The TAS Review of the Burmester $65K 069 Reference CD Player / PRE

Let’s talk about TAS’s review of the $65K Burmester CD player / PRE.

If it was $650K then that would be something… but $65K. Pshaaah. This is US Dollars we are talking about. This new Burmie is less than the old $30K Burmie in real $.

Second, even though Mr. Cordesman who reviewed the player seemed to like th Emm Labs CDSA better than the Burmie, without saying as much, I hated to see him perpetuate the misnomer about the sound of redbook versus SACD, especially on the CDSA.

A few SACDs do sound better than most redbook: DSOTM, Abraxus, … uh, any others? The problem is that, although SACD did have more resolution and a cleaner sound, say, 5 years ago – redbook keeps improving and SACD is kind of losing (lost) momentum. So, to my ears, a good redbook, which is most of them made in the last, 3-5 years, say, sound as good as most SACD.

Ah Ha! you say, then why get the Meitner CDSA when SACDs are not the cats meow anymore? Well, because redbook on the CDSA sounds better than the redbook on any other solid-state player that we have heard, tho we have heard that the Esoteric $50K+ implementation has some goodness as well.

And maybe this Burmie plays redbook well as well. Kind of hard to tell from the review. Mr Cordesman was moving things around …. Pass on Vandy 5s? Boulder on Hansen Prince speakers? Audioquest cables? Sounds like the system was/are tuned to his ears [and not mine! :-)] and subtleties are not what these system designs are going for.

All this is to say, RedBook is pretty darn good, the CDSA (and CDSD/DCC2) play redbook better than anything near them in price, and all those [many] reviewers comparing things to the Meitner players are just trying to avoid saying that the players under review do not sound as good, *playing redbook*, as the Meitner [assuming they have ears and a balanced system] and so spin it by back-handed compliments that imply the CDSA is all about SACDs. Only about 20%-30% of the CDs we play here on the CDSA are SACD. In fact, I never pay attention anymore to what FORMAT it is we are playing – and haven’t for years now.

There are not many ‘deals’ in audio these days, what with the dollar sinking and the flooding of the market of ridiculously priced equipment – the barrier to entry for new manufacturers so low. But the $10K CDSA is one. The Audio Note $4.5K/m PALLAS cable is another. The $4.2K Acoustic Zen Adagios. And uh….uh….uh…. down the list would be the $10K Audio Aero Capitole CD player and $7.5K Lamm LP2 Phono and perhaps their $14K L2 Reference as well. The SoundLabs [even the U1] and the Kharma 3.2. [and we like Odyssey but Quad prices have gone up significantly. Anything else? There are lots of ‘good values’ out there – but if people know of other ‘GREAT values’ out there, please post a comment]

Funny thing about all these great price/performance pieces in the high-end – is that they do not get as much respect from the people who look at price tags: on both ends. The brands are too respectable for the cheaper-is-better crowd and the prices are too low for the expensive-is-better crowd. So… only the people in the middle somewhere, dare I say ‘better-sounding-is-better’ audiophiles? seem to understand and can appreciate the balance of features and performance that makes something worth much more than its asking price.