Her er en som har gått Kinsesisk byggde Vincent CD-S6 etter i sømmene. Ikke allverden :-(
The look of this player - to my eye - is nothing more than another Chinese monster pretending to be high-end. They all share similar features: looks to die for, a little bit on a vulgar side of taste, the best DAC chip money can buy, as many op-amps as one can fit on a given PCB, and tubes being only attractive visual addition, an excuse to call the player TUBED.
From just 1 meter away I could take it for a BAT VK-D5. Meaning - the Vincent looks THAT GOOD. Even after opening the hood - it looks like a BAT. Same shitty plastic transport from Philips, perhaps the cheapest one ever made. But in Vincent it is a Philips-China version of VAL1202, in BAT it was still European made..
The PCB looks extremely well made, clean, sophisticated design with lots of high-end parts and colorful heatsinked regulators standing in straight rows like soldiers....
or is it really ...
well...
hmmm.....
where is my magnifying glass magic lamp !?
Wait a minute. The parts on the PCB are FAKE IMITATIONS. All capacitors are WIMA look-alikes. I bet that the BurrBrown op-amps are fake as well: they are painted with white letters, not laser engraved like real BB 2604.
Wait a minute - WHAT OPAMPS?! This is a tubed player innit? .... well...
...not quite.
Counting opamps - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 - TEN opamps means 5 per channel in a series and this shit feeds the triode ... well ....
lets see - this is not amplifying triode, no SRPP, no MU follower - this tube is a CATHODE BUFFER to color the sound of op-amped shit. This is SHIT SQUARED.
And what about the glow ? There is an Amsterdam brothel window mounted on the front of the player to fool naive crowds that they should reach deep in the pocket. There is a God Knows What For tube installed there as a Christmas decoration, which has no other role but glowing for the crowds, but this tube does not glow itself (as none of the small triodes does) so they mounted 8 LEDS illuminating it from both sides plus a MIRROR (!) behind to increase the glow! In my humble opinion illuminating tubes with LEDS is very vulgar, hence the brothel association) You feel rich enough to treat yourself and buy the HIGHEND HYBRID TECHNOLOGY player. remember .... "... vacuum tube technology has culminated ...." - you are welcome to be my guest.
If fitting 10 crappy opamps with fake "Chinese-Wima" caps and adding an idiotic tube cathode follower at the end they call hybrid technology culmination, yes, I dont know what to say. Culminate my ass and sue me for all I care. 1800 Euro MRRP ? 4 times the Shanling 300?
Bwahahahaaha.
Anyway, the poor friend of mine already BOUGHT IT paying the German / Chinese crooks over 1100 Euro in the vain hope of tubed sound.
I had to give him some hand and I promised to play with the player.
Now I ADMIT I did not audition it brand-new. I did not have the time for such ride. I would rather eat a dead rat for breakfast.