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Blind Shoot-out in San Diego -- 5 CD Players

On Saturday, February 24, a few members of the San Diego, Los Angeles and Palm Springs audio communities conducted a blind shoot-out at the home of one of the members of the San Diego Music and Audio Guild. The five CD Players selected for evaluation were: 1) a Resolution Audio Opus 21 (modified by Great Northern Sound), 2) the dcs standalone player, 3) a Meridian 808 Signature, 4) a EMM Labs Signature configuration (CDSD/DCC2 combo), and 5) an APL NWO 2.5T (the 2.5T is a 2.5 featuring a redesigned tube output stage and other improvements).

The ground rules for the shoot-out specified that two randomly draw players would be compared head-to-head, and the winner would then be compared against the next randomly drawn player, until only one unit survived (the so-called King-of-the-Hill method). One of our most knowledgeable members would set up each of the two competing pairs behind a curtain, adjust for volume, etc. and would not participate in the voting. Alex Peychev was the only manufacturer present, and he agreed to express no opinion until the completion of the formal process, and he also did not participate in the voting. The five of us who did the voting did so by an immediate and simultaneous show of hands after each pairing after each selection. Two pieces of well-recorded classical music on Red Book CDs were chosen because they offered a range of instrumental and vocal sonic charactistics. And since each participant voted for each piece separately, there was a total of 10 votes up for grabs at each head-to-head audition. Finally, although we all took informal notes, there was no attempt at detailed analysis recorded -- just the raw vote tally.

And now for the results:

In pairing number 1, the dcs won handily over the modified Opus 21, 9 votes to 1.

In pairing number 2, the dcs again came out on top, this time against the Meridian 808, 9 votes to 1.

In pairing number 3, the Meitner Signature was preferred over the dcs, by a closer but consistent margin (we repeated some of the head-to-head tests at the requests of the participants). The vote was 6 to 4.

Finally, in pairing number 5, the APL 2.5T bested the Meitner, 7 votes to 3.

In the interest of configuration consistance, all these auditions involved the use of a power regenerator supplying power to each of the players and involved going through a pre-amp.

This concluded the blind portion of the shoot-out. All expressed the view that the comparisons had been fairly conducted, and that even though one of the comparisons was close, the rankings overall represented a true consensus of the group's feelings.

Thereafter, without the use blind listening, we tried certain variations at the request of various of the particiapans. These involved the Meitner and the APL units exclusively, and may be summarized as follows:

First, when the APL 2.5T was removed from the power regenerator and plugged into the wall, its performance improved significantly. (Alex attributed this to the fact that the 2.5T features a linear power supply). When the Meitner unit(which utilizes a switching power supply) was plugged into the wall, its sonics deteriorated, and so it was restored to the power regenerator.

Second, when we auditioned a limited number of SACDs, the performance on both units was even better, but the improvement on the APL was unanimously felt to be dramatic.
The group concluded we had just experienced "an SACD blowout".

The above concludes the agreed-to results on the blind shoot-out. What follows is an overview of my own personal assessment of the qualitative differences I observed in the top three performers.

First of all the dcs and the Meitner are both clearly state of the art players. That the dcs scored as well as it did in its standalone implementation is in my opinion very significant. And for those of us who have auditioned prior implementations of the Meitner in previous shoot-outs, this unit is truly at the top of its game, and although it was close, had the edge on the dcs. Both the dcs and the Meitner showed all the traits one would expect on a Class A player -- excellent tonality, imaging, soundstaging, bass extension, transparency, resolution, delineation, etc.

But from my point of view, the APL 2.5T had all of the above, plus two deminsions that I feel make it truly unique. First of all, the life-like quality of the tonality across the spectrum was spot-on on all forms of instruments and voice. An second, and more difficult to describe, I had the uncany feeling that I was in the presence of real music -- lots or "air", spatial cues, etc. that simply add up to a sense of realism that I have never experienced before. When I closed my eyes, I truly felt that I was in the room with live music. What can I say.

Obviously, I invite others of the participants to express their views on-line.

Pete

petewatt
ctm_cra
86 posts
 
Jfz - You bring up a very intriguing proposal...

"Wouldn't it be great if each of these players (or at least the top three) could be used in each of the 5 individuals' systems for a week or so? I'd love to hear their thoughts after that."

I would gladly participate in this exercise. So Alex and the owners of the Meitner and DCS please consider letting your units go for a week at a time to allow the voters of the blind comparisons to do more listening experimentations and additional comparisons across a broader spectrum of quality acoustic recordings... let me know ;-)

As to the warm-up of players, the time constraints of evaluating 5 players meant that each unit had only about 20-25 minutes or so to warm up once it was placed on the rack and powered up, level matched, disc loaded, connections double checked, the setup blanketed for the blinded eval, then gathering the group back into the listening room. The advantage went to the DCS player, which had the most warm-up time as it remained in the system against the first two players. Interestingly, the Meitner was only on for about 20-25 minutes (vs. greater than 2hrs for the DCS), and it beat the DCS. Similarly, the APL unit was only on for 20-25 minutes (vs. greater than 1 hr for the Meitner) and the APL won.

As to potential interactions of having other players plugged in simultaneously... The PS Audio P300 has a set of two well-isolated duplex AC receptacles. We made sure that the players were plugged into different duplexes. The players were one rack position away from the preamp, one above and the other below. Each player was no less than 9 inches away from the preamp, which has an outboard power supply. The input selectors on the preamp have superb isolation and careful attention was taken by the designer to match the inputs, down to carefully matching the components used (including the lengths of wiring). Throughout the sessions, we heard no sonic anomalies that would lead us to investigate any system issues having to do with two players connected and playing simultaneously.
ctm_cra
86 posts
 
Scottr - During the experimentation phase, the group unanimously preferred the APL over the Meitner using redbook. The difference between this and the blinded comparison (involving the same two players) is that the Meitner was connected to the AC regenerator and the APL unit was plugged directly to the wall, and both units were connected to the amps. We then switched to an SACD recording keeping the optimal AC connection the same as in the redbook comparison and unanimously concluded the same.

