the subject of one component being netter than another. i feel that such a position is counter productive to the spirit of audiogon, which, i belive is to assist members to satisfy their audio goals, without making judgments as to better or worse.

this forum should not be about imposing opinions on others but rather helping others. passing judgment is counter productive.