Audiophilepure

When a CD transport enters the arena, I must compare it to my reference at its price point: the Aqua La Diva M2. The Diva M2 has a huge heart and is my favorite player under 10.000 Euros. Its main fortes include fluidity, delicacy, refinement, air, and flow. Connected via a Mogami 3080 Neglex AES/EBU cable, the La Diva M2 sounds seductively smooth, lush, and deliciously delicate. However, there is no denying the MPT-8’s transport has spoilt me with its vitality and expression. In comparison, the Aqua is a little rounder than strictly neutral and lacks a measure of control and impact in the low and mid-bass. Otherwise, though, the Aqua keeps up remarkably well, providing similar measures of resolution, transparency, and, importantly, musicality.

While I greatly admire what the La Diva M2 achieves at its comparatively modest price point, this is also a reminder of what is possible in still higher tiers. The MPT-8 may cost more than three times as much, but it beautifully underlines the performance level that Playback Designs achieved with this product.

https://www.audiophilia.com/reviews/2024/7/3/mtronome-aqwo-2-hybrid-dac-sacdcd-streamer

The ESOTERIC SACD of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 (originally released on Philips in 1963) is a spectacular example of ESOTERIC’s famous remastering for compact discs (their new vinyl remasterings are superb, too). The London Symphony Orchestra sounds dramatic and very beautiful as guided by Pierre Monteux. All instruments’ timbral cues are wonderful via ESOTERIC mastering and the AQWO 2’s advanced DAC, but those soaring violins are sweet and when things get thick in the mix like the famous viola syncopations in the first movement, the AQWO 2 unravels things easily. This was luxury SACD playback.

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/esoteric-k-05xd

The honest approach is thrown into even sharper relief when we play an SACD of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring. This is a lovely clean Decca recording with the music conducted by Valery Gergiev and played by the Kirov Orchestra. Here we’re impressed by the clarity on offer and the sheer amount of information the Esoteric reveals. Just as impressive is the way this player manages to arrange all that information to deliver a stirring musical experience. This symphony is known for its drama, complex instrumentation and wild dynamic swings, and the K-05XD delivers the full experience with enthusiasm.

This player has a large-scale and authoritative presentation and images with pleasing precision. Instruments are layered with care and locked into position even when the music becomes demanding. We love the spacious nature of the soundstage and the general lack of clutter. The Esoteric’s impressive ability to dig up low-level details shines through in the convincing way it places the orchestra within the recording venue. There is nothing showy here, no attempt to make the recording sound more impressive than it is. Just a pleasingly accurate rendition of the original recording.

https://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/ch_precision_d15.htm

Where the CH Precision D1.5 MQA playback really shines, however, is with exceptionally well-recorded classical music, and nothing shines brighter than the Lisa Batiashvili and Daniel Barenboim disc of Tchaikovsky’s and Sibelius’s Violin Concertos. It comes in a standard CD package [Deutsche Grammophon 479 6038] but also in a UHQCD package with MQA encoding [Deutsche Grammophon Uccg-41048 484 2089]. It is a modern recording, made in 2016, and is thus fully MQA Studio. The improvement with the UHQCD/MQA disc is not subtle. The original disc was an exceptional-sounding CD, but the improvements with the MQA version, played on the CH Precision player, are nothing short of stunning. The soundstage opened up and details lost in the digital haze were fleshed out. How much does all this boil down to improvements from the UHQCD manufacturing and how much to the MQA? The newer disc is certainly a significant improvement played on a non-MQA player like the Neodio simply because of the UHQCD manufacturing, but MQA Studio encoding takes it into another league.

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/technics-sa-c600

Mahler’s Symphony No.10 is a dense and demanding piece of classical music. The Technics does well, though to be fair if you’re after the last word in insight a well-chosen combination of separates will do better. Regardless, the SA-C600 captures the feel of the music convincingly, delivering a combination of drama and fluidity that grabs a firm hold of our attention. A claimed power output of 30 watts per channel (into 8 ohms) is pretty modest, but the SA-C600 exceeds expectations by sounding surprisingly authoritative and suitably large-scale.

The digital inputs maintain this high standard, provided the source is of the requisite quality, of course. It’s only when we feed a signal through the single line-level analogue input do we feel a tinge of disappointment, as it sounds a little more opaque and dynamically constrained than we’d hoped for. Oddly, the onboard moving magnet phono stage doesn’t exhibit these traits to any serious extent and sounds way better than is the norm from such built-in circuits. This phono stage is good enough for most price-compatible turntables, which is an unexpected but thoroughly pleasant surprise.