$1200 vs $200 cd players

Yes the website is: WWW.East-Sound.com.cn It is in Chinese but you can go to babelfish-altavista.com and get the site translated. The information though is rather difficult to ascertain.

I found more information by going to many different sources and these are some of the things I found out.

Transport is from Philips.

Operational amps and chip set are not Burr browns as advertizsed here on audiogon. They are from Crystal Dynamics. Chip is the CS4390. The same one used in the $4000 Gamut player and several Meridian models.

Power source uses WIMA black box technology.

The most unusual part is the TCCO (Temperature Control Clock Ocillator). Did some research to find out what a TCCO does. Actually found the answer at a engineering website talking about clock designs.

According to them a traditional clock is affected by temperature and humidity. A TCCO clock minimizes the effect of temperature and humidity and is theoretically capable of being 20 times more accurate then a non temperature control clock.

The shootout Between the Cayin, Jolida and Eastsound is at Audiocostruzioni.com. Italian website with a English version. There is also a review of the Eastsound there which has a hyper link to the shootout between the Copland and Eastsound and the reviewer states the Eastsound "disintigrated" his own $3200 Copland.

The sound is analog in nature. The importer I got the Eastsound from was curious about the player, since it was the first one he imported and I let him keep it for a week to audition. He was very very suprised when he learned the player was all SS and had no tubes. It does slam like SS though.

Hope this helped some. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Best Wishes MaxxC

IMO...

your Sony STR-DA2000ES, when fed a digital PCM signal from any source..and being in direct 2 channel mode, is an AMAZING SOUNDING amp. You'd have to spend upwards of $5k in sperate componants to top that soundstage, detail and imaging prowess.

That said...
the ONLY way to listen to one of these amps is by feeding it a digital signal and taking advantage of the Sony S-Master pro wizardry (which upsamples incoming PCM to DSD..hence the magic).
so, its the tranpsort that will make a big difference. Any new or old higher end Sony DVD / CD player should perform wonderfully as they are supposed to be exceptional tranpsorts on their own, from what I understand. I think big, heavy and well built players make for nice tranpsorts vs. the thin and flimsy plastic consumer players that are available these days.

The thing w/CD players..its about the tranpsort and build quality (one and the same) but more importantly, its all about the DAC inside. The better the DAC, the better the sound. pure and simple. And IMO, the DAC in the Sony 2000, 3000, 5000 and 9000es recievers are better sounding than most other stand alone DACs out there that cost under $2k.
I think you're on the right track where you are.
as mentioned, trust your ears. Keep listening to different gear and come to the conclusion that you all ready have a great sounding system.
A lot of the cheap $200 and less CD players have nice DACs in them,...but are lousy transports.
Many of the $1000-2000 CD players are great transports w/mediocore DACs in them. When you get the best of both worlds together in one box, those are the good decks.
as per CD players and my own observation....
I went from a Musical Fidelity CD-PRE24 which is a GREAT sounding CD player....to a $58 best buy Toshiba 3960. I had the two units running head to head and could not hear a difference. My system at the time was certainly up to the challange of showing me points of reference between componants.

Now, I run that same toshiba into a 3000es Sony amp. 1/4th the cost of my individual componant rig. 10x better sound.
still, I could stand a better transport to improve things a little bit.

I think an approach to try would be to better the digital signal. Something like the Apogee Big Ben master clock would do VERY nice between any transport and DAC.

Went from an Adcom CD player(changer) to a Wadia 21 CD player, the rest of the system was unchanged. (BTW, I connected the Adcom against a Rotel CD Player that was a recommended component 3 years ago, and the listening panel couldn't tell which was which!)

The same CD's played through the Wadia was like someone took the blankets off the speakers! Attack, involvement, music! Even a later upgrade in amps didn't do as much.

While you don't always get what you pay for, entry level cd or dvd players won't let you capture the full potential of your system.

But, if you start off with an inexpensive but musical player then you're well placed to do in-home auditions and make smart upgrade decisions.