Ayre C-5xe Bedienungsanleitung PDF herunterladen (Seite 3)

Australian Hi-Fi

image. Live concert performances through

the Ayre just sound gutsier, with seemingly

higher levels of energy coursing through the

musicians and the complete effect is really far

more like being at the original concert, even

minus the visuals. What was also clearly ap-

parent was the added level of detailing from

the C-5xe that meant that whereas I’d previ-

ously blamed the ‘live mix’ for the lack of ﬁ ne

detail, with the result that the sounds seemed

to blend together, the Ayre immediately re-

vealed that the fault was with the previous

players I’d been using, because with the C-

5xe, there was detail aplenty, so that when

listening to a guitar duel, what was previously

an amorphous sound, where it was impossible

to tell one guitarist from the other, I found

that the C-5xe not only accentuated the mi-

nor tonal differences, but also clearly delin-

eated the tiny differences in timing. Magic!

What a difference the C-5xe made to one of

my favourites, the Musicare Person of the Year

Tribute to James Taylor, featuring Bonnie Rait,

The Dixy Chicks, Jackson Browne, Sting, and

Carole King (of course!) amongst others. This

had good sound to begin with (even the 5.1

mix) but the C-X5xe turns up the crispness of

the vocals to an unprecedented level of intel-

ligibility. This is a great disc, one of the best

ever. When played another DVD-A favourite

of mine, Donald Fagan’s ‘Kamakiriad’, the

Ayre display indicated that the group that’s

supposed to be two-channel 96kHz was actu-

ally just Dolby Digital, so either I was sold a

pup, or some ﬂ ag hasn’t been set. This was one

complication I did not get to the bottom of.

One of the SACDs I most loved playing

over and over again on the Ayre was the Mar-

tha Argerich/Dora Schwartzberg recording on

Avanti, which features Franck’s Violin/Piano

Sonata in A major; Debussy’s Violin/Piano

Sonata in G minor, and Robert Schumann’s

Fantasy Pieces (Avanti SACD 5414706 10232).

I just had to buy this disc, despite its miserly

playing time (under 60 minutes) and I was

glad I did, because Argerich really plays her

heart out on this one, Just listen to the power

she generates with her left hand on crescen-

dos! However, this disc also highlights her

delicacy as well, so that she almost has only

to imply a note, rather than play it, to deliver

the effect. This type of detail just isn’t revealed

when playing ordinary CDs. Unfortunately,

because SACDs are to all intents and purposes

‘unobtainium’ down here in Australia, one’s

only recourse is the Internet, which has the

disadvantage that you can’t listen before buy-

ing, with the result that I now own some very

ordinary (and very expensive) SACDs. But

when SACD is good, it is very, very good, and

when you hear it played back on a player such

as the Ayre C-X5e, it’s exquisite.

The reality is, however, that with rare ex-

ceptions, if you want to enjoy good perfor-

mances, rather than just good sound, we’re

going to be stuck with listening to good ol’

CDs for quite a while yet, so it’s crucial that

any ‘universal’ player—no matter how well it

plays back DVD-As and SACDs—should not

short-change the Red Book format. I was rath-

er stunned to hear that not only did the C-X5e

play back every CD I loaded with much higher

ﬁ delity than any other universal player I have

ever used (including a certain high-priced

Scottish import), it played back them back

with the same high level of resolution and—I

almost hate to write the word—‘musicality’

as even the best CD players this side of ﬁ ve

ﬁ gures. My favourite version of Bach’s English

Suites is the one Murray Perahia recorded for

Sony back in 1998. Producer Andreas Neobron-

ner and recording engineer Johannes Müller

lavished an enormous amount of care on this,

using the beautiful acoustic of the Theatre La

Salle de Musique in Switzerland, sourcing a

Model D-274 Steinway from Italy, and using

Super-Bit-Mapping for the recording. It seems

even Perahia’s playing was inspired for the oc-

casion, because it’s even better than his usual

high standard. The result is that the perfor-

mance is absolutely superb. The depth of the

sound, the precision of the attacks, the sustain

of the decays, and the beautiful balance of

the direct piano sound with the ‘ﬁ ll’ from the

acoustic means this is a disc to treasure (Sony

SK60277). Pay particular attention to the way

Perahia plays the Allemande of Suite No 2 in

A Minor (BWV807)—his legato is breathtaking

and the way he threads the left- and right-

hand parts together without losing either is

truly genius. If you already have other ver-

sions of these Bach masterpieces, you’ll need

this one anyway. If you don’t, this is the one

to get. Even if you don’t think you’re ‘into’

classical music—much less solo piano music—

you might be surprised at how modern almost

all the tracks sound: Suite II’s Gigue could eas-

ily be a modern pop song. A word of warning

if you’re trying to use the C-5xe to compare a

CD version with an SACD version: you can’t—

or at least you can’t do so easily. The reason is

that due to the way the C-5xe processes the

two signals, the SACD output level is far lower

than it is for CD (and DVD-A). This means

that unless you adjust for equal output, the

CD version will always sound better simply by

virtue of being louder. (It’s a well-known psy-

choacoustic phenomenon that when the ear

is presented with two sounds that are in all

ways identical except for their volume level,

the ear will always ‘prefer’ the quality of the

louder sound.) This also causes a minor issue

during playback, which is that if, like most au-

diophiles, you have a preferred ‘sweetest’ play-

back level, you’ll now likely need three crayon

marks on your volume control: one for LP, one

for CD and one for SACD.

Conclusion

One thing I might not have made clear is that

I am very probably the last person in the world

to review Ayre’s C-5xe—it debuted more than

three years ago in the US at CES. But this is

just one more of Ayre’s many strengths: Han-

sen designs his equipment for the long haul,

choosing only internal components that will

go the distance, for which he’s certain he can

provide support, and once he’s designed a

component, it stays ﬁ xed in the Ayre line-up:

there’s no ‘ﬂ avour of the month’ marketing

up there in Boulder, Colorado. As he once

told Stereophile’s Wes Phillips: “We want the

gear to make beautiful music that is compelling

and captivating, and we want the stuff to boogie

and be maintenance-free—and we want to do all

that at a fair price.”

Ayre’s C-5ex isn’t just a brilliant ‘univer-

sal’ player, it’s a brilliant CD player in its

own right. Chris Croft

Readers interested in a full technical

appraisal of the performance of the

Ayre Acoustics C-5ex should continue

on and read the LABORATORY

REPORT published on the following

pages. Readers should note that

the results mentioned in the report,

tabulated in performance charts

and/or displayed using graphs

and/or photographs should be

construed as applying only to the

speciﬁ c sample tested.

LAB REPORT

Ayre Acoustics C-5xe Universal Player

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Ayre C-5xe Bedienungsanleitung Seite 3

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