[commuteman]

Hi,

First post here;I found the community while doing some research on processors. The reasons for choosing the Cary are kinda interesting, a combination of sound quality, price and dealer issues.

I am replacing an old Meridian 500 series combo; the processor will be the primary digital music path in my main system as well as doing the obvious movie processing, so the 2-channel audio performance is very important.

I narrowed the choice down to 3 candidates, and the other two were the Arcam FMJ888 and the Anthem AVM50V. At this point i didn't want to stretch the budget up to D2V or SSP territory, given that this space is still evolving. The Cary is the cheapest of the three, but reputed to have the best 2-channel sound.

Surprisingly, I wasn't able to find a dealer in the SF Bay Area who actually had either of the Anthem units (or would return my phone calls). More than 6M people here and no Anthem processors? More or less the same with the Arcam, although I did not call every dealer.

Sound Vision SF had the Cary, and I spent an hour or so listening to both the analog pass-through and the digital processing. In both cases, the performance was at least as good as I expected. The pass-through signal came from an $8k Wadia unit (maybe a 581, but I did not look closely) and was fabulous, but the processed signal through the Cary was not too far behind. A little more closed-in, not quite so much air and separation, but close.

Obviously this is a risky approach since I was auditioning it in a foreign system, but the experience was good enough that I ordered one on the spot.

Should be here in a week or so, and I will post more once I play with it.

Peter