Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well! 

Today's Fresh Catch is the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x Level Three Red Book CD player! 

You have probably already read the feature review I wrote for Positive Feedback about the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II Level Two Red Book CD player last November (HERE).

The Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II has been a life changing experience for me. How often can one say that about an audio component? Not often.

For quite some time I've considered LPs as the staple of my listening diet, providing lots of musical fun and games on my treasured CTC Garrard 301 and Thorens TD124 turntables, at least until the arrival of the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II Level Two Red Book CD player that shattered my 'LP innocence' (photo below).

I thought my path to music listening satisfaction was solely via my delightful turntables, so at first I didn't know what to make of this interloper, the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II Level Two Red Book CD player.

I thought my reaction would be, "Oh that's nice, now let me get some LPs out and listen to some music."

My reaction was the opposite. For the first time, the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II Level Two Red Book CD player made listening to albums on CD as musically satisfying as listening to LPs on my Garrard and Thorens turntables.

As a bonus the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II  opened up a whole new world of listening to music for me that I had been completely missing, and it rocked my world. 

I became aware of, then fascinated with, and now totally engrossed in, music that I hadn't been able to find and listen to on LP. 

I became aware of how important music from all of the historic eras of the recording arts were to world culture: the acoustic era (1877 to 1925), the electric era (1925 to 1945), the magnetic era (1945 to 1975), and the often maligned among audiophiles, digital era (1975 to present).

Primarily, I had been listening to music from the magnetic era, because there were quite a few great recordings of music albums from that period that I really enjoy. But now, armed with the CD 2.1x/II, I began to listen to our recorded music canon from the acoustic, electric, and digital eras of the recording arts as well, and it has been truly a life changing, enriching, music listening experience for me.

First it was Peter Qvortrup introducing me to the 78 records transferred to digital by the brilliant late Russian audio and recording engineer Anatoly Markovich Likhnitsky, Peter's friend.

Anatoly's 78 transfers to digital were a pleasure to listen to, and transcended the recording limitations of the acoustic and electric eras of the recording arts to deliver stunning musical performances only rarely heard in The West. 

Not only did Anatoly's 78 transfers offer great performances that most listeners in the West were not familiar with, but the sound quality was astonishing, rivaling or exceeding the best of the magnetic era of recording, albeit with some limitations at the frequency extremes (but not always), and a little more surface noise from the 78s than most LP listeners are used to hearing (but not always).

The good news is that Peter is working on releasing all of Anatoly Markovich Likhnitsky's 78 transfers to digital that he has access to in the future through Audio Note (UK).

That's exciting news, as it will make these amazing performances of music available to a much wider audience, an audience that has probably never heard most of them performed.

There are dedicated specialist enthusiast music labels like Nimbus Records' Prima Voce, Marston Records, The Record Collector, Immortal Performances, Naxos Historical, and others, that are fantastic sources of music from the acoustic and electric eras of the recording arts.

That started my series The 78 Experience - Feeling the Music to tell you about this great - and historically important - music from the acoustic and electric eras of the recording arts.

Then my friend David Gitlen, a talented jazz guitarist, began to introduce me to great albums featuring important performances by jazz guitarists during our weekly listening sessions, following the jazz guitar lesson that David was teaching me each week.

Many of those albums are no longer available on LP, if they ever were, and my musical horizons began to expand even further in the magnetic and digital eras of the recording arts. What an enriching music listening experience.

I have been so thrilled that I started another new series, The Jazz Guitar Chronicles to tell you about the albums David has been introducing me to. 

Ok, so I hope that gives you an idea of how the Peter Qvortrup and his Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II Level Two Red Book CD player changed my music listening life for the better.

If you don't have a quality CD player that can turn the little silver discs into astonishing musical listening experiences, I encourage you to address that, as I suspect for many of you it would be a life changing experience, just as it has been for me.

Now, with that little intro on how important listening to CDs has become for me, back to the subject of this post, the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x Level Three Red Book CD player. 

