I’m glad to see the absolute sound reviewing CD players. I love the CD/SACD format.

I would never buy this product, even if it would fit in my budget AND I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY enjoyed the review. Great job! Please bring him back for more reviews. I can tell that the reviewer loves music and knows his stuff. Very refreshing. Really extemporaneous presentation AND focused and relevant at the same time. Great communicator.

Good to have Michael Johnson at TAS. Some of us have been pressuring him to extended his vinyl-review prowess to digital. And here we are! MJ, please ... just stick with digital hardware for a while at TAS. Believe it or not, by far, the majority of audiophiles and audio enthusiasts are NOT INTO ANALOG PLAYBACK GEAR. Not only for its inconvenience but because ANALOG and DIGITAL sound importantly DIFFERENT (not better or worse) . Investigate vintage CD players if TAS will allow it. You may be surprised at what you uncover.

MICHAEL i gotta say , you have a great style with no wasted words and meaningless information. if you stay with the absolute sound i will make damn sure to watch every episode . kudos to tom martin for hiring you......

*Thank you for your great and very good report. Excellent* ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Even with my 2,000 SACD collection, I just can't see myself buying such an expensive CD/SACD player. However, I enjoyed very much Michael's review and impression of the Metronome's player. Keep up the great work.

Great review Michael. Metronome has not been getting much play from the Absolute Sound so I'm happy that you were able to report on this unit in great detail with style and class.

Good review. Michael should do more reviews.

Extremely top notch, organized, earnest, and well thought out review which, at least to me, carries the weight of a knowledgeable and articulate reviewer.

Not sure who this guy is but I am so thrilled to see someone his age up to his neck in this Hobby. Does my heart good

Really engaging and informative review of this interesting product. Thank you.

A fascinating very detailed review.

Great review Michael. Very informative. WAY better than most reviews in print or online. Please review the Kalista Dreamplay XC. The previous TAS review is just OK! Many thanks

awesome product , going to Axpona this week , hope they have these products...can you also review the Streamer/Pre Amp?...great vid !

I own Metronome C8 dac. Pretty old technology, but still my favorite dac and ultra reliable. I would skip cd player today, except you have a huge cd collection from the get go.

Nice some deftones on high end audio

Good job 👍

That was an excellent review

I wonder how much better this player would be against a Oppo/ Bryston BDA3 combo. Love the big display, but 22k is a big investment.

And I thought a $5000.00 turntable was stupid. This makes that appear almost sane. Call me a philistine. Oh yeah, beautiful review. I like Michael's presentation.

Appreciated your review. Do you know any seller / distributor in the North America of the Metronome audio products ?

Does the i2s/HDMI output provide the raw unencrypted SACD data stream?

Great review. I have a question: how do you file/shelf your classical records? By composer, conductor or label? I have mine by label but I think by composer might be better.

There are albums to buy on MQA CD. And actually with famous artists. Saw it on Amazon or eBay

22k for something that you may hear! Check your hearing first. A good cd player and a DAC may compliment your hearing. Otherwise wasting money.

Interesting. Ihave a dCS Bartok Apex but I'm about to try Ayre QX5 Twenty. Sounds great at the factory in R Series listening room.

A wonderful all-in-one unit that gets my attention because of its great display and it plays SACDs. But the $22K price ruins its appeal. Somethng closer to $5K would easily find a market. The Technics CD/SACD streamer is in that price bracket (but not with this display).

When Mofi is going to publish a vinyl record that comes from analog master tape, they apparently do. at least sometimes with DSD eg DSD 256. However, as far as I know, they do not offer DSD file downloads. However, they sell SACD. But then it's only DSD64 on them, right?

Great review .. Love the cd/sacd player but way out of my budget. I’ll stick with Yamaha CDS2100 unless someone would like to buy it for my birthday. 🎂 😂

Have you tried playing 24 bit sound and by that I don't mean with Flac but with wav or AIFF which is not a compressed file such albums can be downloaded on QOBUZ and HD tracks. And by the way, can you play DVD Audio or Blu-ray audio on it

Hit it out of the park? Taken with a grain of salt. The unit got moved from the top shelf to the 3rd shelf where disc access was not convenient. Shows how good the unit really was.

“AQWO 2 is the Cadillac of the digital players” - obviously you neither have a driver’s license nor a clue of car brands 😂 However, I would compare the gold AQWO rather to the pink Cadillac with a lot of bling bling incl. heaven on the back seat😜 Otherwise a great review!

On SACD If it's only DSD 64 ? it's probably not considered that good. Higher DSD levels are considered better. But then we are talking about DSD Files that you download. Said to be on HD tracks and Native DSD

There was not one note heard. A waste of time.

How does this compare with your turntable?

I laughed out loud when you said 22k.

SACD disc is rare .. cd is ok but soon cd is going out of market so left behind is DAC/streamer with cost $22k not fare at all there is lots of choices

I love the big display that can be read from a distance, but the price just isn't worth it for me. Also: not a device for those with small children; that CD hold-down would go AWOL in no time at all 😂.

Thanks for the review. I would never purchase this product - it is very expensive for a stereo CD/SACD player. For me the major benefit of SACD, particularly for classical music, is multichannel, surround sound, which this player cannot play. The vast majority of SACDs are hydrid, meaning that this player will basically only read the standard CD layer, which contains the stereo audio, and it will read nothing from the SACD layer that contains the surround sound data. The ability to stream 32 bit/348kHz is great except that no-one is streaming audio at resolutions more than 24bit/192kHz, so at present the high end resolution of the player is completely redundant. Rather spend the money on a proper SACD player that plays multi-channel surround sound.

Way to much money for most.. For me the Oppo CD/ SACD streamer does the same thing for only 1000.00 used… modified add 400.00 or so and you can improve the performance 25%.. Nice review and very few will ever spend this kind of money… 25,000 for me to be spent on best speakers….

Stunning piece... but unfortunately, priced in the stratosphere.... Super happy with my relatively super "affordable "Marantz SACD30n for $3K and have an extra $19K in the bank ! Very NICHE product indeed...

There is nothing special of the player. I have one and I cannot really agree with this guy. It seems like paid for advertising.

Excellent review and I look forward to more of them. There was a bit of repetition, and this could have been shortened by 5 min. Also please don't pump a CD case in front of the camera repeatedly, as it makes my eyes cross.

Oh really, Japanese recordings are bright(!) You don't say!

Michael is no 'newcomer'. He has been reviewing gear and records on his channel for over four years now. poetryonplastic Just saying.