The Metronome CD8 S first caught my eye as part of a silent display at last year's New York Audio Show, which was noted for having taken place not in New York City but in Rye Brook, in Westchester County. Consider also that the Metronome's D/A converter technically outpaces the disc transport with which it shares space in the case. Lest that seem like just so much nominal silliness, consider: The Metronome CD8 Swhich recently evolved, Hillary-like, from the well-established Metronome CD8is equipped with USB and S/PDIF digital-input jacks, so its internal DAC can be used with external digital sources. Now another new product is disturbing my peace: the CD8 S ($10,000), which French manufacturer Metronome Technologie describes as an integrated player, in the same sense that many hundreds of electronics manufacturers describe their preamplifier-amplifier combinations as integrated amplifiers.

In recent years, that last observation has been challenged a very few times, most notably by CD-playing source components from Naim Audio, Ayre Acoustics, 47 Laboratory, and Audio Noteproducts that upset my composure by leading me to the music and making me drink it. (And if I'm around music that's awful and I'm powerless to stop it, I have to leave the premises.) A rare exception is when I listen to CDs while proofreading, because proofreading is fairly brainless stuffand as playback formats go, the Compact Disc isn't the most musically compelling. I don't listen to music when I write, even when I write about listening to music: When there's music playing, it almost always gets my full attentionand I'm no good at multitasking.

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