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Re: Cary 303/300 vs 306/200

I recently bought the 303/300 as a replacement for my ageing Sony XA-777ES. I auditioned the unit in the store and through the system there the Cary seemed impressive with good dynamics and reasonable soundstaging. I was pretty sure it would blow my old Sony away on redbook.

At home it was another story. The Cary was bright with very narrow staging and mechanical tonality. The Sony has a very lush analog sound to it with the filter enabled on redbook (I remember reading that it converted PCM to DSD) and as it is now the Cary sounds very much like a CD player.

In favour of the Cary I did find it was processing more detail than the Sony. The Cary sounded best through balanced output with the tube stage enabled. I found that using any of the upsampling made for a brittle sound, and it seemed best with the upsampling off. There are some build quality issues with the Cary as well...it in no way feels it's price and I found the drive tray to far too flimsy for a quality player.

Now maybe with more playing the tubes on the Cary will open up. I am going to look at getting some NOS tubes for the Cary and see what happens. If anyone has any recommendations for tubes please post.


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