March 19, 2012

• Adcom GCD-700, Part 8

  Oh...hell...yeah!  25 years ago, we really got off on Survivor's When Seconds Count.  More specifically, hardly anyone writes better anthems than Survivor, and When Seconds Count included two killer anthems, "How Much Love" and "Is This Love."  I would meet ACS later that year.  Survivor were perhaps best known for "Eye Of The Tiger."  Lo and behold, ACS was born in the Year of the Tiger.
  
  In the mid-90s, when getting ready to go out, ACS and I would often find that Survivor songs would pump us up.  She'd rarely have to get dressed up.  But it was indeed ACS, who showed me that a garter belt was used to hold up stockings.  Maybe we were going to a company party or maybe we were going to a nice restaurant for our birthdays.  But afterward, I did go over to her place.  I clearly remember telling her that she looked sexy in the stockings and garter belt.  Her panties had the "leopard spots," and I remarked that she should have used jagged stripes, so she could be a tigress.  Though she appreciated the compliments, she shrugged and said that she didn't like the feel of stockings and the hassle of using a garter belt to hold them up.  Since she didn't think she'd be needing the garter belt much more, she gave it to me.
  
  Though the garter belt may look like a bra, it has conventional SML sizes.  No 34B or 36A nonsense.  Anyway, I recently spoke to ACS.  She joked that, forget about being a tiger or tigress; her husband calls her a cougar.  Getting old...
  
  Well, just as ACS needed the garter belt to hold her stockings up, an Adcom GCD-700 needs a good interconnect to hold things together.  The XLO Ultra 1 is something I had in the mid-90s, when ACS and I were together.  She actually liked the look of the black-and-lavender Ultra 1.  Although, she stated that the color pattern was better on an interconnect, than a stocking-and-garter-belt or bra-and-panty combo.  Price-wise, the Ultra 1 was $169 for a 1-meter pair -- appropriate for the $700 GCD-700.  I think those mid-90s VS garter belts were around 20-something dollars each.  Thus, if you sacrificed about 8 garter belts, you could buy one XLO Ultra 1.

  The GCD-700/Ultra 1 combo makes music sound like my kids' color-by-numbers coloring books.  That is, without anyone actually coloring them.  Image outlines are well-defined.  The music is unambiguous, and moves with purpose.  But those images are not filled in.  They lack substance, tone, texture, depth, and detail.
  
  Ha ha, sometimes ACS would complain that she'd buy an outfit which cost even more than our pricey dinner.  After going home, she'd put the outfit away, never to be worn again.  Likewise, the XLO S3-1 interconnect can cost more than the GCD-700 itself.  But unlike certain outfits, the S3-1 can be used over and over again.  With that, I tried it on the GCD-700.  Versus the Ultra 1, the images have more fill.  And, more resolution is available.  In absolute terms, this in many ways maxes out the GCD-700's potential.  The GCD-700 doesn't get much more tactile than with the XLO S3-1.  But here, the S3-1 sort of reveals the GCD-700's limitations.  The GCD-700 simply doesn't have the sanguine images, kick and punch, inner detail, musical force, and expansive soundstaging of better CD players.  And I can't help but wonder how much that skimpy fixed powercord is limiting the GCD-700's abilities.  
  

  • 3:44 am
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