Halo D3 pics and specs

[mikepinkerton]

Allegedly the US MSRP is $2,300.00.

This is a good point. Does anyone have a comparison to other players that are in that price range, like the well-respected Denon 3910/5910 players?

I'd love to replace my rp-91 with something top-notch that also does SACD, and those Denon players seem tempting. The D3 looks tempting too, but again, with HD-DVD/bluray right around the corner....

-Mike

[Chris D]

Alright, I'm back from my trip. First, I can confirm that the MX-700 now contains the D3. I just did a fresh Windows XP OS install on my laptop, and did a new install of the MXEditor program. The download of the program from the Parasound website HERE now has the D3 as one of components preset on the 1st LCD page. WARNING, though, going into the IR database, the D3 is not listed anywhere--DVD's, Audio, or Parasound equipment. So if you want the D3, don't erase it from the LCD presets and then try to re-install it later.

As for what the D3 LCD control menus contain, there's nothing particularly shocking that stands out. Button L1 on page 2 is titled "SACD", which I'm not sure about. The D3 is listed as playing both SACD and DVD-A, but there's no distinct button for DVD-A, so I'm not quite sure what this would do. Button R1 on page 2 says "V OFF" which as mentioned likely turns off all video paths of the D3, making it pure audio for critical listening. One of my few beefs about the MX-700 is that it has hard buttons to scan forward and backwards, but not skip tracks, which must be added to devices' LCD buttons. So a thing that's odd about the D3 menu is that the track skip buttons are on page 2, and both on the right side. (R4 and R5) Since this is an extremely commonly used function, I'll have to manually move the buttons to page 1. There's also a "PAGE+" and "PAGE-" button at L4 and L5.

Overall, I'll remind everyone that we STILL don't know 100% of the D3 details, so it's hard to judge expected performance. What I will say, though, is that based on the info that's out there on Parasound releases and the sales website above, it looks very, very similar to my current Denon DVD-3910, with a few extra output jacks such as BNC and XLR connectors.

Remember, we're about a week away from CES, so stay tuned for more updates.