CD suggestions and help with Musical Fid. and BMW?

I agree with Natalie, but choose to be a little more diplomatic about it. If you could give us an idea what your budget is, we can suggest some good CD players to choose from. And yes, get used to a single drawer.

Thanks for all of your responses. I would spend up to 2.5K on a cd player (my guess as to what's appropriate given the other components) if the impact was big enough. Regarding the cables, they are harder to demo given the current variety of dealers out there, so i'm not sure how to proceed. I'm very interested to CD recommendations given my system and concerns, and any ideas for demoing cables.

I disagree with you, Natalie. Jeff said his problem was that the highs are overly dominant, thereby making the sytem sound overly bright and unbalanced. IMHO, that symptom is a cable issue. If he had said that his highs were grainy or that the system sounded weak, I would agree that it was his old CD player.

I also have a MF a3 amp/preamp but with adio physic tempos. I use straigthwire encore II interconnects with nordost solar wind speaker cable. I also want to upgrade my source which is a Sony changer. I read Mcintosh makes a new one and that Carey will be introducing one in the coming year. The other solution might me to keep your changer for "party" time and buy a goog single drawer for serious listening. Has anyone heard The McIntosh. It looks wonderful.

Jeffsel - from the information you've given, I would guess that the problem you're experiencing is a result of a few issues - and yes, cables are one of the issues - but not necessarily the Tara.

Can you tell us about your room? Do you have hardwood floors, a large coffee table? Windows? I have a feeling that highly reflective surfaces dominate your room.

While you do need a new CD player, I wouldn't expect to find one which warms up the sound - the way you would like. The Rega's are "warm" sounding - the Sony XA777ES is warm sounding but.. if the rest of the system (and ROOM) isn't optimized, you'll have similar results - even with better digital front ends.

Musical Fidelity uses a different type of IEC AC connector than most gear - at least they do on their new 3D CD player so I am assuming that they do on the A3 stuff as well... which leads me to power cords. I guess you're using stock power cords right? And of course the Marantz has an attached power cord, right? (I'm guessing here).

Let me know.