High end cd players

[Floyddroid]

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.

[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.

[Manicatel]

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.

[Macca]

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.

[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)

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!!!

[Lawrence001]

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

[Filterlab]

Do it proper....

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

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!

[Opti-cal]

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

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.

It will look freakin' awesome though!

Zero argument there sir....

[Filterlab]

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

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.

[Opti-cal]

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.

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.