The now discontinued 308T, which I once owned and thoroughly enjoyed, was always a sleeper in the Cary line-up. Unfortunately, at $6500 there's significant competition, so it better be good.
No I have not heard it yet. I have heard some reviews saying that it is a pretty excellent system. I have also read reviews in other places stating that it is not, the best of the best, however.
I called Cary Audio and spoke to Jason. He corroborated what Krisjan stated; the 306 Pro is the top of the line at 8K and the 303T is 6.5K. When I asked about Cary's ad in Stereophile stating the 303T to be the best player on earth, Jason replied "it's just an ad"(!) and the 306 is the superior player.
The 306 uses 8 of the Burr Brown DAC chips and the 303T uses 4, the power supply is superior in the 306, the chassis is all one material (aluminum) and is of higher integrity than that of the 303T and several unspecified internal components are of a higher grade material and construction. The 303T substitutes the 24/192 USB input for the Balanced XLR on the 306. This info comes from a Cary technical staff member. $6500 vs $8K creates a confusing marketing situation to me. Are they trying to steal Esoteric's thunder with this close price point give and take away strategy?
The Cary 303T SACD is a vacuum tube/solid state selectable SACD player. Plays Redbook CDs and upsamples at 44.1, 96, 192, 384, 512, and 768kHz. His mechanism is based on Triple-beam laser, multi speed SACD transport.
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