Ayre CX-7 vs. Meridian G08 ?

Islandear: We do find ourselves in a similar dilemma. The CDP's you mention are all serious dollar, top notch, players. Hard to imagine going wrong with any of them; it would probably be more a matter of system synergy at that point.

I have about 400 redbook CD's and 150 SACD's (most hybrids), only a few DVD-A's. I listen to my Hi-Rez discs a lot. But I do not want any compromise of redbook performance because redbook CD's are still so plentiful and they are always less expensive and easier to find than SACD's and DVD-A's. I don't know,

Drubin, this resolves by changing my CDP to another model. Sorry but eventhough I enjoyed the musicality of my G08 now I turned to another brand. Actually my dealer has been kind enough to take the meridian back and I kept the model he had sent to me for replacement, it is a french brand named Eera (used to be called Helios in the past), model is DL1. The new CDP doesn't have XLR outputs though, and I guess this migth be one of the reasons why I don't have the soundstage of the meridian through my Jeff Rowland Concentra 2.
Anyway it still has some kind of magical "analog" sound and I enjoy it... waiting to upgrade to DL2 with XLR that will be released in a few months.

I had always been skeptical in our audiophile world about products with a CD-ROM drive (but impressed by the Meridian sound), and now I am back to a Philips drive.

Islandear, I had sligth issues with around 10% of my CDs on the G08. But in particular one of them was making the Meridian and my Atacam stands shake like hell : it was "Oscar Perterson we get requests" by Verve, a CD I own for many years and worked well on all my previous players. A brand new Molly johnson CD also had issues. I own 2 original CDs of "Norah Jones Come away with me" (my gf and I bougth it) : one had the issue and not the other. Really is a question of tolerances, I guess.

Chinanico, it's too bad the G08 didn't work out for you. Hopefully, Meridian will get its act together re this issue (and since others have mentioned similar or dissimilar problems we have to hope that Stuart and Boothroyd are aware of these complaints). Let us know how you're enjoying the Eera. Happy listening.

I have heard this Eera cd player in my system. It sounded very good. However I thought sometimes its highs were a little to hot. Now I am testing Meridian G08 and it is easier on highs with better bass and liquidity to overall presentation. It is a better player in my opinion. And the looks are just killing me.