Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Cary Audio CD 500 CD Player Review

It's no secret that stand-alone CD players have mislaid belligerent with consumers seeking for "universal" solutions to home drama and audio needs. Although the digital domain still reigns, unstable media players along with DVD and Blu-ray players have taken a lot of breeze out of the CD player's sails. Still, a dedicated CD player offers the most appropriate promising for high-fidelity performance. If you've invested in to condensed discs and wish to keep enjoying your collection, then a dedicated front spinner is still the way to go. If you wish to take your front gathering to a new level, Cary Audio's CD 500 CD Player may be the final player you'll ever need.

Design Features

The CD 500 retails for $2,995, and for that cost you obtain a appurtenance that's built rock-solid and complemented with top-grade components. The CD 500's digital-to-analog converter uses 24-bit, 192kHz Burr Brown 1792u DAC chips, and the player can moreover decoded HDCD discs. The CD 500 is engineered to minimize disc-read errors by contracting a Read Only Memory expostulate dedicated only for getting more information condensed discs. This setup allows a few passes of the front to be done to approve expect data reading. Cary asserts, too, that this setup "improves the typical condensed disc's error-correction capabilities by a reason of 100." To head off route jitter, the CD 500 utilizes a contingent of buffers that all but eliminates jitter problems. What indeed separates this front spinner from others, though, is Cary's "Resolution Enhancement" DSP circuitry. With this circuitry, the CD 500 initial takes an original 16-bit, 44.1kHz vigilance and expands it to 24 bits. Then users have the choice to up-sample the 24-bit vigilance from 44.1kHz all the way to 768kHz. Upsampling may be done around the front row and/or remote and basically in actual time, interjection to the CD 500's 3 processors that perform operations at 190 Millions of Instructions Per Second.

Setup Listening

The front row of the CD 500 sports 7 controls and 3 displays. Of the controls, the large hitter is the Analog Output Sample Rate Converter, enabling one to up-sample typical redbook discs from 44.1kHz to 96kHz, 192kHz, 384kHz, 512kHz and 768kHz. The CD 500 is moreover matching with HDCD-encoded discs, and features an HDCD indicator (blue LED) to approve decoding. HDCD discs are decoded at 44.1kHz only. The back row is versed with a span of offset XLR analog outputs, a span of lunatic RCA analog outputs, a TOSLINK digital output, a COAXIAL digital output, DC trigger input, IR submit jack, RS 232 jack and AC mains. A batch power line is included, that may be substituted out for an aftermarket cord. Four significant rubber feet anchor the CD 500. we was able to assessment the CD 500 using RCA analog interconnects only, so we can't verbalise for its playback around the digital outputs or offset connections. The initial thing we did was reinstate the batch power connective tissue with my go-to RS Audio Kevlar Starchord and then let it erupt in for about a week.

The pointed differences between the CD 500 and other players aren't that subtle. For my ears, this player delivers all the opening we would expected ever need. Its a in few instances well-spoken user with an engaging, open display that doesn't obtain hamstrung opposite frequencies. Highs are minute and washed without sounding irritable or brittle; mids are well-spoken and burnished; lows are plain and full-bodied. Its sonic footprint is hardly audible, with a clarity of sound that lets song do the talking. And the CD 500 isn't a one- or two-trick pony; rather, it delivers the great in any case of low-pitched type or difficulty of arrangement. This plain state player has a definite feet in the neutral zone, with just a hold of comfortable sparkle, creation it one of the most ear-pleasing and listenable gadgets around.

Though it up-samples to 768 kHz, we found that most discs sounded most appropriate at 96 or 192 kHz. Just going from 44.1 to 96 kHz brings out the air and freshness in recordings and creates a wider and deeper soundstage. As we referred to earlier, you can examination with the not similar DSP rates, as discs play, simply by dire the remote's "SRC" button. And if you wish to attend in "native" mode, it's just as easy to lapse to the redbook typical 44.1kHz.

Dutch composer Johan De Meij's "Symphony No. 1" may not be well well known to the broad public, but fans of J.R.R. Tolkien (and maybe high college rope students) expected agree to this combination as it was desirous by the author's Lord Of The Rings . This acceptably thespian work is widely separated in to 6 parts, 5 depicting a disposition or thesis from the trilogy. De Meij caps it with a transformation formed on Paul Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The 2001 recording by The London Symphony Orchestra, led by David Warble, brings De Meij's work to the unison stage, transcribing the original square calm for sonorous timber rope and re-scoring it for symphony orchestra. The outcome is a blend of dim and light, penetrated by moments of perfect merriment such as the jubilant horn announcements and the dancing shuffles of "Hobbits." we was perplexed by the opening and the clarity of the arrangements, presented with a freshness and joy, as if the CD 500 was working only to make me smile.

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