2. digital
  3. 1091333517

EMM Labs CDSD / DCC2 - Initial Listening Session

With only 48 hours of burn-in on these pieces, this review is hardly definitive- but here goes...

I think old Ed (Meitner) has hit the cover off the ball with this, his latest offering in CD/SACD playback equipment. The following comments are based on comparisons to my previous front-end: Meitnerized Philips SACD 1000, Meitner DAC6, Meitner Switchman II and apply to both SACD & CD playback.

The CDSD & DCC2 - compared to the previous Meitner rig---

-Much deeper soundstage, much more layered, as well, width about the same.
-Hall ambiance retrieval is vastly superior.
-Tonal and timbral qualities are unsurpassed in any digital gear I've experienced. Piano reproduction is absolutely stunningly good!! Acoustic guitar has the string interaction/wooden resonance of the real thing.
-There is a "Bloom" to instuments, even voice, that seems typically absent in digital playback. This quality is very "Analog" like.
-So far, I sense not even a suggestion of stridency or digital fatigue- It is just not there. This new gear is just plain musical. That word is overused- but there is no other word to better describe the overall experience. There is a natural seamlessness and natural bloom to the music, as a whole, which reminds me of a live performance within a live venue. All of the elements of that live experience seem reproduced faithfully by the CDSD & DCC2. This is no small feat. In quantitative terms I'd say the new gear is 25%-35% better, in every listening category (it is about the same in soudstage width), than the earlier 3 piece set-up I had.

As the new gear continues to burn-in there will certainly be changes and refinements, probably for the better, which I will try to keep track of. But so far- Ooh, La, La!!!

ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT:
Kharma Midi Grand
Tenor 300 HP
Jena Labs Pathfinder
Shunyata Anaconda VX & VX Alpha
fbhifi
gladstone
296 posts
 
Rohm321--I'm neither. Just a harmless drudge.
brucegel
151 posts
 
My experience with the emm gear is with their 8 channel dsd/pcm converter into a genex 9000 fed by a grace preamp and royer ribbon mics and geffel mics.This is 30,000 dollars worth of high end recording gear which I mention ONLY to elicit oohs and ahhs from the money boys out there(you know who you are).As a musician first and a audiophile recording engineer second I need to be very accurate and careful when describing acoustics,what a given mic and pre sound like (everything is a coloration...there is no neutral}etc..etc.So with this in mind I can tell you that the meitner sound is unparalleled for detail retrieval and the envelope of spatial retrieval is equally impressive yet it still has the digital taint that is inextricably part of the gene pool of digital.It is too hi-fi ish for my tastes.I ultimately fall on the colored sword of tube gear because this always in critical comparisons ends up sounding more live and thick and meaty and rich and enveloping like sitting in with a group of musicians sounds like to me.In the end it's all blah blah.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
I guess I am painted with the broad brush as a "money boy" for whatever use there is in this blah, blah. I would agree about the continuum from great detail with a lack of harmonics to a more "musical" harmonically rich sound. I also think there is a scale of dynamics and one of degree of smear or undo smoothness that is often, but not always, a characteristic of tubes. All of this complexity fails to be of much use to me, as does how much the component costs. So in reality I would merely say once again that I now have to hear again the DCC2 to find out whether it can rival my untubelike Exemplar/Denon 2900 in my digital front end.
brucegel
151 posts
 
A little lesson for all of you today (I am also a frame drum/hand percussion teacher as well).When I say money boys it is to underscore the most uninteresting and least edifying way to approach the audiophile hobby which is to spend as much as possible on the most expensive equipment (everyone has their limits)knowing one has purchased the state of the art...whatever that is and in whose ever mind it may be defined.This entire hobby,passion,and yes ego aggrandizing(which means to increase ones rank) is built on this testing of the limits one is willing to reach to spend as much as possible.It is one of the greatest sell job hype jobs perpetuated on audio in all of recorded history(pun intended).IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.Many people suffer from this acculturation of the best and most exotic.It is a mental problem...not as in illness but as in a challenge to the awareness to be vigilant and to guard against it.For example I have a microphone preamp that costs me 150.00 dollars that is virtually indistinguishable from my 3000.00 preamp.I consider this to be a fantastic achievment far outweighing the no holds barred overpriced preamp.This is where the genius and excitement of this hobby exists and not in the money boys who buy the latest greatest most expensive gear which appears/disappears every few months.Just my two cents which I probably spent one cent too much on just now.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Others suffer from delusions of grander and of unwarranted sense of authority.
More to discover