http://www.audioenz.co.nz/2006/vinyl_level.shtml
The Vinyl Anachronist: A Level Playing Field
By Marc Phillips
April 2006
That’s it. I’m packing it up and selling it all.
The JA Michell Orbe SE? Gone. The SME V tonearm, considered one of the finest in the world? Out of here. The Koetsu Rosewood cartridge? I’m selling it for a song.
All of my LPs are gone, too. My near mint copy of Casino Royale, my UK Parlophone mono pressing of Sgt Pepper, my rare test pressing of Sonic Youth’s Goo, and even my sealed Mobile Fidelity UHQRs are all up for grabs. Make me an offer.
Why the sudden change of heart, you ask? Why would someone who’s been so adamant about the preservation of analog want to suddenly give it all up?
The Naim CDX2, that’s why.
I know, I know, I’m just kidding. It’s all hyperbole, my way of conveying to you that the Naim CDX2 is by far the finest CD player I’ve heard. But here’s a statement that isn’t hyperbole, one that is very difficult for me to say.
If I had heard the CDX2 a decade ago, I might not have started writing about analog at all. I might have joined the countless masses that sold off their LP collections and analog gear and happily embraced the digital formats and never looked back. For me, that’s a stunning thought, one that makes me rethink everything I know about digital playback.
Heresy!
I’m not necessarily saying that the Naim CDX2 sounds better than my beloved Michell/SME/Koetsu rig. In fact, I want to trot out the old apples-and-oranges analogy, because there are certain things I prefer with each piece of gear. The analog rig is still superior in rendering the inner soul of the music, in continually reminding me of the presence of human beings playing musical instruments. But the Naim does a better job of presenting scale and dynamics and detail.
That doesn’t sound too revolutionary, because we’ve been hearing these kinds of digital/analog comparisons for years. But to tell you the truth, I’ve never really agreed with those descriptions until now.
And here’s another crazy thought. While the CDX2 doesn’t necessarily better my analog rig, it comes pretty darned close. The CDX2, however, is only the middle child of Naim’s CD player line, the third of five.
That’s right. There are two models above the CDX2 – the NZ$16,000 CDS3, and the all-new NZ$31,500/US$27,000 CD555, a true statement product. And the optional, dedicated XPS power supply (NZ$7800) can be added to your CDX2 at a later date, which is supposed to improve performance significantly, while doubling the total cost of your digital front end. So if the CDX2 can’t quite beat my Michell Orbe, those other players probably can. I’m not sure if I want to find out.
Treason!
I do have to step back and give some credit to some other changes I’ve made in my system since the last column. Yes, I have succumbed to the whole high-efficiency speaker/low-powered SET amp movement.
I’ve replaced my Quad and Naim amplification with some extraordinary Yamamoto Sound Craft gear (just two watts per channel from a pair of 45 output tubes), and the versatile 101 dB efficient Zu Cable Druid mkIV loudspeakers (NZ$5310). And if I’ve learned anything from this paradigm shift, it’s that low-powered SETs actually make digital sound reasonably good, even when it comes from a modest source.
I’ve attended quite a few audio shows in the last year, and the trend seems to be mating inexpensive, mass-market CD players, or even iPods and MP3 players, with exotic low-powered amplifiers and idiosyncratic high-efficient speaker systems. The results are usually surprisingly good.
The CDX2, however, is anything but modest. At NZ$9000/US$5350, the CDX2 is far more CD player than I’d ever thought I needed. My Naim CD3, which has lasted me almost a decade, started showing its age by being very selective about which CDs it wanted to play. My first instinct was to go with the CD5X, and pairing it with the Flatcap 2X power supply I already owned. But after some convoluted yet profitable equipment trades with my friend and audio dealer, Gene Rubin, I actually found that I could afford the more expensive player.
