AudioMeca vs. AudioAero vs. Electrocompaniet

Michael Fremmer writes for stereophile.....

Bwhite..I can't thank you enough for your honest replies. You are one of the few audiophiles who know what they are talking about. But, there is one important thing about the Mephisto, you didn't specify if your comparison was on the balanced output or the RCA output. I hope if you can give a brief comparison between both outputs. Which has more weight and how different are both of them in sound character and which one offers more musical experience than the other. I also would appreciate it alot if you can state in order your favorite or the best top 10 high end CD players that you ever heard. Thank you agian for your nice helpful comments..

Lordgorian thanks for the correction..and ya'll know what i mean...if the reviewers were as intriguing and honest ( but maybe Bwhite has the trained ear and the reviewers are still in training? or are they trying to support the INDUSTRY and thereby keep their plush jobs??) as Bwhite then maybe we would TEND to buy whats best for US... MORE often.

Hi Farhad - When I first purchased the Mephisto, I had an Elecrocompaniet EC4.5 preamp which has a "balanced/unbalanced" switch. The switch allowed a user to go between the two inputs on the preamp very easily. At that time, I was moving to a new preamp made by Supratek which doesn't have balanced inputs. I was concerned because all my previous systems were balanced only. I didn't like or trust RCA - single ended cables. Whether it be because the XLRs fit better, looked cooler or were just different, I don't know, I just always used balanced.

To make the comparison, I installed two runs of Nordost Quattro Fil. One was balanced and the other was single ended. To make a long story short, I heard no difference in sonic character between the two interconnects. Using balanced cables produces a 6db increase in gain but...that was really all the difference I could hear.

Balanced cables are VERY good for LONG runs as they have better rejection of RFI but I don't think they sound better or worse as a general rule of thumb.

RCA cables are annoying. They either fit too tight or don't fit tight enough. XLR's are very convenient. In all honesty, I would prefer to use XLR simply because it connects better but I wouldn't expect it to make my system sound better unless I had a cable run that was longer than 3 or 4 meters (which I do not).

Now that I use all RCA cables, I can honestly say it that to me, the performance of RCA is just as good as balanced.

Top Ten Players? This is tough because my system changed so much between listenings that it's hard to say what the exact order should be.

Clearly the three best players are listed below - but under that the order is a little more jumbled based entirely on my system at the time of auditioning. For many of those players listed, I didn't spend the COUNTLESS hours testing interconnects and power cords to tune/tweak to my tastes.

- Lin CD12

- Audio Aero Capitole & Audio Meca Mephisto (tie)

!-- This is where the order starts to get a bit funky ---!

- Accuphase DP75v
- Wadia 860 and 861
- Electrocompaniet EMC-1 Mk II
- Marantz SA-1
- Cary 306/200
- Electrocompaniet EMC-1 Mk I
- Meridian 508.24
- Resolution Audio CD55