Time For a CD Player Upgrade

@mellowshifi

I bought a 'factory reconditioned' new Hegel Mohician - right from the start, the CD tray would not load the CD, have to turn the unit off just as the drawer closes to get it to load. Then playback started skipping, have to hit forward and back several times, seems the lubricaton on the laser rails it lacking.

A similar issue with a fellow audiogoner with his Viking, he sent it to be serviced twice and nothing changed. And my factory re-conditioned would not play from the get go. My take away is Hegel has an lubrication issue with their players, (hoping it just a lubricate the rails issue), but the arrangement with service here in the states is poor. 

All that being said, the player sounds fantastic, just color me disappointed with their service.

After buying used Marantz, Bryston, Esoteric, and T+A spinners and always having problems, I bought a new Ayon player and took advantage of the zero percent financing. Best purchase ever. A fantastic unit that has a tubed preamp section. I sold my Primaluna Pre and never looked back. Highly recommended.

I doubt that a new CD player will sound less bright than your Rega. CD players have a flat frequency response and from that standpoint they sound very similar to one another.

I think what you are hearing is a rolled-off high frequency response from your new Ortofon cartridge. It is making your CD player sound bright by comparison. You don't say which presentation you prefer but if you like the less bright sound of your turntable then getting an equalizer to put between your CD player and your preamp may be a better answer.

FWIW, I'm running a HANA SL cartridge and it sounds strikingly similar to my digital rigs. The freqency response of the HANA is very flat. I have a couple DACs, a couple of transports, a CD player, and an SACD player and they have slight differences but none of them sounds brighter than the other.

It would be intersting to try the HANA and see if that sounds more like your CD player. Depending on the rest of your system the diminished high frequencies you are hearing from your ML/Ortofon combo may be preferable in which case you might want to reevaluate your speakers.

@8th-note

“… I doubt that a new CD player will sound less bright than your Rega. CD players have a flat frequency response and from that standpoint they sound very similar to one another.…

MY TAKE: I strongly disagree with that over- generalization.

@giantsalami has already highlighted his experiences with valves (tubes) in his AYON unit with tubes .

The REGA ISIS VALVE cdp/DAC is another valve cdp option that sounds very different from a solid state spinner. Yes, I bought one too , and it is not anywhere near in audio performance nor presentation to any of the lower range REGAs I auditioned, nor any other solid state units OEM brands,

So here is a précis from the REGA website

” …. Rega’s now legendary head electronics engineer Terry Bateman spent 10 years researching the concept of a CD player using valves in the output amplifier. Valves have been widely used in musical instrument and recording amplification from the 1950s to the present day, therefore it made great sense to develop a valve based CD player to match that of the signal chain found in such applications….

Valve version of our reference Isis CDP

The valve Isis shares the same digital and USB sections as found in the solid-state version, however, the analogue stage is valve based with passive filtering. This stage uses two military specification triple mica 5814A (ECC82/12AU7) triodes being driven by the revolutionary Wolfson WM8741 ultra high performance digital to analogue converter….”

Valves provide further tuning options
https://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/rega_valve_isis.htm

“ … There is a switch on the back of the Valve Isis that’s specific to this player and offers three filter settings. The first (F1) is a linear-phase half-band filter, which doesn’t introduce group-delay distortion but does create pre-ringing -- it’s the closest thing to the filter in the standard Isis. The second (F2) is a minimum-phase apodizing filter, which has approximately the opposite characteristics of the first filter. The third option (F3) is a linear-phase apodizing filter with no group delay and suppressed ringing.

The apodizing filter was specifically designed to minimize pre-ringing in low-sample-rate digital signals. Dr. Peter Craven, whose credits include the Ambisonic soundfield microphone and lossless data compression, invented it in co-development with Meridian. It combats the way that digital filters ring at half their sample rate, something that’s always going to be a problem for CD with its 44.1kHz rate. I have encountered this type of filter in two other players to date: the Copland CDA825 and Meridian’s own 808.3 -- players that sound so different from one another that it’s impossible to assess exactly how beneficial apodizing filters are. However, out of the three players assessed so far, two have been extremely good. So on balance apodizing helps.…”

More technical bits. Rega does something that to my knowledge is unique among CD-player makers: it builds three matched laser mechanisms for every Isis. One is installed in the player, and the other two are stored at the factory. Should the original mechanism develop a fault, the company will always be able to provide precisely the right replacement. That’s taking customer service to a new level.

TAKEAWAY :

option 1: If you choose an all in one unit then this cdp/dac is one option. :(note: it has a USB direct input into its high-end DAC to play digital files) Buying new at $13K plus taxes may hit a resistance based on price, but a pre-owned unit at a discounted price tag, may sooth the budget woes

option 2: Think high-end stand-alone DAC or streamer / DAC (with quality cables) and use your existing cdp as a transport . I also have a MOON 280D MiND2 player for hi-rez digital files playback.

I 2nd the accuphase and Burmester players, they are extremely accurate machines, spectral is very nice as well