What new gear have you just bought?


 I figured this might be an interesting topic for people of all levels of audio knowledge. For folks like me at the lower end of the spectrum, we might even learn some things from it.

 I'll start off with a couple of my recent purchases which entails a CD recorder and a CD player.

 A couple of weeks ago I purchased the Tascam CD-RW900SX CD Recorder/Player. I bought this to make a CD out of an old cassette I made way back in 1988. The tape still sounds mint but it won't forever so I wanted the digital copy before it was too late. The machine itself works pretty good. I had a tough time with some of the instructions but finally figured most of it out. The CD's came out great. It took two blank CD's because it is a 90 minute cassette. If anybody is wondering, I used Maxell blank CD's. I'll get some Verbatim blank discs now that I know what I'm doing. The cassette was done on a Maxell XLll blank tape 35 years ago.

 

 My other recent purchase was this week. I bought a Rotel CD11 Tribute (Black) CD player. The Rotel name seems to come up on Audiogon a lot so I figured it must be decent for it's price range. I could simply use the aforementioned recorder as a player also  but I don't want to use the transport in the recorder for simple playback so it will last longer. The Rotel  sounds pretty good to me in my system for as much as I've tried it out so far. Especially for it's price range. All I've played so far was Robert Plant Fate of Nations because it was the first thing I grabbed off the shelf. This weekend I'll check it out further with some Pink Floyd and a little classical music to boot. Specifically,Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I love the rendition I have of that with real cannon and musket fire!

 The Rotel CD11 Tribute is not a super expensive CD player but it will be a good stand-in until I can get my vintage Harman Kardon CD players serviced. Two of them stopped reading discs just a few weeks apart.

 Anybody else want to share some recent purchases? I'll be sure to look up more information on anything that piques my interest.  Also, if anyone has any questions on my recent acquisitions I'll do my best to answer them . Thanks.

 

128x128toddsyr

toddsyr, I also recently purchased the Rotel Tribute cd player.  I’ve been using it quite a bit this summer.  I wasn’t too impressed, finding the sound basically blah and not involving.  I gave it plenty of run in time but it just sounded like a nice player that was fine for background music.

On a whim, I swapped out the supplied 18g power cord for another 14g generic cord I had laying around.  This resulted in an improvement in every sonic category.  I highly recommend a better power cord than the one supplied.

rhljazz, I actually read about swapping out the power cord for the Rotel. It was probably in a post by you somewhere.

It is on the to do list for sure. For what it would cost it is definitely worth a shot.

Not finding too many 2 prong (ungrounded) power cords though.

Lots of other good posts in this thread too. I look into as many of the mentioned items as my time permits. It’s fun and I learn things here and there.

I recently purchased the Benchmark DAC3 HGC. It has Four balanced SABRE 32-bit D/A converters that are summed together to create each balanced analog output. This 4:1 summation provides a 6 dB noise reduction, and gives the DAC3 industry-leading performance.

The Benchmark DAC3 HGC sports the latest ESS Technology ES9028PRO 32-bit D/A converter chip, which performs all the unit’s digital-to-analog conversion.

It sounds great and I like it very much.

Benchmark DAC3 HGC Link: