High end cd players

Here's a thought, high end cd players are they the proposition as they once were? I say this because i have never owned a truly high end player though i have borrowed and heard many. In the past couple of years since the demise of some of the lager company's who crafted such devises or decided to concentrate on streamers etc i have noticed that the quality both in finish and more importantly sound quality of mid priced players negate the need for such statement products of yore. Even at the budget end of the market brands like Cambridge Audio are making some fabulous products. Rega's lower priced offerings too i think are exceptional for thheir price. Go figure.:scratch:

My CD playing experience has gone from 'meh' to astonishing.

I can now believe in the 'Perfect music forever' tag line. Listening to the CD collection is like listening to brand new music.
The reason - I have moved onto a new R-2R Dac, the Musician Pegasus.

The detail and separation of complex passages, with absolute pin point imaging is an absolute joy.
So my advice is ignore high end players, get a reasonable transport and a Pegasus.

No doubt its a shrinking market. Take Naim as an example. They used to do 3 or 4 CDP's, now it's just one. And it's the base model. Their digital source products are now streamers.
The difference in SQ between a decent £1k CDP & a £10k player is for most people not that vast, mainly comes down to the DAC & is only worth the price difference for a very small group of extremely committed CD users.
However, like exotic cars, & any other high end product, there will be some out there who demand the absolute best.
A mate had a Vitus CDP to go with his Vitus amp, & despite its battleship build quality appearance, it spent 9 out of 18 months going backwards & forward to the dealer, distributor & factory for repairs. He couldn't get rid of it quickly enough, despite his love of the brand. For digital source, he now streams 90% of the time & uses a Creek CDP very rarely.

in the heyday of CD all the Jap brands had a flagship player that maxed out on the engineering side (whether it mattered or not). They were statements of what they were capable of.

There were also 'battleship' players from various expensive boutique brands that really were just transports and DACs bought off the shelf from Sanyo, Sony or Philips and put in a fancy case.

Now the world has moved on, CD market is now very small compared to streaming so no more statements of excellence in the world of CD players.

Alan is right a dedicated transport and a contemporary DAC is now the way to go, you can do that for £500 brand new and is actually on a par or better than the flagship players of yore, some of which I still own.

Bought a Denon 1520 CD Player in the late 80s...entire grant cheque!!!

It was built like a brick shit house(big copper plate under the hood)

The mech went south and despite numerous attempts with cleaning eventually refused to read disks.

Replaced it with a Sony cheapo from richer sounds-happy days.

I kept the Sony until now as a back up source....just in case like.

Lashed up a hifi in the garage this weekend with my son to resolve a speaker problem-tremendous fun!!!

Sat on a weights bench listening to music....bottle of jack later with a WTF intervention from my good lady and we called it a night/morning.

CD is still a lovely medium.

The transport DAC solution is excellent if the player has the output.

Cheapo 4k blu ray players offer a lot of hardware for reasonable money...with an outboard dac-game on!!!

I bought a Marantz CD94 MK2 the other year after owning one a while ago. It sounded beautiful but as I moved to ripoing/streaming I just couldn't justify the continued investment of owning it.

If you want a quality retro player I'd recommend that.

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

Do it proper....

Teac VRDS and any quality, modern DAC. It'll be the pinnacle of CD replay. :D

But it won't be as good as a streamer with a solid state drive and a well-ripped file outputting to the same DAC.

It will look freakin' awesome though!

https://i.ibb.co/xGhWFxv/70-ABBF5-A-...53-E8-FA23.jpg

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Originally Posted by Filterlab

But it won't be as good as a streamer with a solid state drive and a well-ripped file.

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Assume you mean a streamer outputting digitally to the same 'modern DAC'? As most streamers below say £400 have pretty basic sounding DAC's in comparison to say a Topping E30/SONCOZ in my experience.

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Originally Posted by Filterlab

It will look freakin' awesome though!

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Zero argument there sir....

