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Digital Drive: REVIEW: Audio Note CDT 2 CD Player/Recorder by KevinF

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REVIEW: Audio Note CDT 2 CD Player/Recorder

213.122.186.216


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Model: CDT 2
Category: CD Player/Recorder
Suggested Retail Price: $2950
Description: Top Loading CD Transport
Manufacturer URL: Audio Note
Manufacturer URL: Audio Note

Review by KevinF ( A ) on January 08, 2003 at 13:23:07
IP Address: 213.122.186.216
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for the CDT 2


I can understand some of what irritates people about Audio Note’s Peter Qvortrup, I really can.

I had borrowed a demo model CDT II transport from him to try, and liked it so much I submitted a review to AA, even without having dropped pounds sterling on the product. So much for post-purchase justification being the driver for most audio equipment reviews.

When I phoned to say: “Peter, it’s wonderful, please sell me one,” he laughed a knowing kind of Qvortrup laugh and said: “OK, but you’ll have to wait.”

Fast-forward several (too many) weeks, and the new transport arrives. In response to his querying email: “Did you get it OK?” I phone Qvortrup to say thanks. I don’t know. Upbringing, I guess. I was taught to say please and thank you and not put my feet on the seats.

Anyhow, Qvortrup suggests I write a review of how the new transport sounds. “You’ll be horrified. It’ll be shit until it’s run in and you know that’ll take ages. People might be interested.”

See what I mean?

But perhaps he’s right. The CDT II is stuffed with Black Gate electrolytics, a make of capacitor whose remarkable sonic characteristics UK professional reviewer Martin Collums has recently devoted a whole article to. Among the idiosyncrasies noted by Collums is the long -- 300 hours + -- burning in time that Black Gates require before they give up their music goodies.

I lift the brand new black CDT II out of its transit box, plug it into the mains with a Kimber hi-current cable, connect it to my Audio Note 3.1 Balanced DAC with a Kimber D60 Illuminations 75 Ohm interconnect, and press PLAY on the remote. And it does indeed sound like shi*t.

No bass. No treble. Muffled. Closed up. Just as expected.

So I leave it running on REPEAT, returning to listen 24 hours later. It sounds just the same as it did the night before. My wife, (Lynn – from Bath, England, two ‘nn’s and it’s not a contraction of Lynda by the way) is not renowned for her interest in audio. She says: “This is awful. What happened to the silver one?”

Uh oh. That way laid Dragons. I try to explain about how the silver one was a demo model but how I sent it back and bought a production model and how the new player has got to run in before it sounds the same as the first one and how it may take 300 hours or more before it even starts to sound good and suddenly, sickeningly, my explanation all starts to sound horribly lame. Lynn’s got that ‘oh yeah?’ look on her face and I just know I should stop digging the hole I am so obviously right in up to my skinny and oh-so-stupid neck.

Hmmm.

When I was younger, much, much younger (this would have been at age three or four) I had an imaginary friend.

Ginger was my playmate, debating partner, confident -- and fellow crook.

Upbraided for doing something wrong (this was before I stopped putting my feet on the seats) I’d quickly offer: “It wasn’t me, it was Ginger.”

That’s how it is with young children. Some of the time they inhabit a twilight world between imagination and reality. I have a theory that it’s the longing to return there that drives a lot of us adult audio nuts to spend so much on our hobby. Each to his or her own, but for me music at home is a means of escape from reality. The search for what to my ears sounds like realistic reproduction is merely a means to that end, not an end in itself.

There’s something else that Ginger illustrates too. And that’s the childish tendency to duck personal responsibility. Some people never grow out of it. They vote Democrat or New Labour. You can also see it in the way they approach the purchase of high-end audio, driven more by manufacturer marketing cycles and magazine reviews than by a solid conviction about what they’re looking to achieve and a faith in their own ability to recognise it when they hear it. They’d rather pay usurious tax or a magazine subscription and have someone else tell them what to spend their money on. Sad. Sad. So sad.

And that brings me back to the Audio Note CDT II. It is not perfect. It is not the Holy Grail. It does not bring live performance into the living room. In fact anyone who says any combination of audio gear does that stuff has either just paid big bucks for it – post-purchase justification again – manufactures or sells it, or earns a living on an audio magazine stoking the audio gear marketing cycle. No. Forget I said that. I’ve had a tough Christmas and need to let off steam. Let’s talk about the CDT II.

What the CDT II does do is, for the price, deliver a remarkably musically coherent and satisfying data stream. I have not heard the player with any DAC other than the Audio Note 3.1 Balanced that I own, so if you are minded to give any credence to my views – my wife doesn’t so heaven only knows why anyone else should – just bear in mind that caveat.

Actually I’m not so sure my caution means anything at all. After all, in a CD transport, surely what’s required is an ability to faithfully transcribe all the information on any given disk and do it with honest neutrality; in other words without creating artifices such as warmth where there is none, or a mid-range bloom or an over-prominent top-end, for example. What happens after that, downstream, so to speak, is another country. Very few transports achieve that transparency, but the question right now is does the CDT II? Not out of the box.

At around 100 hours (these are approximate milestones and apply only to the player I have here) it began to develop a semblance of top-end, but an unpleasantly brittle, on-edge one. At 200 hours it still had no real bottom end and what there was sounded loose and flabby. By 300 the top-end had begun to develop a sweeter and more natural sound with less edginess but the bottom end had still not tightened up. The transport was still sounding a pale shadow of the demo model that I had auditioned.

Even I’m getting bored now so I’ll truncate this narrative. The new CDT II did not wholly float my boat, as they say, until it had passed the 600-hour mark. Finally, we came back from spending a weekend with friends in the English West Country – hunting deer with the Tiverton Stag Hounds if you must ask -- and I opened the living room door to be hit with a sound that, at last, was as I remembered the demo model sounded. It had all the qualities I tried to describe in my original review here on AA.

I am not an audio engineer, but I can’t see any logical reason why the CDT should not partner very effectively with any system capable of delivering real resolution. Seems to my untutored view that if what goes in at the front is good, then what comes out at the back is likely to be better too, even if what’s in between is ‘poor’ and discards some of the information delivered by the transport.

Whatever. I was very happy and shouted to my wife to come and listen. “Yes. Very nice dear. Now come and help unload the car. And by the way, just how much electricity does this thing use?”

After 18 years of marriage I have still not learned to keep my mouth shut. And Ginger still lives. He’s called Peter Qvortrup.


Product Weakness: It's more costly than a weekend away with friends in the west country
Product Strengths: What kind of question is that? Oh. It's not called Ginger


Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier: Bryston 7b ST X2
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): Bryston BP 25
Sources (CDP/Turntable): AN CDT II
Speakers: PMC IB1
Cables/Interconnects: Kimber Select
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Anything
Room Size (LxWxH): 21 x 12.5 x 7.5
Room Comments/Treatments: Carpet, dogs, curtains
Time Period/Length of Audition: 3 months
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): Kimber
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner




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Topic - REVIEW: Audio Note CDT 2 CD Player/Recorder - KevinF 13:23:07 01/8/03 ( 9)