dcs puccini, chord red ref, meitner cdsa or nagra

Emm labs sounded great. The nagra sounds ok, but I find it a little toy like to use. It has silly button configuration for play and stop. I dont know the chord. I have the model up from the Puccini. Very detailed player.

What are you planning to use it with?

Nice system. I like the MBL amps.

If you cant go a little further up the DCS line, I would try the Emm labs first. Dont get me wrong, the DCS is an amazing player and has volume control (you could sell your preamp), but their single box version while very impressive, struggles with musicality IMO when compared to the higher in the range DCS which are absolutely SOTA.

I do find DCS has no "sound" although the latest range is less "cold" sounding than the earlier ranges.

If you are looking for a musical player, which with a lot of people seems to mean "warm", you may find it leaning towards sterile. If your system is well balanced it can be just the right thing.

From what I can tell the EMM Lab while not as detailed, leans towards warm in comparison. It really is a very nice player and would just slot in without much effort I am sure.

Someone has mentioned a Playback Design SACD player. I dont know it, but may be worth hearing. The only problem with these kind of companies is their value drops very quickly and may be difficult to sell later.

I would agree with Kops,

the DCS guys really do know how to dig out resolution. I believe they are the only CD player manufacturers that use a chip right at the laser output to look at the information before it is sent to the DAC section.

If you feel you dont need any "rose tinted glasses" on your system, go DCS. You will have resolution and transparency to spare.

Yes I did mean going further up the DCS range to either Panganini or Scarlatti. If the budget is tight, try to find an older DCS transport with firewire and use the latest DAC/clock until such time. The Scarlatti is perfection.

Dazzdax,
I couldnt say whether a top of top of the line vinyl playback or the Scarlatti is better.

The Scarlatti is stunning and I doubt any analogue system has the dynamic range or noise floor of the DCS. The usual complaints people have towards digital playback I dont think exist with the Scarlatti. I guess only you can decide in the end though.

Metronome make some great sounding players. The T2i signatrure is good. The Spectral SDR4000 may be good, I havent heard it, but it is the ugliest player in the world closely followed by the Playback design.

No matter how good the Metronome is and the Spectral may be on red book, they cannot compete with a SOTA SACD player playing SACD. Although having said that an SACD is only as good as the recording...

Hi Dave,
Maybe the pictures i have seen of the Playback design have been unfortunate.
The display looks cheap which is a bad start.

The Chord equipment sure has a look and probably the cd player suffers the worst with the cd lid placed like that. Their amps i have heard sounded very good. I can see why some wouldnt like the fussy design though. Nicely finished when you seem them up close.

Max2man/Teddybear,

you mention redbook playback. The Emm lab and DCS give you the choice of playing either SACD or redbook disks. The bonus i guess being they upsample rebook to dsd.

Why do you find redbook playback bad on the Emm lab Teddybear?

Sorry guys,

the point I was trying to make was whether it is a SACD player or not is not important.

If you do go for an SACD player (I understand this thread is about a good single box for redbook playback) the bonus is that if you play redbook on it it will use the DSD upsampling and obviously if you do play an SACD disk you gain from its greater resolution anyway.

I have a pretty good SACD player and it makes little difference whether I play redbook or DSD. They all sound amazing. Very rarely do I find myself complaining about the disk type. If its a good recording, its a good recording!