YBA CD 2 CD Player Reviewed

  • By: HomeTheaterReview.com,

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HTR Product Rating

Performance
3 Stars
Value
4 Stars
Overall
3.5 Stars

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Soliciting negatives about CD from an audio audience is too easy a way to start a pub-level row. Do it at a hi-fi show, in a shop on a Saturday -- wherever hi-fi nuts meet, it's as good a way as any to start fights and establish sides. I'm offering, as this month's 'friendly row' topic, the hoary old chestnut about CD removing the fun from hi-fi because it's not as 'hands-on' and involving a format as LP. It deprives us of much of the lunacy which made hi-fi so amusing. But I didn't allow for the likes of Yves-Bernard Andre of YBA, a man who could tweak a bowling ball. And his YBA CD 2 is about as tweaky a player as I can name, despite its almost prosaic looks.

As with Naim, Krell and a few others, this is a top-loader. (Top-vs-front loading is another great debate issue...) And that's where the fun starts. Why? Because this machine can be tuned infinitely, according to whether or not the lid is shut or how far you closed it, since the lid slides manually and you can leave it anywhere. Mess around with the lighting in your room, then fiddle with the sliding door and you can imagine why Settlers sales will shoot through the roof should the YBA sell in great numbers.

Additional Resources

Not that any £2999 CD player will move in the hundreds, let alone dozens. And this one does have all of the ingredients (besides novelty) which justify such a lofty sticker price. It has an outboard power supply as well as a power supply on the main chassis, so the CD2 needs two mains outlets -- one for the transport and the other for the digital circuitry. The on-off switch is disguised as the badge, but that's only the stand-by switch; there's a main switch underneath. The nicely-machined toggle switches have minds of their own, with multiple modes you'll never remember. You have to clear memory banks just to skip tracks. You must use the supplied puck. You must use YBA cable. You must polish your discs in a fleur de lys pattern with the supplied cloth. It goes on and on. So it's a natural for those macho Boys' Own types who thought that cueing levers were for wimps.

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