Not much to add to what JP has said. I'm very happy with my Serac. If I decide to upgrade, it will be to a Gavia. Thom has an excellent upgrade policy, basically giving you full value of your trade in towards the next level. I have heard the HR-X a bunch of times and it's an excellent tt. I've never heard the Aries 3, but I expect it's similar to the HR-X. For the money, I think the Serac is something to consider.
I had no idea they had a connection. I bought the ERC-1 from Emotiva. I'm tempted to pick up the XPA-2 power amp to give it a try. I'm pretty happy with the Odyssey Stratos Mono but curiosity may get the best of me.
It's up and running and all I will say at this point is that it doesn't suck. The packaging for this cdp was excellent. This company, does it right. I ordered late Tuesday and it was here on Friday. It is a substantial piece weighing in at 17.5 lbs. The remote is about as nice as I've seen from a cdp at pretty much any price. The most important button on the remote is the Dim switch. This thing has a lot of blue light but when you hit the Dim switch, most of it is gone. I had been using the Duet and the power output of the cdp is higher than the Duet.
When I bought my P-1 I was wondering whether I should save the extra money and wait for the P-200. Having heard it, I'm glad I went with the P-1. That's not to say the P-200 isn't good and for those whom the P-1 is out of reach, it's a nice amp. I just prefer the P-1 in terms of sq and in terms of the overall look. I should qualify this by saying I heard the P-200 at CJ for a brief time without a P-1 to compare it to.
B-52 poisoning. The real question is whether there is a cure.
The P-1 and the HD800 sounds about as good as I've heard the HD800, in addition to the WA5, BUDA and Nugget B22.
Assuming that the P-1 mkii is an improvement over the P-1, I guess with the differential in price there should still be a market for the my P-1 once the mkii is released, without taking too big of a hit. This assumes that I would pay extra for the mkii.
I don't know, they just dropped the price, upped the speed, added an SD card slot, fw, far better battery life than a PC notebook will ever get, it is solid aluminum so it doesn't flex at all, glass multi-touch trackpad and they aren't POS.
On the other subject, if you say so.
I'm curious about the amps as well. Since I have the Odyssey amps and the McCormack (being repaired) I figured I would hold off on trying one of the amps until I get rid of one of the ones I have. That left the cdp to try out.
I bought this: Emotiva Audio ERC-1 Reference Compact Disc Player
I've been curious about their gear and figured with the 30 day return policy, I would give it a try.