Ayre CX7e vs. Meridain G08

Zaikesman, In this case, I just didn't feel, to my ears, it sounded as good. You are exactly right about the transport. A lot of manufacturers have gone this route. I always felt it was because they couldn't source a better transport at their price points and were forced to adapt. Wether this technology is better---well---I guess everyone needs to make their own decision. They sure make for a cheaper product.
I have noticed higher jitter levels with this technology. This makes me wonder if the signal is as pure.
I know Wadia's players use a much higher quality transport and sound wonderful to me. Their jitter is very low. The older Meridian 508-24 hand some of the lowest measured jitter of any player. Just makes me wonder if manufacturers have adopted something because they had to and then market other specifications to put it on even footing.

I've owned both the 508.24 and the 588 (in fact, my son still has the 508.24). In the four years I owned the 588 I never experienced any mechanical issues, with the drawer or otherwise. As far as sonic comparisons, while I loved the warmth of the 508.24 it was not as articulate and LF reproduction - in my system - was not as good as the 588. I never felt that the upgrade was a step down, a step sideways, but a distinct improvement.

I auditioned both the G08 and the 808 before purchasing an AA. The G08 was not an improvement over my 588. The 808 was a major step up in performance over both the 588 and G08. Ultimately, I couldn't justify the additional cost above the AA. But the G08 is an outstanding performer...unless something has changed at Meridian in the last 2 years...

Bigtee: When you say "I have noticed higher jitter levels with this technology", are you referring to figures published in reviews, or manufacturer specs? (Forgive me for assuming you're not set up to determine this for yourself.) Or are you making an inference based on sound? In any case, I can't really see how taking the Meridian approach would necessarily result in worse timing errors delivering the data to the DACs (I'll bet Meridian claims the opposite). Just curious -- and also to know what other players you allude to that you feel could be grouped with the newer Meridians. (I don't know if any others employ a system for rereading and reclocking the data similar to what Meridian does?)

Islandear: I've wondered, if I were to try one of these machines (haven't done so yet mostly because they lack digital inputs), whether the 08 differed significantly from the 588 other than cosmetically, so thanks for the info.

You're correct in that I don't test for myself. I use Stereophile and other sources for these measurements. I have found that the players considered good today have jitter in the 240+ range. The 508-24 was around 144. You can go back and look at older top rate players of the time and see that jitter was under 175 in all of them. Even the old Sony XA7es had very low jitter and makes a lot of todays players look like junk. I know Wadia and some other manufacturers of higher dollar machines use excellent built transports.
My real beef is these newer players aren't as harmonically rich. They seem thin to me and the sound (again to me, sounds compromised.) Sure, they have great resolution but I think that comes with the overall tendency to lose harmonic structure and lighten the presentation. The 508-24 for example is richer BUT compare it side by side with the 588 or G08 and don't base it on what you remember it sounding like. The resolution is there. It's just richer. I think it's similiar to what folks try to get out of a good tube preamp.
Even the Ayre C5xe had jitter upwards over 250+.
Actually, I have not seen any player lower than 200 in quite a while.
All these levels of jitter are considered low but I wonder why the levels have increased. Of course, I don't think it's all jitter to blame but why have the levels gone up?
As for what Meridian would claim, I have never seen a manufacture not produce something that wasn't considered better than their previous effort.
Meridian use to be in the top tier. I don't see them there anymore. Seems either technology for CD players is peaking or not as much effort is being put into them.
I never saw anyone really brag on the Meridian G08. The 588 didn't get much coverage at all. I'm sure Meridians top stuff is good as well as it should for the price.
As for reclocking, I have seen numerous units claiming this.
Digital has so many buzz words that don't mean as much as manufacturers make out they do. With the slow decay in true CD players in favor of multiformat machines, I just don't know.
I have tried a lot of players at different price points. Of standard - non upgraded or tweaked units, I do like the sound of the Ayre C5xe even if it has a sorta cheap drive (that makes a little noise opening and/or shutting(kind of clunky.) The Wadia 861se is by far my favorite for sound and incredible build quality to boot with one beautiful transport.
The bottom line is---this is just my opinion. Remember, opinions are like butt holes, everyone has one!!!! I just look at the machines inside out, how they operate, measurements when available and certainly how they sound.
I think CD replay has sort of peaked unless you want to get off of mega dollars. Ultimately, most of these machines would make their owner extremely happy and that's what matters most. They are in the current good to excellent class with the current state of CD flux.
I know this was originally about the Ayre vs the Meridian. The CX7e does exactly what I've said it does. It lightens the presentation a tad but makes up for it with a more sonically pure presentation that goes deep and with wide soundstaging. The G08 had a sound I didn't care for. The presentation seemed a bit disjointed with some slight slurring of high frequency transients. It's a good player though. Just not for me.

Bigtee -

I have noticed the same phenomenon you have -- increasing levels of jitter over the years in the Stereophile test reports. JA made an oblique reference to this in one or two of the testing sidebars -- something to the effect that you can't compare the numbers in the newer test reports with those of the older test reports. Unfortunately, he did not say why.

I tried to duplicate his test results for the Ayre C-5xe with a slightly different setup. The test disc is easily made, using specifications from an AES paper (by the late Michael Gerzon, I believe). I analyzed the output with the FFT function of both an Audio Precision System One (and older machine like Stereophile uses for most of their measurements), as well as the latest, greatest Audio Precision 2722.

With the System One, there were a lot of spurious sidebars as well as a generally higher noise floor than JA reported with his Miller Audio Research analyzer. But with the 2722, the noise floor was markedly lower than JA's tests. Further there were *no* sidebars at all when using 24-bit data, implying that all of the sidebars I found with that machine in 16-bit mode were data related and therefore an artifact of the test itself.

My conclusion is that this test protocol is extremely sensitive to the test equipment being used. I further speculate that something has degraded in JA's test setup over the years, leading to falsely high readings in more recent tests.

This is unfortunate, as many readers rely on these test reports. I hope that JA addresses this issue soon, and preferably in print.

Charles Hansen
Ayre Acoustics, Inc.