July 3, 2012

  • Simaudio CD3.3X, Part 13

    "When are we going back to Hawaii?" ask Aiden and Tessa.

    Now that Aiden is in school, the only time we'd have for trips to Hawaii would be during the summer.  So maybe next year, we can go.  I do recall the summer of '82, which took place 30 years ago.  I had a Sanyo personal cassette/radio stereo.  And we went to the Shirokiya in Ala Moana shopping center, and bought a Hitachi boombox. 

    Via that Hitachi boombox, my brother and I heard the new Eddie money song, "Think I'm In Love."  At the time, Eddie Money was living in the Bay Area, which was our home.  Yet, we heard his new song while we were in Hawaii.

    In that summer of '82, no one had heard of the Compact Disc.  And there weren't S/PDIF digital interfaces.  Well, Simaudio were in existence in 1982.  But maybe they weren't called "Simaudio."  Maybe they were doing business as Celeste.  While in Hawaii, I knew about Japanese electronics manufacturers.  Nobody knew that Canada had any.  Anyway, the Simaudio CD3.3X, as I mentioned earlier, sports a digital input and output.  With the latter, the CD3.3X can be used as a CD transport, to feed a DAC, surround sound processor, or digital recorder.

    Interestingly, my audio buddies near me do not have any standalone DACs.  In order to test the CD3.3X's digital output, we fed it into such CD players as the Cambridge Audio 840C, dCS Puccini, and Simaudio's own Andromeda.  We also used a variety of digital coaxial cables, including the Illuminati D-60, MIT Digital Reference, and XLO Reference Type 4.  No, Andy, we do not currently have the Tara Labs ISM Onboard digital cables.  When used as a transport, yes, the CD3.3X is "sensitive" to digital cables.  The D-60 sounded too milky and soft.  The Reference Type 4 could have used a smidgen more sparkle, breath, transparency, and air in the upper 1/4 of the soundstage.  Just right was that old standby, the MIT Digital Reference.

    Even so, the CD3.3X's transport section seems to be the culprit, in giving the player a full bodied, slightly warm midrange.  Subjectively, this tends to "crowd out" the upper midrange and treble.  When we listen carefully, it's not that the upper mids and treble are overtly or grossly truncated, rolled off, muffled, muted, or diminished. What treble is there is of good quality.  It's just that, in the overall scheme, the midrange takes up a little too much space, which throws the sense of scale and subjective tonal balance off.