It seemed almost perverse at the time, for someone like me to blow a big wad of cash on something as flawed as a common redbook CD player that didn’t even play SACDs or DVD-As (it does have HDCD, however, a recent concession from Naim). I felt like a traitor, a digital turncoat, until I got home and plugged the beast in.
Sedition!
Right out of the box, the CDX2 amazed me. That seems to be the thing with Naim gear… it doesn’t really need a lot of break-in. I threw in the first CD, the one I always start with whenever I make a change in my system, Dead Can Dance’s Into the Labyrinth (4AD 2-45384-A). I was instantly impressed with the huge soundstage, a quality that normally isn’t associated with Naim gear. Sure, PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing) was there in spades, and the entire presentation was forward and enveloping, much more than with my old CD3.
But the deepest bass was nicely fleshed-out, with astounding detail. I was suddenly aware of the musicians, moving and breathing, interacting with each other, just like with the best analog. And this was after no break-in!
After a couple of weeks, everything settled in to a point where I had gone several days without listening to a single LP. That’s a rare thing, because for me, over the last few years, listening to CDs has been almost completely relegated to something I do while driving. Home listening has gone from a fifty-fifty split between vinyl and compact disc before I bought the Michell Orbe, to a nearly hundred percent dedication to analog in the last couple of years. In fact, the only reason I knew that the Naim CD3 was acting up was because my wife told me.
But with the CDX2, I truly started rediscovering my CD collection. How many times have you heard that in an audio review? When you think about it, however, that’s the true yardstick of a new component’s worth.
Many of the CDs I’ve purchased over the last year, only to languish in the changer mechanism of my car’s CD player for months, suddenly saw time in my reference system, and many recordings turned out to sound completely different than I thought they did. For instance, in my car, Iron & Wine’s brilliant, folksy Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop 630) sounded wide, expansive and spare. With the CDX2, it was much more immediate, much more intimate.
At the same time, Sufjan Stevens’ revelatory Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty AKR 014) sounded frantic and muddled in my car, but open and organized and endlessly detailed and relaxed in the CDX2.
I know it sounds ridiculous to compare the CDX2 to a stock car stereo, but I noticed the same differences in comparison to the CD3, just to a lesser degree. It’s almost as if I never really knew the true nature of many of my favorite CD recordings until I listened to the CDX2. They’re entirely different animals from what I originally thought. They’re better, in almost every respect.
I’ve never had that feeling as I’ve steadily upgraded my analog rig over the years; the character of the recordings stayed basically the same, even when I switched from Regas to the Michell. The improvements were indeed noticeable, but never this drastic. For all the audio skeptics in the world who believe that differences between compact disc players are negligible at best, the CDX2 will almost certainly change their minds.
Perfidy!
So where does that leave me with my Michell/SME/Koetsu combo, which is embarrassingly dusty as I write these words? Well, I’ve been in this situation before. I had to trade in my AR ES-1 turntable on a Rega Planar 3 a good fifteen years ago when I bought a Creek CD-60, my first halfway decent CD player. I had to switch the Planar 3 for a Planar 25 when I bought the CD3. And now that I have the CDX2, I feel it’s important to up the ante on the analog side in order to retain my unbridled enthusiasm for vinyl. I could just trade my Koetsu Rosewood Standard for an Urushi, or I could opt for the new “Never-Connected” technology from Michell that will convert my Orbe to battery power.
Or, I could come to grips with my recent realization that my favorite turntable in the world in the original Wilson Benesch, the one that didn’t even have an actual name, the one that’s been discontinued for at least five years now. Every time I hear one, I realize that not only is it better than the Orbe SE, it’s better than everything else I’ve ever heard, and that includes those infamous decks from Rockport and Continuum!
Then again, I could always succumb to the immense charms of the Naim CDX2, and sell off everything. Stay tuned.
Marc Phillips has been writing about hi-fi and music under the Vinyl Anachronist banner since 1998. His earlier columns can be found on the Perfect Sound Forever website. You can discuss vinyl with Marc at Vinylanach@aol.com
