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CeeDee, Vinyl & the Point of Diminishing Return
Last week my V good friend (PewterTA) brought over his new (less than the factory recommended 30 hours run-in time) Cambridge Audio 840C CDp for a V informal and unscientific demo.
This was a unique opportunity for me to evaluate this acclaimed (and on the upper end of affordable to the average, on a budget, enthusiast) new player which is said to match competencies with units in the uppermost strata of decks, within my own system at home.
After plugging in the 840c’s OEM power cord into a HTS 3500 MkII surge protector, I took a moment to sit down and take a look at it. This particular unit was in the standard (and currently ever so popular) silver finish. The traditionalist that I am, it did clash a bit with my all black equipment (us old-timer curmudgeons all know that black really does sound better) and is available in noir finish for those who share my personal preference. However, it still somehow seemed right at home. The unit is standard width and quite tall, fairly robust at ~ 20 pounds, with a V understated and practical faceplate. No fluff, gizmo tech dressing or unnecessary glitz. But not overly ‘Industrial’, either. I personally like the appearance of this type of equipment in general. It makes me feel as though the money I spent went into making the product do specifically what it is intended to do, without wasting production budget on things that don’t add or contribute to the root performance of the product. Some may call it ‘Plain Jane’. I call it getting what you paid for (see my signature line). The remote is substantial, feels good in your hand with a clean and intuitive arrangement that makes it easy to use the first time you pick it up.
As a point of reference, here is what was down stream of the deck. We connected to the deck’s analog output via a pair of 1 meter WBT terminated SilverCat (100% Ag) IC’s made by CatCable, that run to my Carver C-19 pre-amp, it being stuffed with two pair of matched Electro Hamonix 6922 tubes from Upscale Audio (one set for the signal level pre, and another for the built-in phono pre). We used the C-19 by-pass circuit during the entire session which eliminates any coloration that may be induced by tone pots and other such superfluous imbedded circuits. The goal obviously being to hear how the deck, not the pre-amp, sounded. Another set of SilverCats are run to a recently factory-refurbished Rotel RB990-BX, 200 watt power amp. The boosted signal was then routed via an 8’ pair of Mapleshade Clearview Golden Helix speaker cables to my self made 67 liter ported cabinets of 3/4, 15 ply Baltic Birch construction with 1-1/2” solid Poplar front baffles, utilizing two V capable 7” aluminum cone & phase plug woofers and a 1-1/8” aluminum dome tweeter specifically matched to the passive crossover network designed by Jon Marsh (original Avalon designer), and uses only V high quality components including the solid copper air-core inductors and high tolerance audio grade resistors and caps.
With the power on, the tray was commanded to open. In a smooth and purposeful manner, that’s just what it did. So far, so good. The tray itself not appearing to be anything special as in the likes of a solid, machined from a single aluminum billet type such as…. say…. one of Nagra’s decks, but hey, this puppy don’t cost ten grand either! Suffice it to say it serves its purpose and with all but the type of abuse it might receive at a Saturday night frat-house party, should stand the test of time just fine. We dropped in a disc of Duke Ellington big band compositions, ‘Digital Duke’, released on the GRP label. This album has tons of highly dynamic brass, percussion and string content, is fairly well recorded and is one that I am V familiar with. To my utter surprise, I was immediately served a dose of low frequency information that initiated a recheck of the hook-up and equipment settings. After verifying that everything was in fact, set as intended, i.e., as neutral as possible, we got back to listening. This deck sounded like no CDp I have ever heard. The amount of bass information being delivered was near the level I get from my vinyl playback system. In fact, the more we listened, the more I noticed the increased amount of information and detail across the entire spectrum. V impressive. Disc after disc produced the same result. At this point, I am not going to regurgitate the same diatribe nearly every person who has heard this deck recounts as to how well-engineered discs sound great (well-engineered) and poorly engineered discs sound worse than ever (poorly engineered). I will say this; I am in total agreement with them all. What ever is (or is not) on the disc, this deck retrieves it.
Now what? Well what else……time to spin some vinyl, of course! And it just so happens I have an LP that goes by the title of ‘Digital Duke’ on the GRP label. Isn’t that an interesting and convenient coincidence? I fired up my Music Hall MMF-7, dropped the Grado stylus in the groove, sending the 5mV signal through a set of CatCable KingCat 100% Ag, shielded 1 meter I/C’s, to the tube equipped phono stage input of the Carver C-19 and performed a rough volume-matching using a Radio Shack SPL meter (again, this was by no means intended to be a truly scientific comparison, just two good friends who share an appreciation for music and its accurate reproduction, having some fun and listening to some new gear). The results were impressive relative to the 840. Differences were subtle, but still discernable. Note that some of the differences on the ‘Digital Duke’ album may still have been due to variations in the engineering of the CeeDee vs. the LP, as I have no proof that the CeeDee version was not slightly ‘tweaked’ during its production. Regardless, my observations were consistent with the variations I found between the two formats (any vinyl played on my table vs. any CeeDee played on the 840).
