The bass is very extended and deep, but has a dynamic punch to it, perfect for more modern electronic recordings such as Moby, Leftfield and Kosheen. I am having a real renaissance with my hi-fi now, exploring old CD’s that used to sound bland that now sound wonderful. Whatever I throw at it from Kylie to Madonna, Michael Jackson to Fluke, Shostakovich to Bach, Vierne or Dupre, the Audio-Note excelled. In fact the quality of its sound was apparent well before 20 hours! It just sounds even better after 20 hours of playing. But once the player had run in (I suggest 20-30 hours minimum), the quality of it was apparent. I hooked the CD2.1x to my M1 pre-amp, and immediately, I fell foul of the high output voltage (3V). I like this a lot – especially a warm amplifier, with warm controls! It didn’t take too long to warm up, and the chassis and front-panel soon had nice warmth to them. Nonetheless, this is a very well built machine, with basic controls, no frills, and a digital out on the rear too! Personally, I find a slower drawer has more of an expensive feel! But that’s my opinion. Quite why display manufacturers need to tell you the track number via a digit, and by the matrix of flashing numbers on the right-hand-side baffles me! The CD-tray is fairly quiet and smooth, but is also quite quick in ejection and retracting into the player. The display is a cool-blue LCD affair that has all the usual info present. The brushed aluminium fascia is beautiful, as are the buttons, which have a pleasant smooth feel to them. Physically, it is a large, heavy player, which feels satisfyingly substantial. They weren’t bad, but they didn’t really ring my bell. By the way, the sonic qualities of the system are still improving as I have only had it for about 10 days! Just before my purchase, I tried a number of other “Best-Buy” Japanese models. Straight out of the box, the bass was way too heavy, but after just 10 minutes or so, it snapped into line. (My system comprises a modified Audio-Note M1 pre-amp with silver wiring, A-N Copper-Foil signal capacitors, Aura PA200 mono’d power-amps, Mountain Snow Atlas 2 Silver speaker cable and B&W Nautilus 804 loudspeakers.) I have felt compelled to write this review ever since about 30 minutes after taking my new Audio-Note CD2.1X out of the box, and hooking it all up with some superb Audio-Note AN-V interconnect, on New-Year’s Eve. Value rating would be for a new one incidentally- mine would be 10 blobs at £150. Give it a listen and I'm pretty sure you will to. This is no acoustic only anachorism however, the Hybrid remix of Jeff Wayne's Eve of the War has all of the drive and grunt (and none of the harshness) of my Dad's Naim CD3.5 and has a truly ballistic edge. Feeders' "Just the way I'm feeling" played on the CD2 will allow you to judge just how many fags Grant Nicholas had smoked before launching into his opening vocals. Human voices are reproduced in a manner that will draw a sharp intake of breath and a swift helping of goosebumps. Whatever you throw at it the overall performance remains incredibly smooth without sacrificing any detail on the recording. Simply speaking this player proverbially poos all over the two aforementioned players (which are in fairness both cheaper than a new CD2). It had been doing work as a reference player at the company I work for (good behavior will spare you all a plug- it is not a make mentioned in this review) and its owner released for the magnificently generous sum listed above. Next up was the the CD6000KI but I had a job finding them and oddly it doesn't partner very well with with my Marantz PM8200. A listen revealed that as far as I was concerned it really did not do much more than the CD62. Initial thoughts centred toward the Arcam CD82 as it at the time of writing has all the magazines swooning. My long suffering Arcam Alpha 7 expired after 5 years of hard use.
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