Burmester 089 CD player DAC just came in for short stay so I'll wrap up things in more compact way. While not packed with the latest bloom Burmester is still in the high loop. As proven many times over the past few years new DAC chips are not give a reason for the audio joy just by their existence. Belt drive and CD player? CEC, Pioneer and Burmester comes to mind. The refined and rebuild Phillips mechanism is for sure guilty for the sound difference. In combination with Burmester X-Amp 2 this belt driven CD player for sure brings one of the most analog like performance among all CD players I have had pleasure to listen in my highend audio journey. Comparing to my analog setup, there is still a noticable difference, but this player comes with almost zero listening fatigue. Only time that happend so far was with Lampizatior Level 4 DAC. Many new products come and go yet its rare for me to stay long in listening moods and quality impressions. 089 is not just an aesthetic jewel, but an stand out performer.
Winston Ma First Impression Music CD's and Morten Lindberg's 2L releases never sounded so good, natural and intimate. I owned Burmester 052 and tested Burmester 001, 061 etc. All are interesting performers on its own. Burmester house sound is a bit on the warm side. I would go even so far and called it tube like warmth. Burmester custom opamps seems to be tuned in the way to capture darker and warmer timbre of instrument.
Take a look at my exclusive interview with Dieter Burmester here to find out more interesting facts about company. Whole review coming in due time. Stay tuned!