Ayre CX-7 vs. Meridian G08 ?

Anyone heard the G07, which is less money? This one does not use a ROM drive, so it doesn't spin at the high speeds of the G08. Hence, it wouldn't have this 'problem'.

Cjlundgren...I used to listen to Meridian CD players at my dealer extensively and for some reason almost every remote in the store would control them. I'm not talking the "play" button on the Sim remote would play the Merdian, I'm talking the "play" on the Sim remote would turn the 508.24 on and off or try to jump to another track. It was really strange but it seems to me Meridian's remote codes need to be changed on the equipment(as opposed to the remote itself).

BTW, the 508.24 was the best player I heard at the time and the G08 would certainly be my first listen if I was in the mkt for a $4000 player. I feel one of the problems(problem for audiophiles, good thing for Meridian) with Merdian is it is sold at home theater type of places that have little equipment similar to what many of us own. There is one dealer in NYC that carries it and besides Rowland(which they don't pair with Merdian players) they are nothing more than a step above Best Buy.

Chinanico, what you describe would have me absolutely livid. The first job of a CD player is to PLAY CDs. Will be curious to learn how this resolves, if it does.

Anyone compare the G08 with any quality SACD players? I am in the market for a new CDP and am currently trying to decide whether to go with a SACD/Universal player, or a high quality redbook only CDP. Here's my story (if you are interested):

Now that I have spent some significant time with an Exemplar 2900, I ask myself, is SACD really necessary? This player forced me to stop and think.

Prior to owning the Exemplar 2900 I owned the Sony XA777ES. SACD's on the Sony sounded very, very good to me. Way better than my redbook versions of the same discs. But after spending several months with the Exemplar I began to notice no significant difference, on many quality recordings, between the SACD and the redbook. For example, I owned two versions of Bill Evans 'Waltz for Debby': one was the SACD and one was the Super-K2 20 bit remaster. Well, on the Exemplar Denon, in my system, I could not tell a significant difference between the two, and, on a few tracks, I actually preferred the 20 bit remaster. This exeperience repeated itself a few times.

This has given me pause. It makes me wonder whether I should just go for a really high quality redbook only player and forget the whole Hi-Rez thing altogether (especially because I am two-channel and don't need DVD). While I have invested a lot of money in SACD only about %10 of them were music I re-bought and the vast majority were hybrids -- so it would not be hard to divest myself of the single-sided SACD's and keep the hybrids (which is mostly new music for me) if I wanted.

I have learned a lot and one of the things that keeps coming back to me is that maybe I just had never owned a really exceptional redbook player before the Exemplar. I have not come to any conclusions...I will definitely audition the G08. Thanks for reading,

FWIW, I have had my G08 14 months now and have only had one disc that caused any mechanical noise. That was solved by levelling the player. That disc no longer causes any noise.

Also, in the manual it says the G08 runs its transport at standard CD speed most of the time. It only speeds up when it encounters errors, then it re-reads the tracks at a higher rate to try to correct the errors.