In another previous post I mentioned that the DCS had a more lively/dynamic presentation than either the Meitner or the APL. Recall that this took place during the blinded comparisons when all players were connected to the AC regenerator. What would have been great to do if we had more time was to also experiment with the DCS to see if it was better when plugged direct to the wall or to the PS Audio P300. Next, it would have been good to compare the DCS at its best AC connection against the APL plugged direct to the wall to see if the gap in liveliness/dynamics remained. My recollection of the DCS performance relative to the in-wall-plugged APL and even later when it was directly connected to the amps was simply too far removed for me to make a definitive vote. Am I asking for another session to take place? You bet I am.

Pete mentioned above that "when we auditioned a limited number of SACDs, the performance on both units was even better"... I find it difficult to agree with this because we did not first play the CD layer then adjust the player to playback the SACD layer of the same disc. It would have been great to do this. Until I hear this for myself I cannot make the conclusion he made.
ctm_cra
86 posts
 
Essentialaudio - Two sets of evaluations took place. A blind, level-matched comparison in San Diego, and a non-blind, level-matched session in LA.

I take this opportunity to commend the voters who participated in both sessions. I know the systems they each use at home and they differ significantly from system used in either session. Despite this (and their differing tastes in music), I appreciated that they really gave the evaluation of each pairing their honest appraisal. We all knew that not doing so would taint the results.

I have noted in a previous post and will do so here again that I purposely left out system details so as to keep the focus on the players and the results. The opportunity to repeat these comparisons will present itself and we’ll definitely take into consideration forum member recommendations.

We did not set out to create the most scientific of comparisons, but instead made the most with what we had to work with while making sure that we had as level of playing field as possible for each player involved. It just so happened that the fellowship and hospitalities ended up being very enjoyable too.

We also did not seek to create a definitive set of results that can be extrapolated so that it could be relevant to yours or anyone else's system. In the end the results of the San Diego blind comparisons reflect the opinions of 5 voters on two great classical recordings played though 5 highly regarded digital players in a resolving full range system on that day.

Similarly, the LA results reflect the opinions of 4 voters (two of whom did not participate in the San Diego comparisons) on one great jazz recording played though 3 highly regarded digital players in a completely different full range system the following day.

I’d do it again in a heartbeat!
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
Shadorne says:
I remain somewhat skeptical that the other products are "dimensionless" in comparison.
First, let me say how much I enjoy your posts here, Shadorne. I would characterize you as a knowledgeable, "gentleman disbeliever" of audiophile dogma. I hope you will stay with us, though the track records of disbelievers around here has not been terribly good.

I am reading two themes in your comments in this thread. First is that it doesn't make sense that these high-priced units should sound as different from one another as the test results suggest. You'll have a hard time getting much agreement on that point from most of us for whom the hobby survives on the basis of our perceptions of these differences. Second, and very much related but also a bit different, is suggested by the quote I lifted above. So often in reviews we read that some important aspect of sound reproduction was transformed by a specific component, as if, as you say, it was "dimensionless before." Here's my theory: we hear minor differences from component changes in our systems (or in systems we are familiar with) and, for whatever reason or reasons, the magnitude of these differences gets blown up in a big way. A bit more dimensionality in some respect strikes as us as a night and day difference. I don't know the underlying mechanism at work, but I suspect there is some psychology of change in which small changes to a known staus quo are perceived disproportionally. As I've argued before, if [Nordost Valhalla or EMM Labs or take your pick] is really as great as people say, why is it that, when you go to an audio show, the rooms using [Valhalla or whatever] don't sound better tha the average rooms with some reasonable consistency? I don't have an answer, but it's possible -- just possible -- that in the scheme of the overall system, the speaker cable amounts pretty much to bupkis. I dunno. Even so, whoever is running that room is likely to feel that their sound was transformed when they put the Valhalla in (or even when, at 3:00am this morning, they changed the cable elevators they were using). And I'm sure it did sound like a transformation to them.
ctm_cra
86 posts
 
Shadorne -

"but the shootout suggests large and earth
shaking differences in performance from
several extremely expensive and extremely
high quality players"...

The results of both sessions, particularly the blinded comparisons do not suggest this at all. There were audible differences and these differences were certainly noticeable enough for each voter to confidently select which player he preferred in the four pairing conducted. As noticeable as these differences were, they were not night and day differences and certainly not large and earth shaking.

"I read the conclusion again...it attributes
all the qualities of the audio at the listening
session to the CD source (as if nothing else
influenced the sound; speakers, music selection,
room acoustics, amp, listener preferences...)"

Now you know why we asked the voters to give their simultaneous votes in the form of simple show of hands. Asking them to provide commentary leads to other issues and I addressed this in detail in my first post on this thread. It can also lead to misinterpretations or inconsistent conclusions on the part of forum members.

Certainly the downstream components in the system used have a certain sonic character, but this was consistent across all players. It is interesting to note that there was not an instance when a voter said that one player was thinner or warmer than another suggesting that tonality is not really the area of greatest discernable difference between these players. Having no tonality issues across two very different systems is a compliment to the designers of each of the players we evaluated.

If I would have had the chance to speak to Pete prior to his initial post I would have asked him to simply report the results and refrain from giving his personal assessment. Water under the bridge...

Instead of trying to get an understanding of Pete's assessments I can only attempt to steer you to focus more on the overall voting results on day 1 and day two. Please see my response to Essentialaudio and at the end of this post I attempted to summarize what this all means.
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