Ayre CX-7 vs. Meridian G08 ?

I've tried both in my system and ended up buying the G08. Tonally, the two players are more similar than different. They both sound very natural with a slight bias toward warmth, but the CX-7 is a little warmer than the G08. The main reason I bought the G08 was it has a deeper soundstage and higher resolution than the CX-7. You can hear some low-level things clearly with the G08 that are lost below the noise floor on the CX-7. The G08 is somewhat sensitive to ICs. I've found Kimber KS-1130 to work well in my system (Rowland/Soliloquy 6.5).

Good hunting, CJ. BTW, as Nighthawk points out, Meridian is sensitive to IC/PC/isolation tweaks. Mine is on a Symposium Ultra and Rollerblocks, power running through a Shunyata KCv2, all of which further accentuate its soundstage depth/width. Also, keep in mind the 588/G08 runs $4K retail as opposed to $3K for the CX-7...sometimes you do get what you pay for. FWIW, any change I make in my system will have to produce substantial improvement for me to give up the 588.

Gentleman, I have lsitened to both players and ended up ordering the G08 - I like the deep soundstage and bass response - plus, it mates well with my cj electronics. Thanks again for your thoughts.

Picked up my new G08 last night - right out of the box this is a KILLER CD player. The bass is very good, huge soundstage and the resolution of low level detail is scary - I'm hearing things on my CD's that I didn't even know was there. I can only imaging what this unit will be like once it is broken in.

I would HIGHLY recommend this CD player to anyone in the market for a one box CD player - you won't be dissapointed!!!!!

My G08 went back to the importer and I don't recommend this player...
I had picked up this machine after an extensive market review and listening (didn't have chance to listen to Ayre though). The sound stage is huge, and it is really musical, clear and extended in the highs.
The problem I faced is that with around 10% of my CD collection (they're all originals) the transport was noisy, vibrating, sometimes shaking my stands...
I returned the unit with one of the defective CDs for Meridan to study. They said that using this CD the behaviour could be reproduced on all their G08 in stock. I had tested the CD in many other players (Copland, Samsung DVD, Electrocompaniet, some esoteric player using Philips drive, my computer CD-rom...) and never had any issue.

I quote Meridian anwser :"The complaint regarding the vibration coming from the G08 is due to the following problems. The disc appears to be badly manufactured in that possibly the hole and data are not completely centered on the disc, or the disc is slightly warped.This results in the disc spinning not occurring smoothly causing air turbulence and resulting in the low rumbling noise. The reason that this isnot a problem with most CD players is that they spin the disc at 1X speed which is around 200rpm to 500rpm, depending on where the head is positioned on the disc, where as we spin the disc at 4X which results in the disc spinning at around 800rpm to 2000rpm. We can do this because we read the audio data digitally from the disc whereas most players read audio in an analogue form which the drive generates, which enforces 1X. Spinning the disc at the greater speed allows for the drive to re-read bad sectors on the disc if a problem is encountered. It also allows for buffering of the audio to ensure no dropouts. The reason the customer complains that the noise goes away after track 6 is because the drive uses Constant Liner Velocity where the disc spins faster when reading the inner tracks, then slows down for the outer tracks so slowing the disc down. This then causes a lower rpm on high track numbers making the noise quieter. (...)

My solution would be for the customer to back up the disc onto a CDR and use this disc which will not have the manufacturing issues."

To me this is a major design weakness if your player cannot accept CDs that are not 100% perfect, and none are given the industrial process variations (except maybe XRCDs) !

I could stand with this and worry everytiem I buy a CD that I will have to back it up on a CDR to listen to it in my high end player...