Sustain on vinyl was more prevalent and precise, especially in the upper frequency ranges of cymbals and strings. Reproduction in the lower ranges was incredible on the 840, but still lacked realistic warmth and tactile ‘feel’ of the stick or hammer hitting the skin of the drums conveyed by vinyl. Highs on cymbals, high-hat, and brass lacked the typical shrill, hard edge we commonly hear on digital playback (some call this characteristic crisp, clear and tight highs when listing to digital, but I hear enough live music at the plentiful number of jazz clubs our little city has, to know how real, natural, unamplified instruments truly sound). Sound stage was about equal. Mids were V good and cohesive (V much an analog characteristic) on the 840, as where most voices. This is probably where the deck comes the closet to matching analog. When it came to 3D depth of soundstage, vinyl was still the clear and obvious winner.
All well and good, but sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. After all this nit-picking and critical focus, looking for variations in specific details of numerous musical aspects like attack, speed, dynamic transients, air, textures, etc., etc…..on and on…...Just what the hell does all this mean with regards to accurately reproducing music? In other words, is this deck getting the music right, does it get your foot tapping when you don’t even realize your tapping your foot? What happens when you just sit down and listen to well recorded and engineered music. Does this thing have PRAT (Pace, Rhythm And Timing)?
Well yes and no. Yes, this deck makes music from a digital source better than any player or DAC I have ever heard. It is as smooth and clean throughout the entire spectrum as I have heard from CeeDee. Is it as natural, involving, realistic and capable of conveying emotion as vinyl? No, not quite, but it is a close as I have ever heard.
Do I want one? Hell yes! Is it worth the price? That depends; there is certainly nothing out there that I have heard that compares to it anywhere near its price. Would it replace my turntable? Nope.
I realize some may think I am biased toward vinyl, and maybe they are right, and maybe they aren’t. Why I may or may not be biased is based only on what I hear. You may or may not hear the same way I do. Regardless, as with most things taken to the end-all, nth degree of perfection, as you reach the theoretical (and unobtainable) end of such a quest, the differences get smaller and the effort begins to approach infinity.
So finally, we reach the point where I attempt to make a point. That being, if I already had a sizable library of Compact Discs, wanted to make a worthwhile upgrade to a system that was already at a level of reproducing music with revealing detail and accuracy, and was trying to decide if it was worth making the transition to vinyl, I would seriously consider getting the 840 instead. Heresy you say! No. practicality, I say. If I had a serous investment in digitally formatted music, converting to vinyl would mean replacing much of what I already owned. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in a position to replace 1000 CeeDees with LP’s, supposing that I could even find half of them, just to get an incremental, albeit to my ears significant, increase in fidelity. And what if the type of music I listen to is seldom released on LP to begin with. Do you see what I mean now? It is all related to the individuals own answer when calculating the equation of ‘diminishing return’. In this case, with the 840, you would end up with a great collection of music and a great player to listen to it (or at least the decently engineered discs in that collection).
If, on the other hand, I did not have tons of equity wrapped up in digital to begin with, then I would take the same amount of money and get a vinyl rig. That amount by the way, would get a V nice rig, including a good cartridge and the sundries like a stylus force gage and record cleaning materials. The vinyl would sound better, and I could begin building a collection of my favorite music to play on it. And if you are fortunate enough to have reasonable access to flea markets, yard sales and even better, used record stores, the costs of music can be greatly reduced. Cheaper software costs, better sound quality. Once again, I see it as a function of ‘diminishing returns’.
In terms of how this deck performs, I have to say I was skeptical prior to hearing it. Now that I have, I must truthfully admit that it could make a person decide to stay with digital. The difference is that close. I have a decent size CD collection myself and just purchased my first turntable within the last 6 months when I had no LP’s of my own. I now have nearly 200 LP’s, and rarely listen to my CD’s, mostly just when I need the convenience factor they offer. I have no regrets, for me the superior sound quality of vinyl makes that decision the right one for me. But, if I had this 840C CDp that Cambridge Audio just came out with, in all honesty I would be playing those CeeDees more often. Actually, a lot more often.
