"Laurence Payne" NOSPAMlpayne1ATdsl.pipex.com wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:57:34 +1100, "Trevor Wilson"
wrote:

**Forget second hand, unless you are prepared to throw a new laser in a
decent exotic machine. IMO, the best value around today is the Harman
Kardon
HD970. Brilliant machine for not too much cash. It'll even play MP3s.

Looked it up.

**A waste of time. Go listen to it. It is a very fine sounding machine.

The "...exclusive sound improvement system based on the
Real Time Linear Smoothing III, optimizing the sound level and
quality" worries me a little. Smacks of audiophile snake-oil. Can it
be switched out?

**Nope. IMO, the good sound of the HD970 is likely to be related to the
excellent DAC used and the very impressive, all discrete transistor output
stages. Quality OP amps complement the mix.

Like I said: "Listen to it." Forget all the bull**** and the hype (which
pretty much ALL companies are guilty of) and just listen to the thing. It's
not an expensive machine, but it will easily best fancy machines costing
several times more. The HK is designed using good, solid engineering.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Trevor Wilson