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Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

Cary 308T / Cary 303/300

No offense taken.

My experience was quite the opposite.

I felt the 308 was OK but nothing special. The 308T had a nice full bodied harmonically rich and warm sound to it. I did tube roll it a bit with Mullards and Telefunkens. I thought the Mullards were lacking detail and a little veiled overall (but smooth) while the Telefunkens brought out more detail and transparency. I preferred the Telefunkens.

However, on the 303/300, I tube rolled that thing with a wide variety including some tubes that were sent to me on loan from Asylum inmates. I felt that the 303/300 was quite goo0d on it's solid-state outputs - which bypasses the buffer tubes entirely... it's purely a solid-state CD player at this point.

The tubes in the 303/300 are just buffers while in the 308T they're tapped into the DAC circuit and offer gain which isn't the case with the 303/300.

I felt that the 303/300 tube output was slightly dynamically challenged (a little "muffled"), smooth but slightly veiled no matter what tubes I tossed at it.

I simply felt that the 308T was a significantly better sounding CD player if you're comparing tube output vs tube output between the two models.

I've had 4 Cary players over the years including the 306/300, 308, 308T, and 303/300. I liked the 306/200 best then the 308T. I think the 308T is the real bargain in the bunch especially when you find them used at right around $1000 +/- which is typical.

Inside the Cary 303/300 I once owned (center shield removed):


Close up of op-amp, transistors, and tube buffer stage with stock tubes:


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