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Originally Posted by Opti-cal

Assume you mean a streamer outputting digitally to the same 'modern DAC'?

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Yes indeed. Like for like, an SSD-based streamer outputting to the same DAC will almost always sound better, especially if the file has been comparison checked.

I've just added that for clarification in my post. :)

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Originally Posted by Filterlab

Yes indeed. Like for like, an SSD-based streamer outputting to the same DAC will almost always sound better, especially if the file has been comparison checked.

I've just added that for clarification in my post. :)

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Yeah sorry that's what I suspected you meant, didn't mean to get hung up on clarification there but thanks for confirming. Yeah I use an SSD in my streamer into my DAC, the DAC on the streamer itself is pants.

Damn those Teac transports are sexy, can't beat some brushed gold and chunky buttons with a little sliver of a loading tray, lovely proportions.

That's an odd assertion. Why would an SSD be any better than a standard hard drive? Or an optical drive?

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Originally Posted by Macca

That's an odd assertion. Why would an SSD be any better than a standard hard drive? Or an optical drive?

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No mechanical/introduced vibration to adjacent/close by components, silent, faster read/write speeds.

roon say music on an ext hdd is fine but program and the os should be on a ssd. thats how i run mine. tbh ssd's the size i need would cost a fortune. i dont really see why a ssd would be better as an ext drive. speed isnt really an issue as usb3 is fast enough

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Originally Posted by struth

roon say music on a hdd is fine but program and the os should be on a ssd. thats how i run mine. tbh ssd's the size i need would cost a fortune.

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Yup, 500G internal SSD for my most listened to stuff, for anything else I fire up the (noisy!) 4TB NAS drive, movies on that too. Not necessarily audio related but an OS stored on an SSD rather than HDD will boot up 10X faster, maybe more.

Still very much a cd & cdp user, I don't see my 2 box Lector CDP7TL going anywhere, and have not heard anything yet that comes close for digital replay. Also it having a valve output stage has meant I have been able to take it further by swapping out the ECC81 JJs and subsequent EH Triple mica for a pair of TELEFUNKEN, now the TFKs are something special in the Lector bringing it much closer to my Bardo/Conqueror/Hana ML tt combo.

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Originally Posted by Opti-cal

No mechanical/introduced vibration to adjacent/close by components, silent, faster read/write speeds.

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This indeed. HDs are donkey's years old and SSDs have replaced them with far more advantages and few drawbacks.

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Originally Posted by Opti-cal

Damn those Teac transports are sexy, can't beat some brushed gold and chunky buttons with a little sliver of a loading tray, lovely proportions.

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I know - simply gorgeous. I almost bought one last night, and I only have four CDs (which I ripped to my server as soon as I got them :lol:).

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Originally Posted by Opti-cal

No mechanical/introduced vibration to adjacent/close by components, silent, faster read/write speeds.

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Sorry, I meant in relation to sound quality. I know SSDs are better than the old magnetic drives for computing purposes.

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Originally Posted by Macca

Sorry, I meant in relation to sound quality. I know SSDs are better than the old magnetic drives for computing purposes.

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Debatable effect but certainly won't 'hurt' playback quality. My feeling is that it is better but for what exact reason I can't scientifically give. I think less mechanical vibration anywhere in the audio chain can only be a good thing.

The amount of vibration from a hard drive is quite massive; all sorts of damping methods are used in computers to counteract it. Can't be good for replay in any system, and the noise - both electrical and physical, must bring negatives as well.

SSDs in everything for me. :)

this year alone marantz have bought out 2 midrange Cd players , project has a new Cd transport , companies are still bringing them out so there must be a market

When my Densen CDP gave up the ghost I went out and bought a £300 Marantz player, and I don't feel I've lost any of the music. If I ever feel like upgrading, I guess buying a decent DAC to plug it into will be the way to go. Alan Firebottle's experience is intriguing, I'll look into that one.