As I mentioned in my Today's Fresh Catch: The Audio Note (UK) 300B Meishu Phono Silver Tonmeister Single-Ended-Triode Integrated Amplifier! post (HERE), the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x Level Three Red Book CD player came to visit along with the Meishu 300B integrated amp.

The idea here is to explore and tell you about what I hear when going from the Level Two Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II CD player to the Level Three Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player. 

What differences in musicality and sound quality do I hear between these two?

That will be the discussion, as well as a comparison of their levels of performance compared to the rather lofty performance level of the Audio Note (UK) Io I moving coil phonograph cartridge, AN-S4 step-up transformer (SUT), and AN-V silver interconnects that are providing the analog signal from my CTC Garrard 301 turntable.

The first thing that you'll notice about the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player is that it is a 'top-loader'.

What the top-loading feature gives you is an analogue-like experience very similar to what you get with a turntable. 

First you slide open the cover that shields the transport mechanism, then you place the CD on the 'platter', add the 'record weight' atop the CD, and close the cover.

Now you are ready to play music through the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player.

I find the analogue-like ritual of placing the CD on the 'platter' and adding the 'record weight' to be quite familiar and comforting, just like I do on my Garrard 301 or Thorens TD124.

Here's a better view of the top-loading feature of the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player. 

Here are the 'details' of the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player from the Audio Note (UK) website:

After I get a little farther along with the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player, I'll pop the top off and shoot some interior photos so you can see the analogue output stage, the ECC88 vacuum tubes, the Analogue Devices AD1865 DAC, and so forth.

Here are the 'technical specifications' of the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player from the Audio Note (UK) website:

This particular Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player is a well-travelled demo unit, so no lengthy run-in will be necessary, just the normal time for system-equilibration when installing a new component.

When I first placed the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player in my Westminster Royal Special Edition loudspeakers based music system, I just swapped out the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II CD player, without changing anything else, and my reference Triode Lab 45 EVO integrated SET amplifier was still providing the juice, as I hadn't unpacked and installed the Meishu yet.

After letting the system warm up, I played a number of familiar CDs from the different eras of the recording arts. Liquid, natural, and lush musical performances were what I heard emerging from my West's. I liked what I heard.

The Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player seemed to sound quite a bit different from the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II CD player, so I'll have to do A-B listening impressions across the different eras of the recording arts to suss out the differences in performances so I can articulate them for you, as well as comparisons to the Audio Note (UK) Io I moving coil phonograph cartridge, AN-S4 step-up transformer (SUT), and AN-V silver interconnects that are providing the analog signal from my CTC Garrard 301 turntable, where I have the same albums on both LP and CD.

At the moment, my primary music system, from loudspeakers to source, consists of my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers with custom silver Duelund Coherent Audio crossovers, Duelund DCA16GA tinned-copper speaker cables, the Audio Note (UK) Meishu 300B Phono Silver Tonmeister integrated amplifier, my Garrard 301 with the Audio Note (UK) Io I moving coil phonograph cartridge, AN-S4 step-up transformer (SUT), and AN-V silver interconnects as an analog source, and the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player connected to the Meishu with Duelund Dual DCA16GA interconnects terminated with Duelund plastic-free RCAs. It sounds great!

I'll be doing some 'round-robin' listening comparisons with my restored vintage Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers in my audio-visual system for some additional context, and perhaps an as yet to be announced pair of loudspeakers that will be arriving here in the not too distant future.

If you'd like to do a little daydreaming about having an Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player of your own, you can check out the owner's manual HERE. 

As with the Meishu, it will be a while before I write the feature review of the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player for Positive Feedback. 

Until then, you can expect to read lots of posts of my listening adventures with both CD 4.1x and the Meishu, comparisons to their Level Two counterparts, the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II and the Audio Note (UK) Oto Phono SE Signature integrated amplifier, respectively, and a lot more, as I get more familiar with their performance attributes.

The US retail pricing for the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player is $14,331.00 USD.

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!