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With hindsight, one of the sideways steps taken by the High End in the early 1990s was the splitting of CD players into separate transports and processors. There were good reasons for this development, not the least of which was the flowering of creativity it engendered in high-end audio engineers. Having open access to the digital audio data also made possible effective digital equalizers and room-correction processors, but in the rush to increase a system's component count, it was overlooked for too long that keeping everything in one box offered certain advantages.
Sound
Setup consisted of sitting the CX-7 on four of Ayre's Myrtle Wood Blocks, using four more of these blocks to damp the player's rather resonant top panel, powering it with a PS Audio Lab Cable, and connecting it to my Levinson preamp with 0.5m lengths of Ayre's new Cardas-sourced Signature balanced interconnect. All comparisons were performed with levels matched at 1kHz, using the No.380S's input offset function. In general I set the CX-7's digital filter to Listen, but I could hear no appreciable difference between that mode and Measure. Sometimes I thought I favored one setting…
Setup consisted of sitting the CX-7 on four of Ayre's Myrtle Wood Blocks, using four more of these blocks to damp the player's rather resonant top panel, powering it with a PS Audio Lab Cable, and connecting it to my Levinson preamp with 0.5m lengths of Ayre's new Cardas-sourced Signature balanced interconnect. All comparisons were performed with levels matched at 1kHz, using the No.380S's input offset function. In general I set the CX-7's digital filter to Listen, but I could hear no appreciable difference between that mode and Measure. Sometimes I thought I favored one setting…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Integrated CD player with remote control and two user-selectable digital filter settings. Analog outputs: 1 pair unbalanced (RCA), 1 pair balanced (XLR). Digital outputs: 1 AES/EBU (XLR). Maximum output level: 4.5V RMS at 1kHz (balanced), 2.25V RMS (unbalanced). Frequency response: DC-20kHz, ±0.25dB. S/N ratio: 110dB (unweighted ref. 0dBFS). Power consumption: 30W.
Dimensions: 17.25" (440mm) W by 4.75" (120mm) H by 13.75" (350mm) D. Weight: 25 lbs (11.5kg).
Finish: Brushed aluminum.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 9E001.
Price: $2950.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Mark Levinson No.31.5 CD transport & No.30.6 D/A processor; dCS 972 upsampler; Technics DVD-A10 DVD-Audio player; Ayre D-1X, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 3D CD players; Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista SACD player.
Preamplification: Mark Levinson No.380S line preamp, Z-Systems rdp-1 digital control center (updated to handle 96kHz sources).
Power amplifiers: Mark Levinson No.33H & Lamm M2.1 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Canton Karat Reference 2 DC, KEF Reference 207, Dynaudio Confidence C4, EarthWorks Sigma 6.2.
Cables: Datalinks:…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The Ayre CX-7's maximum output level was very slightly higher than specified, at 4.514V balanced and 2.255V unbalanced. The latter is 1.03dB higher than the CD standard's 2V. Both sets of outputs preserved absolute polarity (ie, were noninverting), the XLRs being wired with pin 2 hot. The source impedance from the unbalanced RCA jacks was a low 58 ohms across the audioband, this doubling as expected from the balanced XLRs, which is still usefully low. Error correction, assessed using the Pierre Verany Test CD, was good, the player occasionally dropping out when…
John Atkinson wrote again about the CX-7 in December 2004 (Vol.27 No.12):
When I reviewed the $2950 Ayre CX-7 CD player in May 2003, I had a hard time determining its final rating in the magazine's "Recommended Components" listing. "Its balance is vibrant, its bass well-defined and deep, its highs clean, detailed, and well-resolved," I concluded, but there was an elusive something missing that prevented me giving the player a Class A rating.
I kept the Ayre in-house for a couple of months to compare with the Classé CDP-10, but a number of high-performance digital components have…
Art Dudley wrote about the Ayre CX-7e in February 2006 (Vol.29 No.2):
Remember all those full-function (line-plus-phono) preamps we used to be able to buy from manufacturers like Audible Illusions, Audio Research, Conrad-Johnson, Convergent Audio Technology, Counterpoint, Dennesen, EAR, Electrocompaniet, Klyne, Mark Levinson, Motif, Naim, New York Audio Labs, Nova, Precision Fidelity, Robertson, Spectral, Theta, and Threshold? Today, most of those companies have stopped making full-function models—that, or vanished from the scene altogether.
But never mind them: Remember all those…
Robert Deutsch wrote about the Ayre CX-7e in January 2008 (Vol.31 No.1):
For the past six years, my digital source has comprised a PS Audio Lambda II CD transport, Perpetual Technologies P-1A and ModWright P-3A digital processors, and a Monolithic Sound P3 power supply. I've been pleased with the performance of this setup, but the four boxes and their attendant power-supply and signal cables made for a lot of clutter, and the P-1A upsampler-interpolator had the annoying quirk of reverting to Bypass mode whenever the power was interrupted. Having the Onkyo DX-7555 for review reminded me of…
Wes Phillips wrote about the Ayre CX-7e in February 2009 (Vol.32 No.2):
When I read Robert Deutsch's Follow-Up on Ayre Acoustics' CX-7e CD player in the January 2008 Stereophile, I was startled to read that "at least two of [my Stereophile colleagues] said that, for CD playback, they preferred the CX-7e [$2950] to Ayre's twice-as-expensive universal player, the C-5xe [$5950]."
That was a bit of audiophile buzz I hadn't heard. But, like most 'Murricans, I do love a story in which the plucky underdog bests the champion. Besides, I'm the very happy owner of a C-5xe; if what RD said…
Robert Deutsch wrote about the Ayre CX-7eMP in October 2009 (Vol.32 No.10):
The technical specifications for the Compact Disc include a sampling rate of 44.1kHz at a resolution of 16 bits. The Nyquist Theorem states that if you want to sample a sinewave and then reconstruct it, sampling at twice the sinewave's maximum frequency permits perfect reconstruction of that wave (assuming certain other conditions are met). So a sampling rate of 44.1kHz should take you up to an audio frequency of 22kHz, which is higher than most people can hear. However, for this process of recording and…