Exposure 3010S2 CD Player

Nope but they look nice

Well you can always buy second hand I guess.

S.

Have you heard the 2010 family CD Players, Dave?

S.

I'm just looking and costing the parts and relating this to the rrp. maybe it's ok, but look at the component count in an Apollo R for example (UK made) or one of the far eastern imports (a top line Cambridge for example). If it's Chinese made, icould sell for half what it does if the importers wanted it to, but I think it could be UK built, I'm not sure.

As for market pricing, I look at a copy of HFN and the innards pics of the expensive gear they often review. Some items such as phono stages can sell for thousands yet with next to nothing inside the bling casework.

Apologies for being a philistine here, but building stuff as I do, I tend to be sensitive to component count and costings.

Oh, and have to an agree with dave about the price of modern exposures being too much. It’s made in Malaysia as far as I know. I’d far rather have the old school stuff that is better made, designed by someone with more talent and made in the UK. I don’t trust anything made in third world countries and I include China in that. Fine if you like that sort of thing but “Made in China” is usually a big concern for me. I just don’t trust the build and reliability.

I'm told that there's nothing wrong about being made cheaply in China, BUT the builds need careful policing if cost cutting isn't to be done. The rather lovely breeze-block Quad 909 moved production to China and there was a period when sub-standard electrolytics began to be used, destroying the otherwise benign performance of this power amp. All catalogued on the Dada website and sorted long ago I believe.


By the way, my bilging on about costings goes back to the early 70's. I remember a popular Sony cassette deck (186SD) which we sold (with usual mid 70's discounts?) for £120. The cost ex-japan would have been around £25 even then, the shipping and middle men making a huge chunk of the remainder. Our service engineers slagging off the Naim stuff purely on internal component costs, a NAC12 preamp then costing £120 having reportedly a tenner's worth of bits inside at 1982 pricings.

A CD player selling for £1500 now (£1200 + VAT) but made in the far east must leave there for a couple of hundred tops (landed cost of Quad 11L speakers was reported at $14 the pair landed and boxed!). The dealer would pay £750 plus VAT or so, so who makes the bit in the middle?

Sorry, not slating the performance of current Exposure stuff (it's very well reported and the little I heard of early noughties stuff was very positive), but it kind of makes the little Rega Apollo R something of a bargain still, especially if you look inside... They make their margin on the dearer Saturn R I suggest..

The Planet and Apollo's need a load input impedance of 50K if you look at the basic spec on their website. Less than this is anybody's guess for sonics.

Used according to instructions, NO Rega CD player is boring or mechanical sounding. A Klotz AC110 (or whatever the Couple is made from these days) will finish off the circuit.

This is one area where their DAC may make a beneficial difference - impedance matching... I can't think of another cheapo CD player that could reliably communicate the music as well, but possibly the Cambridge machines might - no idea about Arcam these days - I think a lot of their stuff is Chinese made now (are they owned by a far eastern organisation as well?) and that Exposure (10** series?) player at under £500 if still made might...

Forget the DAC chips - all they usually work with is digits and I was told decades ago they don't usually have any sonic effect unless they're faulty. What CAN make a sonic difference is the digital filtering after (goes back to the infamous TDA1541 era)and also the analogue output buffer if effed up or 'altered' in some way - oh and in the past the clock circuit too.

Rega are vinyl lovers.No way should they have produced a CD player that sounds more digital than digital really does!!! if that machine was sounding as faulty as you suggest, it should have gone back to the factory for checking. A friend had one such and after tha mech failed, it went back and came back sounding better than ever - no idea what they did, but it was musically better than before. The player he has now were of the final batch of mk1 machines (they made a final lot in the previous cosmetic after announcing the new one) and he's delighted with it - and he's a fussy old beggar as well! It's used into a Croft Micro 25 preamp with no issues whatsoever...

I was always put off the Oppos by their “AV” looks, until I saw how well made they are internally. I’m settled with what I have now (can’t believe I said that!) but a small part of me wishes I’d tried one.