Last week my V good friend (PewterTA) brought over his new (less than the factory recommended 30 hours run-in time) Cambridge Audio 840C CDp for a V informal and unscientific demo.
This was a unique opportunity for me to evaluate this acclaimed (and on the upper end of affordable to the average, on a budget, enthusiast) new player which is said to match competencies with units in the uppermost strata of decks, within my own system at home.
After plugging in the 840c’s OEM power cord into a HTS 3500 MkII surge protector, I took a moment to sit down and take a look at it. This particular unit was in the standard (and currently ever so popular) silver finish. The traditionalist that I am, it did clash a bit with my all black equipment (us old-timer curmudgeons all know that black really does sound better) and is available in noir finish for those who share my personal preference. However, it still somehow seemed right at home. The unit is standard width and quite tall, fairly robust at ~ 20 pounds, with a V understated and practical faceplate. No fluff, gizmo tech dressing or unnecessary glitz. But not overly ‘Industrial’, either. I personally like the appearance of this type of equipment in general. It makes me feel as though the money I spent went into making the product do specifically what it is intended to do, without wasting production budget on things that don’t add or contribute to the root performance of the product. Some may call it ‘Plain Jane’. I call it getting what you paid for (see my signature line). The remote is substantial, feels good in your hand with a clean and intuitive arrangement that makes it easy to use the first time you pick it up.
As a point of reference, here is what was down stream of the deck. We connected to the deck’s analog output via a pair of 1 meter WBT terminated SilverCat (100% Ag) IC’s made by CatCable, that run to my Carver C-19 pre-amp, it being stuffed with two pair of matched Electro Hamonix 6922 tubes from Upscale Audio (one set for the signal level pre, and another for the built-in phono pre). We used the C-19 by-pass circuit during the entire session which eliminates any coloration that may be induced by tone pots and other such superfluous imbedded circuits. The goal obviously being to hear how the deck, not the pre-amp, sounded. Another set of SilverCats are run to a recently factory-refurbished Rotel RB990-BX, 200 watt power amp. The boosted signal was then routed via an 8’ pair of Mapleshade Clearview Golden Helix speaker cables to my self made 67 liter ported cabinets of 3/4, 15 ply Baltic Birch construction with 1-1/2” solid Poplar front baffles, utilizing two V capable 7” aluminum cone & phase plug woofers and a 1-1/8” aluminum dome tweeter specifically matched to the passive crossover network designed by Jon Marsh (original Avalon designer), and uses only V high quality components including the solid copper air-core inductors and high tolerance audio grade resistors and caps.
With the power on, the tray was commanded to open. In a smooth and purposeful manner, that’s just what it did. So far, so good. The tray itself not appearing to be anything special as in the likes of a solid, machined from a single aluminum billet type such as…. say…. one of Nagra’s decks, but hey, this puppy don’t cost ten grand either! Suffice it to say it serves its purpose and with all but the type of abuse it might receive at a Saturday night frat-house party, should stand the test of time just fine. We dropped in a disc of Duke Ellington big band compositions, ‘Digital Duke’, released on the GRP label. This album has tons of highly dynamic brass, percussion and string content, is fairly well recorded and is one that I am V familiar with. To my utter surprise, I was immediately served a dose of low frequency information that initiated a recheck of the hook-up and equipment settings. After verifying that everything was in fact, set as intended, i.e., as neutral as possible, we got back to listening. This deck sounded like no CDp I have ever heard. The amount of bass information being delivered was near the level I get from my vinyl playback system. In fact, the more we listened, the more I noticed the increased amount of information and detail across the entire spectrum. V impressive. Disc after disc produced the same result. At this point, I am not going to regurgitate the same diatribe nearly every person who has heard this deck recounts as to how well-engineered discs sound great (well-engineered) and poorly engineered discs sound worse than ever (poorly engineered). I will say this; I am in total agreement with them all. What ever is (or is not) on the disc, this deck retrieves it.
Now what? Well what else……time to spin some vinyl, of course! And it just so happens I have an LP that goes by the title of ‘Digital Duke’ on the GRP label. Isn’t that an interesting and convenient coincidence? I fired up my Music Hall MMF-7, dropped the Grado stylus in the groove, sending the 5mV signal through a set of CatCable KingCat 100% Ag, shielded 1 meter I/C’s, to the tube equipped phono stage input of the Carver C-19 and performed a rough volume-matching using a Radio Shack SPL meter (again, this was by no means intended to be a truly scientific comparison, just two good friends who share an appreciation for music and its accurate reproduction, having some fun and listening to some new gear). The results were impressive relative to the 840. Differences were subtle, but still discernable. Note that some of the differences on the ‘Digital Duke’ album may still have been due to variations in the engineering of the CeeDee vs. the LP, as I have no proof that the CeeDee version was not slightly ‘tweaked’ during its production. Regardless, my observations were consistent with the variations I found between the two formats (any vinyl played on my table vs. any CeeDee played on the 840).