When I was talking to the technical guy from Melco at the last Windsor show he told me they actually find HDDs better for SQ. I can't remember all the technical details but I think he mentioned the read/write speed/process and the way the SSD physically stores data, they had done tests and research on it all.

If they've since moved from HDD to SSD then take it all with a pinch of salt!

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

It's interesting how CD players do seems to have come on in leaps and bounds. I reviewed Cambridge Audio's £300 AXC-35 a year or so back and was astonished at just how good it is.

Even then, though, my old Marantz CD-94 is still a fair way ahead of it!

Audiolab 6000CDT CD Transport is the most currently twisting my Melon..."forget all you think you know" sounding piece of gear for sensible money.
Best Redbook CD playback I've had in my system by a country mile.

Regret selling my CDs now.

Adopted streaming...but still wanted to hedge my bets for the CDs I kept in the Cull...
Spent significant wedge on my "last disc spinner" as well....for video its "good enough"( as they say, probably close to 4K Dolby Vision Reference quality) ...Audio though, even over i2s to a good Dac...compared to the 6000CDT it's a different Sport.

Just shows to go you.

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Originally Posted by Lawrence001

When I was talking to the technical guy from Melco at the last Windsor show he told me they actually find HDDs better for SQ. I can't remember all the technical details but I think he mentioned the read/write speed/process and the way the SSD physically stores data, they had done tests and research on it all.

If they've since moved from HDD to SSD then take it all with a pinch of salt!

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

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That's odd as Melco offer SSD storage as an upgrade on their units. Unless it's a downgrade for more money. :lol:

I suspect the reality is that nobody would be able to tell what type of drive their music was coming from.

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Originally Posted by Firebottle

My CD playing experience has gone from 'meh' to astonishing.

I can now believe in the 'Perfect music forever' tag line. Listening to the CD collection is like listening to brand new music.
The reason - I have moved onto a new R-2R Dac, the Musician Pegasus.

The detail and separation of complex passages, with absolute pin point imaging is an absolute joy.
So my advice is ignore high end players, get a reasonable transport and a Pegasus.

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Are the R-2R converters reliable? Probably as much as any others. Getting the resistors in the ladder networks to accurate values might be difficult - I think special techniques are used for those. Do they drift off over time, thus compromising the conversion?

I have no doubts about reliability, given that it's modern technology.

There are only 2 values in the resistor ladder, the required accuracy just makes them more expensive. I don't expect any drift as there is no power/heat in the resistor ladders.

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Originally Posted by wee tee cee

Bought a Denon 1520 CD Player in the late 80s...entire grant cheque!!!

It was built like a brick shit house(big copper plate under the hood)

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I had one of those, too. Mine sounded absolutely awful. Put me off CDs/digital for years.

Like other's I've had problems with the reliability of CD players and have had a few goes south mechanically (including a "rock solid" Teac VRDS). So I would not spend a lot on a CD transport. For me that's made the Audiolab 6000CDT I purchased recently the perfect solution. It's at least as good as any of my previous players and is very affordable.

So my suggestion would be get a 6000CDT, and as Alan says, spend you're money on a good DAC. Especially as with that not only your CDs will sound better, but so will your streamed music.

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Originally Posted by Macca

I suspect the reality is that nobody would be able to tell what type of drive their music was coming from.

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To be honest, as it generally plays from RAM anyway (or certainly a cached buffer of some type), even HDD held data would still be solid state at the point of stream. The only thing that remains is that mechanical vibration of course. But you're right, I bet in reality it'd be impossible to tell the difference.

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Originally Posted by Firebottle

I have no doubts about reliability, given that it's modern technology.

There are only 2 values in the resistor ladder, the required accuracy just makes them more expensive. I don't expect any drift as there is no power/heat in the resistor ladders.

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Are there many R-2R designs? Do you think that they are generally better than other designs?

I've probably still got other things I'd rather spend money on than a fairly expensive DAC.

