XXHighEnd

About 8 years ago, I made what I consider to be the biggest mistake along my 'hifi journey'. I sold my beloved Rotel RHCD-10 CD player to buy a Sony SCD-1. I didn't like the Sony so bought a Marantz SA-1. I didn't like that either, and decided that SACD was wrong - it just can't recreate real transients.

Well, last week, I took delivery of a mint Rotel RHCD-10 and a matching RHA-10/RHB-10 pre/power amp to use in my office. This CD player may be 15 years old, but my God, what a CD player! In may ways, I prefer it to my Esoteric P70/D70.

Now, not only does the Rotel sound great, it does something that no other CD player I've come across does. It plays track 00 of Maxwell's Embrya album. I can't even extract this track using EAC!

If you have this CD, please try it. It should start at track 01 and count down from -3.13 to zero before track 01 actually starts. In this time period, there's lots of wierd stuff going on.

Can anyone else get this?

Mani.

SOLVED.

With 'normal' CD players, you have to rewind back before time 00.00 to get track 00 'Gestation: Mythos'.

I'm assuming the same is true when playing a ripped file with XXHE (not at home to test this)...

Mani.

WOW this is a big statement. I know how good that esoteric combo sounds :)

I had in the past a rotel 971, it was easily beated with a teac 10se. The 991 was probably on par, not not with a quality external dac. I have googled the rhcd-10 and seems the top of the line. Good sturdy unit.

Hi Mani,

Besides that I don't have that album, I don't understand what you want us to try.
I know about these kind of tracks, and once they are ripped (I forgot how to do that, but aren't those the ones shown in red by EAC ?) they are just normal tracks. For the computer there's nothing like counting down or anything. It's no other track than otrhers. But :

This is different for Cue Files, because in there all is officially denoted, and IIRC indeed in there you'd see something like minus times for the first track. XXHighEnd supports this, and what you see from that on the screen is again nothing. Could be a track 00 in the Cue File case, for those situation no track numbers are present in the track names; I then take them from the Cue data.

Peter

Telstar,

Interested in a TEAC P10 ?
hehehe

Peter, you don't have Maxwell's Embrya? And you call yourself a music lover?

In any event, you're right. The track comes up in red in EAC (when I ripped this track years ago with EAC, I'm sure this didn't happen). So, no great mistery after all - just me being a bit dumb.

Telstar, don't get me wrong, the P70/D70 is a great combo. But just a bit 'dry' sounding. The RDOT filters help, but introduce other traits that I don't like. The Rotel though has a really 'sweet' sound - the top end sparkles. Perhaps this is the CDM9Pro drive. More likely, it's loads of jitter and a bad digital filter... but I don't care, I like it!

Mani.

Ok ok, I'll get it. :)

That red track thing isn't so obvious at all. Try Google, and see how many people ask about it. Anyway IIRC - a year or so ago - I ended up in exactly one link with someone who knew.

Well, I found another album ("Now" from 2001), but I must honestly say that Stevie Wonder with Songs in the Key of Life sounds young and fresh compared to that. My wife said I'd rather switch to Tavares, and that did it for me. Out.

:) :)

No, thanks :)