Audiolab 8200 v Arcam Alpha 5+

[admin_exported]

I'm going to arrange a test drive but I was wondering whether the Audiolab is going to be a significant step up from my 15 year old Arcam Alpha 5+ which was an award winner in its day.

Has anyone tested them side by side?

Thanks

Simon

 

[Frank Harvey]

I think you'll find a rather large difference! The Audiolab won't be as smooth, but you're going to hear so much more...

 

[koolkeith]

FrankHarveyHiFi:I think you'll find a rather large difference! The Audiolab won't be as smooth, but you're going to hear so much more...

David, please elaborate. There are many people hoping this & the CDQ (currently on a long boat from China I think) are going to give them a sniff of real high end for c. £1k. I was going to wait for the ATC equivalent but feels like it will need to be a real class act to compete, especially as it will be at least twice the price ?

 

[Frank Harvey]

In it's day, the Alpha 5+ was a good player. Nice and smooth (for a CD player of the time), easy to listen to, fairly warm sounding. This has it's downsides. Smoothness loses leading edge detail, decays etc, making it less informative. Many smoother products, especially aging ones, tend to lack openness. There have been advances in digital to analogue conversion - nothing major, but advances nonetheless, and these have improved signal/noise ratios, lowered distortions and noise floors, making current players from the likes of rega, Naim, Audiolab etc as good as CD has ever been.

The Audiolab is a cracking CD player for the money, and we think that next year there will be a couple of 'higher end' CD manufacturers losing a little market share to them - people don't want to spend fortunes on CD players any more as they're using their Squeezeboxes, Sonos Zoneplayers, their PC's etc to provide their music.

I have no doubt that the ATC player will be a class act, but it's a declining market for CD players above £1,000.