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Originally Posted by Firebottle

My CD playing experience has gone from 'meh' to astonishing.

I can now believe in the 'Perfect music forever' tag line. Listening to the CD collection is like listening to brand new music.
The reason - I have moved onto a new R-2R Dac, the Musician Pegasus.

The detail and separation of complex passages, with absolute pin point imaging is an absolute joy.
So my advice is ignore high end players, get a reasonable transport and a Pegasus.

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Hi Alan
How did you come across this "wonder DAC" and what did you have before?

One thing that's really clear from this thread; DACs are definitely a crucial component which have the ability to transform a digital source into something special. I remember my first off-board DAC - an Apogee something or other. Within five minutes of using that on the end of my 2006 iMac, I had my Musical Fidelity A3.5CD all packed up and ready for eBay. :lol:

I only use a DAC for CD replay, as I don't stream music. However, the little five quid USB DAC I had sent from China was an eye opener, it's certainly better than all the old Cambridge Audio DACs and the like I used to play around with, probably on a par with the Thetas I've owned. There again, nothing so far has beaten the Monarchy Audio ones I have.

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Originally Posted by fiddlemaker

Hi Alan
How did you come across this "wonder DAC" and what did you have before?

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Hi John, I had progressed up the range of Delta Sigma Dac's having used Topping D30, Xiang Sheng D01A, Topping D50, Raspberry Pi with Allo Boss, Topping D90.

Over the past 2 years the system has been improving in out and out transparency so any improvements, also shortcomings, have been easily heard.
My 'partner in crime' throughout this transformation has been Bigman80 who system has also undergone a similar transformation.

Bigman80 identified an R-2R Dac through research into what some high-end Dac manufacturers and keen hobbyists were using, namely a Soekris OEM R-2R board.

A Soekris 1421 was bought and I had the pleasure of hearing it, also modifying it with a linear power supply. The separation and image clarity and depth was a bit of a revelation compared to the relatively flat presentation of delta Sigma based Dac's.
Looking around for (affordable) alternatives I found the new Musician Pegasus and took a punt, which has paid off tremendously.

There are a lot of manufacturers, to answer Dave's question, that are making advanced R-2R Dac's now, some with eye watering prices.
Manufacturers include Border Patrol, Monarchy, Denafrips, Audio-GD, MHDT, Holo, Soeskris, Metrum, Schiit and Musician.

I bought a relatively very cheap Audio Gd R2R 11 I think it's called and I'm very happy with it. The quality headphone amp is just a bonus at the price.

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by Firebottle

Hi John, I had progressed up the range of Delta Sigma Dac's having used Topping D30, Xiang Sheng D01A, Topping D50, Raspberry Pi with Allo Boss, Topping D90.

Over the past 2 years the system has been improving in out and out transparency so any improvements, also shortcomings, have been easily heard.
My 'partner in crime' throughout this transformation has been Bigman80 who system has also undergone a similar transformation.

Bigman80 identified an R-2R Dac through research into what some high-end Dac manufacturers and keen hobbyists were using, namely a Soekris OEM R-2R board.

A Soekris 1421 was bought and I had the pleasure of hearing it, also modifying it with a linear power supply. The separation and image clarity and depth was a bit of a revelation compared to the relatively flat presentation of delta Sigma based Dac's.
Looking around for (affordable) alternatives I found the new Musician Pegasus and took a punt, which has paid off tremendously.

There are a lot of manufacturers, to answer Dave's question, that are making advanced R-2R Dac's now, some with eye watering prices.
Manufacturers include Border Patrol, Monarchy, Denafrips, Audio-GD, MHDT, Holo, Soeskris, Metrum, Schiit and Musician.

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Thanks for that, Alan. There seems to be a bewildering array of really nice DACs coming out of China at the moment, so it's nice to have a bit of insight. I'm delighted with the Gustard A18 I bought recently, but the Pegasus certainly looks like something to bear in mind for the future.