Those who may have read my initial post in this forum in the Newbie section are aware of my little crusade to restore/replace my Dad's gears that had been damaged by Ondoy. hypertriode is presently working his magic on restoring the Aurora SET amp and his initial prognosis for the AR and Sansui amps is positive for getting them back to working state (keeping my fingers crossed).
With the Aurora soon to be up and about hopefully within the month, I've been looking around to replace the Philips CD950 player. I initially brought this over to Kinetic audio as this outfit is near my office. The unit switches on but displays an "error reading" message when I try to play a cd. I was hoping that this cd player could still be repaired. Unfortunately, it looks like the Philips will have to written off. Per the techs, "pulbos na yung mga gears at madaming kalawang" on the parts.
Fortunately, I was able to purchase this Jolida 100s cd tube player that was being sold in another forum. The owner had upgraded the stock tubes to Mullards and and was very kind enough to throw in other tubes together with the stock tubes that the unit originally came with.
I never did pick up my Dad's "audio sense" (his frustration) so I can't really provide any technical views about this unit. However to my untrained, unsophisticated ears, this player sounded much better than my Philips blue ray player which I use to play my cds in my HT system. Hooked up to my Onkyo 608 receiver and my PSB Alpha speakers, it really made such a big difference. I think the best compliment to this player was having my 7 yr old daughter walk in while I was using the unit and ask, "Daddy, why does your music sound better this time?" My little girl is presently learning how to play the violin and her favorite cd is Linda Rosenthal playing a Stradivarius recorded on an SACD manufactured by First Impressions Music. She listens to this in the car and now only wants to hear it using my new cd player.
I'm really looking forward to use this player with the repaired amps and a new matching set of speakers. Even better, I can hardly wait to see my Dad's reaction when he gets to hear his resurrected gears