Sustain on vinyl was more prevalent and precise, especially in the upper frequency ranges of cymbals and strings. Reproduction in the lower ranges was incredible on the 840, but still lacked realistic warmth and tactile ‘feel’ of the stick or hammer hitting the skin of the drums conveyed by vinyl. Highs on cymbals, high-hat, and brass lacked the typical shrill, hard edge we commonly hear on digital playback (some call this characteristic crisp, clear and tight highs when listing to digital, but I hear enough live music at the plentiful number of jazz clubs our little city has, to know how real, natural, unamplified instruments truly sound). Sound stage was about equal. Mids were V good and cohesive (V much an analog characteristic) on the 840, as where most voices. This is probably where the deck comes the closet to matching analog. When it came to 3D depth of soundstage, vinyl was still the clear and obvious winner.
All well and good, but sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. After all this nit-picking and critical focus, looking for variations in specific details of numerous musical aspects like attack, speed, dynamic transients, air, textures, etc., etc…..on and on…...Just what the hell does all this mean with regards to accurately reproducing music? In other words, is this deck getting the music right, does it get your foot tapping when you don’t even realize your tapping your foot? What happens when you just sit down and listen to well recorded and engineered music. Does this thing have PRAT (Pace, Rhythm And Timing)?
Well yes and no. Yes, this deck makes music from a digital source better than any player or DAC I have ever heard. It is as smooth and clean throughout the entire spectrum as I have heard from CeeDee. Is it as natural, involving, realistic and capable of conveying emotion as vinyl? No, not quite, but it is a close as I have ever heard.
Do I want one? Hell yes! Is it worth the price? That depends; there is certainly nothing out there that I have heard that compares to it anywhere near its price. Would it replace my turntable? Nope.
I realize some may think I am biased toward vinyl, and maybe they are right, and maybe they aren’t. Why I may or may not be biased is based only on what I hear. You may or may not hear the same way I do. Regardless, as with most things taken to the end-all, nth degree of perfection, as you reach the theoretical (and unobtainable) end of such a quest, the differences get smaller and the effort begins to approach infinity.
So finally, we reach the point where I attempt to make a point. That being, if I already had a sizable library of Compact Discs, wanted to make a worthwhile upgrade to a system that was already at a level of reproducing music with revealing detail and accuracy, and was trying to decide if it was worth making the transition to vinyl, I would seriously consider getting the 840 instead. Heresy you say! No. practicality, I say. If I had a serous investment in digitally formatted music, converting to vinyl would mean replacing much of what I already owned. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in a position to replace 1000 CeeDees with LP’s, supposing that I could even find half of them, just to get an incremental, albeit to my ears significant, increase in fidelity. And what if the type of music I listen to is seldom released on LP to begin with. Do you see what I mean now? It is all related to the individuals own answer when calculating the equation of ‘diminishing return’. In this case, with the 840, you would end up with a great collection of music and a great player to listen to it (or at least the decently engineered discs in that collection).
If, on the other hand, I did not have tons of equity wrapped up in digital to begin with, then I would take the same amount of money and get a vinyl rig. That amount by the way, would get a V nice rig, including a good cartridge and the sundries like a stylus force gage and record cleaning materials. The vinyl would sound better, and I could begin building a collection of my favorite music to play on it. And if you are fortunate enough to have reasonable access to flea markets, yard sales and even better, used record stores, the costs of music can be greatly reduced. Cheaper software costs, better sound quality. Once again, I see it as a function of ‘diminishing returns’.
In terms of how this deck performs, I have to say I was skeptical prior to hearing it. Now that I have, I must truthfully admit that it could make a person decide to stay with digital. The difference is that close. I have a decent size CD collection myself and just purchased my first turntable within the last 6 months when I had no LP’s of my own. I now have nearly 200 LP’s, and rarely listen to my CD’s, mostly just when I need the convenience factor they offer. I have no regrets, for me the superior sound quality of vinyl makes that decision the right one for me. But, if I had this 840C CDp that Cambridge Audio just came out with, in all honesty I would be playing those CeeDees more often. Actually, a lot more often.
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