Can any player challenge Audio Aero Prestige SE ?

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.

Audiooracle: you are heartly invited to our next shoout-out in May in Hamburg, Germany. I have to agree with some of your findings: AA players are top notch, with some reliability issues and a crap remote (as with most of the players, except Esoteric and the optional Wadia metal remote). System dependency is as always a great issue as well as cabelling etc. We were aware of that fact as two of the guys where dealers themselves.
The AA Prestige in our shoot-out came with Shun Mook resonance damping, a Black-Cap upgrade and was connected with all Omega Micro (active planar) cabelling - the same set-up that was used at several trade shows were AA partnered with Ascendo and CAT. The unit was very well played-in.
All players except the GNSC modded Wadia had more than 500+ hours on them. The Wadia roughly 200.
All of us were simply blown away from the performance of the Wadia and two of my friends exchanged their players (AA Prestige SE and Esoteric X-01) after the shoot-out with the Wadia which is quite a bold statement as they run systems in the above US $ 80.000,00 range.
The nice thing is that this hobby keeps a lot room for any taste and thats fine with me and good for the industry. But nevertheless there are always some manufacturerer who stand a top of the crowd and this for sure is AA, Wadia, CAT, Boulder, Ayon, German Physics, Barclay, ACapella just to name a few.
Happy listening!

02-07-07: Audiooracle writes:

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.

Ouch. That's a bummer. Good luck getting it rebuilt.

Regards,

To Mrtenis,

If one of my customers has a contrary opinion he or she is right to have one. I can not force someone to like a particular product.

Frankpiet, your set up for the AA may or may not have been optimal. I use an HRS base and it makes a gigantic difference with most CD player, also a Margio damping disc is stellar.

The Omega cables may be the culprit in losing bass, I tried a similar cable and it is fast but thin. I would love to be there and join your testing session, but alass it is not meant to be.