Is revealing always good?

Sgordon1:

Thanks. I do have the original feet on the CD player & have not tried vibration control on the CD player (I do have footers and vibration control on my amp and pre-amp though. The shelf... is a wooden shelf set on carpet and itself has no intrinsic vibration control (though it is designed for audio equipment.. but of the cheap variety).

I am not cleaning the CDs. Do you have some suggestions in this area?

Finally no CD mat (by this you mean on top of the CD as it spins.. right? --- If so, since the Creek is a slot loader, no such mat could be accommodated). Or, are to talking a weight placed upon the CD player to eleviate vibrations.

Zd542:

You are spot on --- it is incredibly important to hear a component in your system before you buy. That said, more often than not (by a wide margin) we cannot do so. If, like me, you live over 500 miles from the nearest high-end dealer and cannot get a component "on loan" and because buying used here at Agon rarely accommodates "testing out prior to purchase," and moreover, because most dealers on the internet make you purchase w/o audition and if they do allow return they charge restocking (or give only store credit)... well we are relegated to purchasing and hoping it works out... and selling on Agon if it does not.

But i agree... hearing first is the ideal.

In my revealing system some CDs were unbearable but changing speakers solved the problem. Now it is even more revealing but never bright. There might be many reasons for brightness including some metal dome tweeters, amps with deep negative feedback, jitter, electrical noise etc. Covering the problem with overly warm/colored component is not the way to go IMHO.

John Siau, technical director of Benchmark, stated:

We designed the DAC1 for maximum transparency. If you want to add warmth, you can't add it with a DAC1. Personally, I do not like what warm sounding equipment does to the sound of a piano. Warmth is wonderful on vocals, guitars and certain instruments, but it beats against the streched overtones of a piano. The overtones in a piano occur at slightly higher than harmonic ratios, and these create beat notes with the exact integer ratios produced by electronic equipment (and speakers). Too much harmonic distortion will make a piano sound out of tune.

"So... a theoretical question for all... do tubes (in a pre-amp or the CD player) color and obscure the digititus that is on the disk and thereby give a smoother more listenable presentation?"

No. Any time you buy tube products just because they're tube, in an attempt to fix a problem, you're just asking for trouble. Same thing with cables. Buy components based on how they sound. I know some people will disagree and say buy tubes, and my answer to that is, you can get lucky. Tube products vary in how they sound, every bit as much as SS does. Focus on what the end result needs to be, or you won't get one.

Right now, your situation seems to be OK with the 2 CD players. I do the same thing. I have my nice, high end components with my Wadia CD player set up for the best sound I can get, and for bad recordings I use my Arcam 33. Its not a perfect solution, but it works.

Another thing you may want to consider, depending on how much of your collection is poorly recorded, is to just have a 2nd system set up to be very forgiving.

I'm with Maplegrovemusic 100% on this. :^)