Fosi Audio Merak CD Player

Perfect player

Incredible!

I am organizing my entire cd library by ripping every cd I play. And the sound quality when used with my Denafrips Ares Dac is incredible even playing back through a thumb drive. Thank you once again Fosi Audio😎

A Solid Performing Tabletop CD Player With A Few Nice Touches

By now, it is well-known that Fosi's Merak CD player is well-built and it comes with the unexpected perk of a OLED screen. Of course, the ability to rip WAV files from CD tracks onto a USB drive is another major convenience. The switch for the ESP function on my particular unit was flush with the body of the unit, however. So it is difficult to change its position. It would have also been nice to include programmability to the playback as well as a function to change the display from elapsed time for each track to the remaining time for the track as well. But even at the modest price of the Merak, the more important concern for most users will be the sound quality. This is where this unit will win a lot of fans. The specifications that come with the player hint at high performance. Subjectively, one of the first things you will notice if you listen to music with a lot of percussion is the Merak's reproduction of transients. Whether it's a result of the player's low jitter, I can't be sure. But percussion and rhythm is reproduced with razor sharp focus. The leading edge attack of drums and bass sounds are razor sharp. This is what you would expect when listening to the real thing. Provided that your speakers or headphones do not suffer from overhang or tubby sound, you will notice that transients seem to lunge at you. This makes the overall presentation very exciting. At the same time, this quality does not seem exaggerated or so extreme that it makes things sound harsh. In terms of reproduction of ambience and space, the presentation tends to be somewhat dryer than other players so there is less of a sense of height as well as depth. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it is something to be aware of if you value ambience and listen to a lot of music with natural reverberation. With the specification of a CS43131 chip at the modest price of the player, one can only assume that Merak uses a single D-A converter for both channels. If so, then there would almost certainly be some phase error at higher frequencies between channels. Whether this leads to the somewhat dry sound, I can't be sure. The saving grace is the built-in optical output, which would allow you to use an external D-A converter to find out for yourself. Overall, this is a nice, compact tabletop CD player.