Stereophile has posted its review of the Cary Audio Design CD 306 SACD Professional Version SACD/CD player ($8,000). This unit (photo) has “wireless IR remote control, HDCD decoding, and switchable upsampling frequency.” Also included are three (!) digital inputs: AES/EBU via XLR, S/PDIF via RCA, and TosLink.
Despite an initial dud review sample and some operational issues on the replacement, Reviewer John Atkinson liked what he heard. Compared to his reference, the Ayre C-5xe, John states:
… the Cary just edges out the Ayre, I think, in terms of soundstage depth and the sheer silkiness of its high frequencies.
He concludes by saying:
It’s on the expensive side, but for your $8000 you get a well-engineered, solidly built, superb-sounding player with close to state-of-the-art measured performance. And it has that very useful digital input, for use with a network music player.
Read the entire review, then check out Wes Phillips’ review of John’s reference player, the Ayre C-5xe universal disc player (5,950).