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发表于 2009-3-6 21:41:00
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2009年1月,著名的Ken Kessler写了一篇CD-1的评论. 我把关于音质评价部分的文字摘抄于此:
What stood out above all the CD-1's qualities - apparent from the very instant I turned on an already-run-in machine - were the cavernous, open sense of space and the phenomenal retrieval of low level detail. And here, yet again, I expect to upset some of you: my first action was to play two copies of Candido & Graciela's Inolvidable (Chesky JD249), one treated by the Golden Sound magic chip. For whatever reason, this player responded even more vividly to the tweak, and it was most easily perceived with the disc's bass.
Inolvidable is rhythmic, flowing Cuban music and it's a challenge for any system. What the CD-1 pulled out was even greater atmosphere, more air, wider dynamics, but - as far as the lower registers are concerned - far better presentation due almost entirely to subtle, barely perceived clues at the best of times. Added mass, tighter transients, smoother decay: if you like your music to have a solid, palpable presence, and your speakers and room can handle it without going all woofy and woolly, the CD-1 will have you grinning from ear to ear.
To see if this is consistent with other genres and that I was not just hearing the GSIC tweak, I moved onto the remastered Ramones canon via the Weird Tales of the Ramones box set. This time, it was disconcerting, almost to the point of betrayal if you still have perforations on your face testifying to your adherence to the punk ethos. Bugger me if the recordings didn't sound simply amazing! You don't listen to the Ramones for sonic ecstasy: you listen to them to have your cage rattled. Sound quality was never even an issue. But the CD-1 revealed their studio work to have far greater dynamics than their three-chord balls-to-the-wall bombast ever suggested. There was clarity and transparency that spoke of expensive studios and genius producers. And, damn, could those guys play. Check out the crystal clear, liquid-y guitar work on their version of 'Journey To The Center of the Mind' - Ted Nugent would be proud.
Fast, punchy, with crisp attack - it was almost impossible to find any areas of behaviour to criticise. I had to look to the £4k Musical Fidelity kW25 package to improve audibly on the performance, and the main gains were in the sense of scale: the MF transport/DAC combo sounded bigger, with a slightly wider and deeper soundstage and slightly greater image height. It also added a hint of warmth, which - in this case - was so subtle as to become merely a matter of taste.
Back to the CD-1, and I wanted to test this with mono recordings, including the remarkable early Neil Diamond tracks - a raspy voice, great arrangements, but single-channel. Here is where the CD-1 showed why it can fight with stuff at double the price. It was able to reveal layer in mono recordings, to separate vocals and instruments with such precision, that it enables the listener to forget that the sound is dead centre and devoid of spatial effects. Diamond's voice remained to the fore, while behind him were examples of sublime musicianship probably not noticed by most listeners who only ever heard this stuff on the radio. Overly familiar material sounded absolutely fresh - and that's just about the greatest gift a sound system can present to the listener.
Think about it. I must have heard ? & the Mysterians' '96 Tears' a few thousand times. It was the garage band anthem for Yanks in the 1960s. It was glorious trash, simplistic to a fault. The mono take on the recent 'best of' sounded fatter, more majestic than I recalled, the angst in the voice, the sheer cheesiness of the organ riff. I left it on repeat for an hour or two.
What Lyngdorf has produced with the CD-1 is the kind of no-brainer choice that takes the worry out of buying a £1500-plus player - still a lot of money to most people. You can drop this into a system with a total price tag in excess of £50,000, and it will not let it down. If its reliability as is solid as its construction, the CD-1 will see most of you out in the way that Quad gear used to go to the grave with its first owners. Its flexibility will render it suitable for any system it's likely to face, the user-adjustability will keep 'enthusiasts' permanently amused, and the sound is, well, delicious. Good grief: what a debut! |
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发表于 2008-3-14 13:28:37
