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In Reply to: RE: Do you believe in giant killers? posted by eduardoo on August 05, 2016 at 21:41:40
Nt
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"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
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I would equate the 3400 to today's PS-1 according to the press.
I along with too many others read Sam's review. I headed right over to my local Radio Shack, bought one early afternoon and returned it 3-4 hours later.
I had CAL DX-1 CD player, the bottom of CAL's line. The 3400 may have been a good portable player, but it did nothing impressive in my, at that time mid-fi system. I think I had the top of the line, at that time, Rotel 990 preamp with either a Dynaco 400 or Crown DC300, speakers were Klipsch LaScala or AR LST. I had both amps and I either played separately or together, the LST's sat on top of the LaScalas.
My regret is that I never matched up a tube amp with the LaScalas. I was just transitioning from Stereo Review specs are everything, to actually using my ears. But the day of the 3400 was all ears, and Sam.
I may of had the CAL Gamma dac, but didn't have the cables to try the 3400 with the dac.
I read Sam, I liked Sam, but I never trusted his reviews after that. It did nothing well, plugged in to an actual audio system. It may have been an above average portable, I never owned one to compare it to.
And then all the tweaks, pwer supplies to improve it. Was not money I wanted to spend on such a poor starting point.
I don't know about giant killers, but the increments between really good and great get a lot more expensive when you reach a certain point. That last jump can be quite costly.
Yes, a piece of crap indeed. Only I kept mine in an attempt to find the magic. Ended up giving it away I think. Eventually replaced it with a Parasound CDP which was a welcome relief. The only thing I could figure was there may have been a few different contracted manufacturers of the 3400 and some of us ended up with duds.
Thanks! for sharing- Jeff.
we know that these guys receive "rewards" for favorable reviews.
Are you high? They don't get rewards. That's so goofy.
sure they do, I did not want to mention terms like, payola or kickback...
Like you know.
The CD-3400 inverted polarity. Not a minor annoyance IMO. The mods I had done to mine included correcting that deficiNcy. I also had the outboard power supply. Of course you hVe to tweak the thing. You have to tweak everything!. The tweaked/modded 3400 was actually a very musical sounding player. Period.
Sam, didn't mention polarity in his great discovery article. At least I don't remember it being mentioned.
I can reverse polarity on my current dac, and it is subtle. The 3400 just wasn't competitive with even the most basic CD player.
I heard nothing that made be think this has potential. My DX-1 was so much better.
I actually owned the 3400 and can report it sounded excellent. It's a Giant Killer. You know, like the Oppo 103. Like anything else these things MUST be modded and tweaked to sound their very best. Isn't that what high end audio is all about?
Trust me, the Radio Shack CD-3400 in it's stock form reverses polarity.
Excellent points! Dave and Jeff.
I still have mine. I have been thinking about hooking it up just to see. It served its purpose well when it was my first CD payer.
Dave
I would be interested in reading your thoughts about the 3400- Dave.
Was it really "that" good way back...?
I don't think it was as good as the hype, but at the RS sale price, it was a very good player for the money. I did not do any of the mods, because, with the price of the mods included, you would have been better off with a similarly priced Denon or Sony ES player, which also included a remote.
Dave
I got mine on sale too, and agree with you, "a very good player for the money" is what it was, but nothing more than that. Edit: As an example, it was dull and rolled off compared to my JVC XL-Z1050TN player. And that included when running the 3400 with an external, higher current battery supply.The only reviewer I remember having the courage to point that out during the frenzy was the later burned at the stake, Corey Greenberg.
Sam Tellig seemed to be the main hype-maker for the 3400, but then he did that a lot, in my opinion.
Edits: 08/09/16
I am sure he knows what good sound "is" but he enjoyed the absurdity that the thing could sound as good as it did. I do not remember whether he went further out on the limb than that.
I used one for a car system and it worked just fine until it was stolen out of my car in NYC.
That's probably true, and I remember reading his review as somewhat tongue in cheek when he pondered if the 3400 was "Better than the Levinson?" which was a $25,000 two box CD player.
I can cut him some slack for having some fun, but he also did a frenzy whip with a B&K amp that was hand tweaked (bias increase?) for him by B&K, which made it sound better. Tellig admitted it in his review, so it wasn't a credibility issue, but B&K balked at doing the tweak for the masses (I'm guessing because of reliability issues).
So his review was essentially a "Here's a giant killer amp, but you can't get one like mine", which, for me anyway, put Tellig into the hype category.
My CD-3400 saw relatively little use, but just stopped working one day. I still have it in a box somewhere.
Generating hype was how Sam made his money. I don't ever remember him recommending something that was bad, but he did overpraise things. Sill, I generally found him entertaining and did buy somethings that he recommended, that I liked quite bit. I agreed with his premiss (at the time) that you did not have to spend the value of a car to get good sound. I still think you don't, but the market has polarized between dirt cheap and very expensive since then.
Dave
Good point!
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