Is revealing always good?

"With these CDs the revealing player sounds biting, harsh and "lets through everything."

From my recent experience, if this happens regularly with many recordings, there is a good chance it is noise and distortion sneaking into your system somewhere upstream that is the problem, not each individual CD. Are you using any power conditioning? I've found both power conditioners and power cords like Pangea 14 series to be effective as designed to reduce noise and distortion that contributes to a subtle edge in the music. Those are good investments that need not cost a lot. Try that first maybe before changing anything else.

Revealing systems have teh most up side.

But they reveal noise and distortion as well as the source material. Do what you can to minimize noise and distortion and only then can one judge the merit of a highly revealing system

Robsker, if you are using the stock tubes supplied by AVA, try replacing them with something else, e.g., tubes recommended by ARC and sold by your high-end dealer who may represent ARC products. i did this with two older AVA fet valve amps, and the etch and grit came down a lot. Are you in the Twin Cities area?

"01-28-15: Czarivey
Why d'u think women have cosmetic pouch handy?"

They may need to powder their nose. Why else?

There are a couple of issues going on here.

1. The new CD player is demonstrating an effect whereby, the music played shows faults in the recordings. This subject has been discussed before. It may be necessary to hang onto an older cd player in order to listen to the older recordings. Also, with the new player, if the newer recordings are better, through the new player as opposed to the older player, it makes sense to have the new player for better quality cd recordings.

2. Listening to the new piece of equipment in your home system before purchasing. This really is the way to go. I am a firm advocate of taking equipment home to listen before purchasing. My favorite store allows me to do this. Because a) they would have my credit card information and would charge the amount if I failed to return the item and b) they know that I'm not a lookee loo and will purchase the item if I like it.

If the item is fairly expensive, which most high end equipment is, it is really unreasonable for stores to not allow one to do a home demonstration for a few days at the minimum.

to expect me to come out of pocket for large sums without such in-home demonstration is not reasonable to me.

As far as revealing, I have found that better equipment does indeed "reveal" the issues of other equipment to the extent that further upgrading may be necessary.

An example for me was my purchase years ago of the Audio Research REF 3 pre-amp. I took it home for an in-home demonstration (San Diego to Los Angeles), and compared it to my existing retubed AR SP 11 pre-amp. I found that many of my older cd recordings sounded really bad. some like a tweeter was aimed directly at my ear. Bad recordings and bad recording equipment. Not so much through the SP 11. But, the newer recordings through the REF 3 was absolutely wonderful. Don't get me wrong, the newer recordings through the SP 11 also sounded great. Just that the REF 3 "revealed" faults in my older cd recordings that I didn't hear so much with the SP 11.

I'm very happy with the REF 3 and I guess there are some recordings that I can't sit through anymore.

Oh well.

enjoy