Digital Drive: REVIEW: Audiomeca Mephisto II CD player CD Player/Recorder by fahad74

Model:	Mephisto II CD player
Category:	CD Player/Recorder
Suggested Retail Price:	$6500
Description:	Upsampling CD player
Manufacturer URL:	Audiomeca
Model Picture:	View

Review by fahad74 ( A ) on August 28, 2002 at 03:50:21
IP Address: 212.138.47.12

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To begin with,
What can I say about a company, which for the last two decades and more have been producing some of the loveliest high quality finishing turntables and have succeeded in every way to satisfy listeners needs, who are seeking desperately to enjoy music in its natural state.
Now for the last 15 years or so, Audiomeca has been producing one of the prettiest, most precious digital front end gears. From their entry level Obsession to the Keops to their medium high end Talisman to their best of all and flagship Mephisto II. All those players share the same character, which belongs to the the same family heritage. They all sound very analog, if not the most analog sounding player to date.
I'm a proud owner of the Mephisto II. To me, this is like a dream player, which woke me up all of the sudden and takes my soul away to an experience I haven't encountered before, during the last decade of my listening experience with the hi fi journey. This player is a beautiful, lovely beast, which is finished in piano lacquer. The designer Piere Laurne has put all his best to this player to produce something, which solves all the problems with red book CDs in an era, which has all the war going on with many new digital formats and has promised to bring the future a solution for all digital gears, but unfortunately have failed so far.
The Mephisto II brings the listener to another level of listening and seduces him deeply in a way which is not possible or very rare to hear before. It strips the digital harshness from the recording and unveils the original true sound of music, with analog flavor added to the recording. This is a very refined delicate player, which simply does one thing right, it plays music neutrally with no original sonic character. If you are looking for a player which sounds very analog and comes very close to an extremely good turntable; look no further than the Mephisto II. Cymbals are very natural, performance is lifelike, soundstage is huge and deep with air between and around the instruments and the music fills every hole and gap between the speakers. Details are tremendous and new instruments exist on the recording and heard like never before. All CD libraries are rediscovered again, as if they are being listened to for the very first time. This is a very rich sounding player, which brings concert hall performance right where you are sitting at home. Natural highs, extreme lucid midrange and soft punchy deep bass. This player has an upsmpler built inside, it is 24bits/ 192khz. It digs down deep into the recording and extracts the last ounce from your CD.
I'm glad that I'm the first who wrote a review about this beautiful state of the art player. I hope to see other enthusiastics about the Mephisto II post their review here on this site. I have said enough about this player, and to those of you who don't know what they are missing in their musical experience. Only one word," seeing is believing". Words can not describe what my heart can truly bare for this player. Go audition this player yourself and you will end up buying one in no time. See what the naked truth is all about.

Product Weakness: bass could be soft for some.
Product Strengths: very revealing to low level details, with natural musical midrange.

Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier:	Gryphon Calisto 2100 integrated amplifier
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	None
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Mephisto II CD player
Speakers:	JMLab Mini Utopia
Cables/Interconnects:	Monster M1 speaker cables & Kimber silver streak interconnects
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Jazz, classical symphony, soul and pop
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner

Product Weakness:	bass could be soft for some.
Product Strengths:	very revealing to low level details, with natural musical midrange.