What can it play?While the CDT3's user manual claims compatibility only with standard CD, CD-R, and CD-RW, I was curious to see if it could play the other types of discs that are supposed to be playable on a regular CD player. In addition to a few CD-Rs and CD-RWs I had burned several years ago on my Alesis Masterlink, I tried a handful of hybrid SACDs to see if reading the CD layer might cause difficulties, and I tried the CD side on a couple of DualDiscs. Because they are double sided, DualDiscs are slightly thicker than standard CDs, which can cause loading problems with some transports, but the CDT3 handled them all without skipping a beat. In fact, the only time I did encounter skipping it was with a standard CD. When I stopped the player and inspected the disc closely, I found a big crack, which ran from the spindle hole to about 0.25" into the data area. Even with that much damage, the CDT3 was able to read the disc's table of contents and play the later tracks without a problem (footnote 4). Listening
Fifty years ago, Linn founder Ivor Tiefenbrun proclaimed that the source was the most important component in any system because once you screw things up there, it doesn't matter how good the rest of your equipment is: It will never recover what was lost at the start. He was talking about analog—turntables—but I feel there is still validity to that thinking with digital sources.
Playing "Manhã do Carnaval" from The Three (East Wind 35JD-1), there was a clear improvement in resolution resulting in a better defined and more spacious soundstage with the CDT3 over the AN CDT2. Curiously, engaging the 4× upsampler enhanced this effect a bit more, while fleshing out the harmonic tonal color of Ray Brown's bass and Joe Sample's piano. Normally I find enhancements like digital upsamplers to be a mixed bag, often preferring the straight poop over the embellished product, but the Jay's upsampler seems to offer a genuine improvement.
In the past, I have described how I believe a system is better judged by its ability to play poor recordings than good ones. If your system is narrowing your music selections because it's "too good," in my opinion you're going in the wrong direction. For example, nobody would put Julian Cope's 1991 album Peggy Suicide (Island CID9977) on a list of reference records, but the way it sounds can tell us a lot about a system. Starting with a CD transport like the CDT3 helps you to hear around the recording and make a connection with the music making rather than the sound. On the song "Promised Land," the raw and unvarnished quality of Cope's vocals and guitar is easily heard, despite the sound being kind of compressed and bright.
Peter Gabriel's sixth album, Us, on the other hand, is a carefully thought-out recording. I still wouldn't call it audiophile sound, but it will certainly wake up your system. Played on the CDT3, the enhanced focus it delivers brings a sumptuousness and ease to the sound that makes you want to keep listening instead of hitting the next-track button.
ConclusionsDistributor Alvin Chee says that the goal is to minimize costs by eliminating as many middlemen as possible, and because shipping 50lb CD transports around the world is expensive, Jay's Audio doesn't currently offer any kind of a return policy. It does come with a one-year comprehensive warranty that covers you in the unlikely case of product failure or shipping damage, but you'd better be pretty sure that this is what you want, because they don't offer a refund if you simply decide that it's not the right product for you. While that doesn't leave the buyer with a lot of options, Jay's Audio explains that this is how they are able to keep the price as reasonable as it is, and to be fair, going strictly by parts content and build quality alone, the CDT3 is an undeniable bargain. Just an NOS CD-Pro2LF drive on its own sells on the sharp side of $1000 these days. It's also true that both Jay's Audio and Denafrips have been operating under this same policy for years, and the vast majority of their customers appear to be thrilled with their purchases. So maybe it's just my baby boomer expectations that make me a little more wary about committing to a big-ticket purchase from the other side of the world shipped sight unseen.
Footnote 4: CDs are read from the inside out.
