How do I smooth out violins?

Hi Frogman,
You make a good point,a CD player built to sell for 400.00 retail certainly faces cost restraints.Likely small power supply, wimpy transformer and cheap op-amps and caps needed to meet budget. High quality digital can sound excellent with all types of music.Would it not be in the OP`s best interest to have a reference CD recording(he knows and can trust) to use when auditioning or comparing other players.He can develop a relative hierarchy of of various players sound quality.
Regards,

The problem with a reference recording is it can sound completely different on every system it's played on. Does that make one system bad and another good? I don't think so. Every system I have assembled gets the most from a separate group of recordings. I think it takes many many recordings to analyze a system. It would be nice if we could use one recording, but it's not that simple.

Gentlemen,
The OP says massed violins sound like crap on his system. Asks for suggestions as to how to correct the situation. Now THINK for a monment. How many VARIABLES are we confronted with here?

The CD was badly recorded
the CD was actually a transfer of a 1942 recording
The performance was subpar
It was not a top tier orchestra
he does not know what massed violins sound like
his expectations are too high for recorded music
his speakers are not up to the task

And Lord knows what else

SO, how can anyone ponder the OP's question and come up with BUY THIS, BUY THAT, UPGRADE THAT CHANGE THIS.
would it not make sense to do the easy and simple and the cheapest things FIRST.

The 349 dollar CD player owned by the OP and moi. Please google CD5004 STEREOPHILE. I will assume you gentlemen know how to 'READ' equipment reviews. Trust me, if they had found anything wrong or bad with a 350$ CD player, they would have shouted it to the roof-tops. Because it would support the firt law of high-end 'If it cost more, it's better'. The obligatory last paragraph comparison to the mega buck 'reference' player notwithstanding.

Cheers

"Trust me, if they had found anything wrong or bad with a 350$ CD player, they would have shouted it to the roof-tops."

Unless Marantz advertises in their magazine.

Bojack - I am a big classical fan and have experienced a very similar problem you describe. In fact, I posted a thread about it on AA. The problem manifested itself in both of my systems, one is a passive pre-Class D amp-Maggies rig, the other is an active pre-Class A/B-box speaker combo, so very different. The posters on AA ranged everywhere from "Maggies suck" (yeah right) to more involved discussion of the problems recording engineers face in recording orchestral strings.

I have a couple of comments:

1) My problem isn't heard with solo violin, which in fact sounds particularly good on my system. It's orchestral violins only.
2) I have improved the sound through shielded A.C cables and jitter control. I would investigate both of these routes. I would look into a reclocker for the Marantz (Empirical Audio and Audio Gd are the competitors in this space). This isn't a complete solution but it's ameliorative.
3) Following up on 2, my current working hypothesis is that the issue is one of dirty power and jitter.

So I think your observation is completely valid and I would approach the solution analytically.