Sigh, Had To Give Back The Minimax CD

Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

For over a month, I've borrowed the Minimax CD from a friend. He picked it up, with the intention of using it in a secondary system. Smart. The Minimax CD is small, and has tubes that are acessed through the back panel. It has an IEC jack, so you can play around with powercords. Its RCA jacks are spaced an inch apart, so there's enough room for you to use cables with locking RCAs. It has an aluminum-colored faceplate, which looks infinitely better than black. It does have time remain function, very useful.
But as I used my friend's Minimax CD, I realized that, forget about secondary systems, this thing is fine as a primary source. Dude, let's say I had nothing at all. (#1) I could get the Minimax CD, plug it directly into the wall, and temporarily use the headphone jack.
(#2) Major improvement at under $100 comes from changing the AC outlet to an Oyaide. As long as we were using the Oyaide outlets, we did not need to rely on expensive powerline conditioning. (#3) The Minimax CD sounded swell with modest integrated amps such as the Creek Classic 5350SE and Naim Nait 5i. Hell, it sounded fine with a relative's Sony AV receiver. (#4) It did not NEED expensive interconnects to sound good. The combination of Kimber Timbre-047 and 4TC was sufficient. (#5) It did not sound bad with the throwaway powercord. At the other extreme, it does not need a Shunyata Anaconda Helix Alpha to sound its best. In fact, the Acrolink 6N powercord with your choice of Oyaide IEC plugs proved to be an optimal match with the Oyaide AC outlets. (#6) The Minimax CD sounds quite good with the stock Electro Harmonix 6922 [ding!]. But it can take 6DJ8s, 6922s, or 7308s [ding, ding!]. And, it does not need matched pairs or specially selected low noise tubes [ding, ding, ding!]. My buddies and I did do some tube rolling, and if I can get my friend who owns the Minimax over, we can write up the results. But for now, I can tell you that, unlike my Cary CD 303/300, the Minimax CD sounded, at a minimum, very good with almost all of the 6DJ8-family tubes we had on hand. Only the Mullard CV2492 sounded poor.
If you're using the Minimax CD as part of a system, rather than just as a headphone source, you're going to need more outlets. As above, be sure you use the right AC outlet. After you've secured that, you need to address powerline conditioning. Well, the $350 Noisetrapper NANA strip leaves the Minimax CD mostly unperturbed. Plus, the NANA worked well with our affordable preamps, amps, and integrated amps.
So far, that's $90 for an Oyaide outlet, $350 for the NANA, $400 for an Acrolink powercord, and $1099 for the Minimax CD itself. You can shave a few hundred bucks off the integrated amp (Creek 5350SE's and Naim Nait 5i's often appear on used lists) if you buy used. There are tons of cheap used bookshelf speakers, so have fun hunting the right one for your amp/room/tastes. While you're at it, pick up a used tuner for $99. If you have records, get a Rega P3 with your favorite budget cart. Now all that is left are the interconnects and speaker cables. Damn, with the Minimax CD as your primary source, you can come up with a true high-performance system at a fraction of what the big bangers cost.
As I unhooked the Minimax CD, and put it back in its box, I already began to miss it. It was such a fun product.
-Lummy The Seahorse

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Topic - Sigh, Had To Give Back The Minimax CD - Luminator 10:52:52 06/26/06 (2)

Re: Sigh, Had To Give Back The Minimax CD - tkg 20:29:44 06/27/06 (1)

Comparisons - Luminator 23:04:24 06/27/06 (0)

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