Hey Jakeman, thats a really nice unit you have there(Rotel), I liked the looks of that but they wanted a G note plus tax and no audition...end of that story.
Because of past mistakes I will never buy any audio gear without a home audition again, its just not the same as hearing potential new gear in your system in your room. If dealers believe in their products and you have room on your credit card, they should be more than happy to lend you a demo. My local Cambridge Audio and Rotel dealers lost a sale because of this idiotic policy.
Rant over

Chris

I agree with you on the importance of power supplies. Even in Cd players a beefer, noise free transformer makes for a better sound. Great deal on that NAD. I'm with you no home audition...no sale.

If you think that NAD is nice, you need to try the AH! Bljoe Joeb. err. I mean Njoe Tjoeb.

pmbuko,

LOL!

Regards,

I used to listen to my CDs in my 15 year old Yammaha carousel player. Then I got a Cambridge Audio Azur 540D DVD player and played my CDs via the DVD player but digital out to my preamp. The sound is night and day, that's because my preamp, the Anthem AVM 20 has really good AKM dacs. I listen to all my CDs on my Preamp

I'm sure high end dedicated CD units probably sound better, but given that 80% of my music listening is lossless encoded FLACs or APEs, that setup is good enough for the times I actually do listen to a CD.

I just saw this.... http://pioneer.jp/dvdld/player/dv_600av/

for those riding down the HDMI trail, this unit has promise. it's the first SACD player that will pass true DSD via HDMI. In other words, you should get (in theory) the same quality bit rate via hdmi as you do with the multi channel analoge. You'll need an audio processor with HDMI 1.2a though.

Michael needs to buy one and report back.

Well I would like to thank Chris (KlipschGuy) for the audition today. He was gracious enough to have me over so I could listen to his Emo setup with the new 80's. I'll have a report shortly....

And yes, big difference with the NAD player. When he A/B'd them, the vocals through the Oppo sounded a little more forward and shallow. Through the NAD, the soundstage and vocals seemed to have much more depth.