Unico cd player is it worth?

[robolowski]

My mate is trying to sell me his used unico cd player for approx 400. The deal is , my marantz cd6003+old yamaha av amp+200 pounds.

To be honest i am not convinced that i am going to gain a lot on SQ , but i might as well be wrong here (not a beliver of expensive cd players )!

The thing is that most of the time i use usb on marantz cd as a main source for my music collection and i am happy with that.

The unico cd hasn't got one , but apparently it's got much better dac and i could use it as an externall one. Is that true and will i be able to connect let say unico to my bluray player and play through its usb port?

Other thing i am concidering is that marantz cd still has over 3 years warranty left and Unico hasn't and just in case of a failure i would be expensive to service Unico , i think...

I'll get chance to demo it over the weekend to convince myself but ,any help and advice will be most welcome.

 

[robolowski]

Anyone?

 

[robolowski]

I think i am going for that deal . I like how this player copes with complex music and bass is never boomy , which happened with marantz. It also creates an amazing atmosphere and it's easy to listen to the music for hours without fatigue at all .

One criticism is that it lacks the "wow factor " or very fine detail .

I need help though with its external dac. I can't figure out how to connect my laptop to it .

Here's what i've got:

Laptop vostro 1310

External card x-fi

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

To be honest i am not convinced that i am going to gain a lot on SQ , but i might as well be wrong here (not a beliver of expensive cd players )!

feeling converted now?

now, to your question. is it a Unico CD? if so, it has a digital S/Pdif input in the back. you can use it to feed signal from your laptop into CDP's DAC. all you need is a USB to S/Pdif converter that has a electrical coax output. it's important as the CDP has only coax input.

I suppose your x-fi sound card has a digital output but it's a toslink so you could use a toslink to electrical digital converter. but if I were you I'd go for a dedicated USB to S/Pdif converter with coax output and galvanic isolation of output socket (M2Tech hiface?).

don't get too worried about low "wow factor" or lack of detail. I'm sure that in time you'll start to appreciate that "wow factor" shows itself only where it should and lack of excessive high freq sparkle is more than compensated by midrange freq layering.

 

[robolowski]

Thanks for the answer.

It looks as though as i need to put more money towards the pleasure . Since i'll need a converter i wonder wheather it would be better to buy s/h soundblaster live! with coax output rather than dedicated converter?

In that case x-fi would have to go on ebay.

 

[Sabby]

Your Marantz will be totally outclassed by the Unison, there is simply no comparison! The Unison is on another level, whereas the Marantz is very much a budget player. Enjoy!