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  3. 191910-107

Who remembers California Audio Labs?

CAL certainly made a big splash in the early days of digital. I owned an Icon for a number of years and enjoyed it so much that when Power Boss was announced I had my Icon upgraded to a Power Boss. And then California Audio Labs was bought out and disappeared. Not overnight but from the perspective of time, it seems so. Anyone else wonder what could have been the company’s future had their trajectory followed a different path? 

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patrickdowns's avatar
patrickdowns
513 posts
 
dekay - I still have one too (since the late 90s!) and it sounds great, imo. It’s my backup, to a Rega which is excellent too. The CalAudio is very close in performance. I mostly stream now, with all my CDs ripped to a Roon server.
reubent
7,005 posts
 

I had a CAL Tercet mk III back in the day. It was the best CD player I had hear at that time. 

jasonbourne71's avatar
jasonbourne71
1,203 posts
 

I have a CAL CD player I bought on EBay. The seller either didn't know or neglected to tell me it doesn't work. I put it aside until I get around to fixing it. So far I suspect the on/off switch as it won't turn on/light up.

deanrk
22 posts
 

I believe the Adcom GCD-750 (still have as a backup) was a CAL design.  I have a schematic with their name on it.

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jallan
312 posts
 

I had the CAL Delta and Alpha combo. Very warm and musical, but resolution wasn’t its strength. I still have them, but I have to say that streaming through my Bluesound Node II is more resolving.
 

what sank CAL from memory was their movement into video. They had a tremendous universal player that was also extremely fragile. I bought two used that had the laser system broken in shipping, despite decent and original packaging both times.

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