A happy victim of its own success in the marketplace, this review's January 2004 intro took until now to reach the finish line. A second review loaner only became available in November of 04 to replace the original. To not tie up the then-scarce supply of PLayers, the original unit had been expedited to the Japanese distributor before I left on my extended Spring vacation in February of last year. The next two pages are the original intro annotated with brief notes where appropriate. The concluding performance commentary of the present 'finale' follows on page 3:


High Deaf. When talking SACD and DVD-A 'super-resolution' formats, it's easy to overlook that they haven't replaced 16-bit/44.1kHz as of any particular date. They haven't become the new de facto standard. They haven't become the now only legalized vehicle brand to motor down your local audio highway with. Never mind highway. Thus far, we should more properly call it predominantly obscure back-country roads. You see, CDs continue to be pressed. New CDs continue to be recorded, mastered and sold in exponentially vastly larger quantities than both new-fangled formats combined (supposedly even vinyl sales eclipsed them last year). Consider those listeners whose musical tastes are broad, who continue on a monthly basis to purchase nine newly minted CDs for every one SACD or DVD-A. With them, the corporate battle cry to embrace Hi-Def audio has fallen mostly on deaf ears. High Deaf! This explains the rise of the universal rather than dedicated SACD or DVD-A machines. Unless you wanted to hitch your horse to one of the two new buggies exclusively; or already owned a state-of-the-art RedBook player and merely required the add-on SACD/DVD-A functionality in a secondary machine - the only sensible consumer option really is the universal one.


Consider the math. From a pure numbers' perspective, a commercially successful universal machine must support 90% RedBook and 10% 'hi-rez' playback. For some, this division could lean yet farther in favor of CD (moi, for example). Curiously enough, the first and second generation universal players were nearly unanimously considered optimized for the 10% of new software. They were proclaimed less satisfying than truly state-of-the-art CD-only machines for the dominant 90% of regular 'lo-rez' music which, by implication, now became relegated to the junk yard of the old and passé. Oh really? My extensive collection of irreplacable CDs passé? Schweinehund! Even an outsider can appreciate that the time seemed ripe for the rise of the no-compromise RedBook-happy universal player. Guess what? The first such contenders have arrived on the scene, with the Esoteric DV-50, Linn Uni-Disc and today's Bel Canto Design PLayer arguably among the most exciting forerunners. [Since then, Classé and Krell have entered the fold, Esoteric has updated its DV-50 and introduced even dearer models, Audio Aero is about to introduce a machine, Meridian has theirs, McCormack theirs, Denons and Sonys are being modded left and right and there could be yet others that escape my notice at the moment - Ed.]