Eera Tentation

[JackD201]

I like the way you put it, a more mature take on the family sound. Another way to put it would be a more realized version of the designers intent because that is exactly what it is. It is the best Didier can do at this point in time and when I say do, it is literal. Every Autographe is assembled by Didier himself hence the name. Sonically as reported earlier, the Autographe is just a bit more extended, gives a bit more texture and is a bit more dynamic. The EERA hallmarks of flow, image density and sense of space are all still there. So yes I would say that the difference is subtle but can be musically significant depending on the track played. Strangely enough the difference is most pronounced on simple small scale music.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Great stuff Jack. Good to see it's not just adept at the usual aural firewks, but the intimate too, where faithful recreation of tone and space are needed to get the mood right. Not so many players can be good at both.
I have a couple of audiophile contacts who say I need to get out of the audio Dark Age and embrace hi rez/streaming, but tbh the Tentation is just so good I really can't bother myself . How do you feel the "lowly" 16/44.1 RBCD played pin Autographe/Tentation stacks up against the best of 24/96, 48/192 etc?

 

[JackD201]

I'm one of the weirdos that actually prefers 24/88.2 and 96 to higher sampling rates. I feel they have more meat on the bones. Many 192s being wispy if that makes any sense. In that regard I feel that redbook actually fares quite well, at least with these players and a precious few others that suit my taste (EAR, Metronome, Zanden to name a few others). Native DSD is another story since again I prefer this in turn to PCM in general the problem being the much smaller catalog. I'm still analog first however and my software budget generally heads in that direction.

I see I neglected to mention the comparison with my analog rig. When I switched to my present table the gap widened again and the Autographe was able to close the gap again somewhat. Still, given all the requisite provisos, to these ears as fluid as the Tentation and Autographe are, I still feel my analog rig is ahead. The good thing is that unlike in the past, I can switch between the two and not get mentally whacked. I'm happy the days of having to listen to digital first is over.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Thanx for those opinions. The invite to you here remains open if you make it to London. I feel I've really got lucky w/this CDP, it complements perfectly my tt (which itself is on a par if not better than the Grand Prix Monaco tt/Triplanar arm I heard recently, amazing at only 20% of the price), and like you I finally don't have to debate whether to listen to 5" or 12" discs. My system w/SETs and Zu high efficiency/non x'overed spkrs really majors on tone density, and this is the first digital I've heard that wins by a country mile in the territory of true tonal colour and discrimination btwn discs - finally digital from disc to disc doesn't sound like it was mastered by the same engineer. The synergy of the Eera w/my SETs/Zu's is just plain spooky.