CD player for my system

Hi everybody,
Sorry for replying late, was caught up in several things.

Especially sorry to myriad, you have been so nice offering a demo of your Arcam cd73. I was just tied up the whole day. I am going to give you a call as soon as I find a bit more peace.

Thanks raghunath, for your suggestion of CD73.

Hi Shuvc, you are right. We met in a team-BHP gathering. SKS Traders is asking Rs.44,000/= for CA azur 740c. Sri Chatterjee, the salesman there said they can consider slashing the price by upto couple of thousands, but nothing is in print so far. Also as far as I can remember your guesses on the speaker boxes are correct. The Quad was 11L something (newer version) at Rs 29,000/=.

SuhasG, I am glad you also liked the 740c. Based on user comments on the net, 840c seems more analytical than 740c which is warmer. For the price, it seems really good. It does upscaling of the music upto 384KHz while the audio CD format is at 44.1KHz. The upscaling is not necessarily a good thing, but if done right can improve the details.The Cyrus6s, also suggested by dinyaar, seems very tempting, if the pricing is right, but the Jolida tube CD seems way out of my finances at the moment. Moreover, none of these are available in Kolkata for auditioning, I believe.

ShuvC and myriad, since both of you are from Kolkata, let me know if you know more dealers, resellers from Kolkata.

Hi dinyaar,
seems like your pricing on the Marantz SA7001 is a bit off, because another member of the forum (I think sethunr) bought it a few months ago from Chennai at around Rs 43,000/=. In Kolkata, I may not get it at that price; but judging from my discussion with SKS yesterday, it seems they may come down a bit from their 49,000/=.

Thanks a lot to all of you for all the suggestions. Keep them coming.

Hi dinyaar,
I called SoundNvision, Pune last evening to find out if they had any Cyrus CD6s left, but unfortunately they didn'y have any.

Could you please let me know how to get in touch with a reseller in Mumbai who may have a Cyrus CD6S at 40/45K as you said in your post before ?

That is most helpful information, Venkat. While I have already got the Oppo 980, it is yet to arrive from the US. What is the Oppo 980 priced at here in India?

And about the Quad 12L - are there any dealers for Quad in Chennai? How did you find the speakers?

Well the 981 priced at $229 is sold in India at 17,500. So using the same conversion factor, the $169 980 will be priced at 12913.29 or roundabouts there.


The 12L sounded very good with the 640 combination as if they were made for each other.

Regarding dealer, Quad is being distributed by designer Audio. Please contact Pro Musicals. He may not be able to give you a demo, but may be able to point you to some owner of the 12Ls.

PROMUSICALS (for Wharfedale, Vanguard, DAC)
25 Casa Major Road, Egmore, Chennai - 600008.
Tel: 28193445, 28193607

Cheers

Hi everybody,
I ultimately bought the CA azur 740c CDP from SKS Traders in Kolkata.

Before buying, I went to the Nakamichi shop on Camac Street to find out about the Marantz SA7001. However, I found out that the only CD player they had was the Marantz 5001 which was not in my shortlist ( I already preferred the 740c to the Marantz 6002 player). They also could not tell me anything about if at all they could get the 7001 for auditioning. There was no discussion on price.

I also called up the ProFx store in Kolkata to find out whether they had the Denon DCD 1500 AE which, although a bit outside my budget (around 50K), has extremely good reviews. This also plays SACD. However, they did not have it, only had the DCD 700AE which is in the same group as 640c v2, 6002, 525 (NAD) etc.

The only options then were the azur 740c and Creek evolution CDP which was available at SKS. None of the Arcams were available in Kolkata and since there are advices in the forum by a lot of knowledgeable people in the forum that one should not buy without proper auditioning), I had to then choose between these two. I did not go to myriad's place to audition the ARCAM Diva CD73 because his amp-speaker is very different from mine. However, if the invitation stands, I still would like to hear his set-up one of these days.

The auditioning was set up with the NAD C320BEE amp (mine is very similar, but slightly better C325BEE, sorry dinyaar, I do not agree with you here) and Quad 11L2 bookshelfs. By the way the 11L2 seemed to have a significant improvemnt over 11L which lacked in bass slightly. The new one also had a better soundstage.
The azur reference interconnect and VDH clearwater speaker cables were used.

The Creek evolution had a great sense of timing and very lively. It was good, but not good enough for my likings because certain things were a bit too bright for me. It no doubt was a very capable player. Price was also a bit higher than the azur 740c.

On the insistence of SKS, I also auditioned the Cayin tube CD player in this set-up. It did not not perform anywhere near the Creek or the azur in this setup.

Finally the azur740c was played (my second auditioning of the player). From the first few movements of the very first track that was played it showed a kind of sophistication that the other players lacked.

I now see quite clearly why it was a class B choice of Stereophile 2007 among many CDPs worth more than twice the price. It is particularly very good for my kind of music.

I also bought the azur interconnect and the VDH clearwater cables because I needed the interconnect and some new speaker cables. The only other choice around that price point among speaker cables available in Kolkata was the QED silver anniversary.

How many burn-in hours are required for the CDP and the cables? The combination is already awesome in my home set-up.

Congratulations!! Very good choice. What is the price you paid at the end?

I once auditioned 740C at my friends place in with CA 640A and liked it. Very nice and balanced presentation and like any other CA product, it has a typical British sound signature.

Now be patient for next 50-100 odd hours while the gear is new. Enjoy the kit and post a detailed review of the same some times later.

Hi Asit,
Sure. Call up Boomerang in mumbai on 022-26194452 / 98209 49395 and speak to Grattan Vaz. Ask him for the Marantz 7001 and the older cyrus CD6s. If he has any they will be 35K and 45K respectively.
Regards

Hey Asit,
Sorry for the delay. Anyway congrats on the set up. Have been caught up with work and barely get to check the forum.
Good luck.
Rgds

Sorry venkat for not responding earlier, this is exactly what i wanted to know!!! muchos gracias

Now what exactly do you mean by being patient for 50-100 hours? I have been playing the CDP whenever I had the opportunity and so far it's been about 10-15 hours of run-time in about 2 days.

There is a click sound whenever I power the CDP on. There is a on-off switch at the back. First one has to turn that one on. Then a light blue indicator comes on next to the power stand-by button on the front panel. Now one has to press this power-standby button to actually power the CDP on. The"click" appears whenever this second button is pressed. I am wondering if this is normal.

Another thing happened. This morning while having tea I had a sitar on in the CDP. After about 20 munutes of playing, the sound suddenly stopped. I discovered that the CDP has gone to the standby mode. when I powered it back on, it read the CD information of total no. of tracks and total time. Then I went to a particular track and it started operation normally. Now I am wondering what this could be caused by. I checked the power cord and it was already pushed in to the limit to the back of the CDP. The other end goes to a power strip which was a bit inaccessible and I did not investigate that end before coming to work. I am going to do that in the evening. Please advice if anybody ever experienced anything like this.

The price I paid for the CD player was Rs. 42 K inclusive of all taxes.