Recommend CD Player with Volume Control

I hate to be in disagreement, but I bought a CD50 to see what all the hype was about. I was completely disappointed with it, in fact I found that a Rotel 855 was more enjoyable to listen to. I tried it on 3 systems and it just never sounded right to me, I'm not saying that it is a piece of junk, it does some things extremely well, but overall I just didn't like it. Wadia sound is much better IMHO. I have one used in mint condition for sale now on Audiogon if you are interested.

Carl- originally I left the player on for a week before any decisions were made. To many recordings to list them all-Yuseff Lateef,Speedy J,Steve Roach,Morton Feldman,Gyorgi Ligeti,Arovane,Deftones are a few. No preamp against the Wadia, just Pass Aleph 2s. Against the Rotel it was a Jolida 40 watt integrated to a pair of B&W CDM7s, I followed Resolutions advice in the manual for pairing it with an integrated amp. Have you ever directly compared the CD50 to a Wadia player in your home? I think if they were going to sell for 15k they would need a lot better looking box and a lot less cheap remote. You've got to admit that remote sucks for a 3k player. And your probably right they would sell a lot more. If I had 15k to spend I would go for the new meridian player though.

Sorry guys I'll try to work on my specificity. In my defense knowone else said what they liked about it. I listend to and lived with the CD50 on 3 systems and came to roughly the same conclusion on each. Interestingly I found the CD50 scored the best on my he man rig. Tonally from the highs to the upper mids I really liked the CD50, it had extended treble without sounding bright or edgy, it may even beat out the Wadia in this regard. The lower mids seemed to have a slightly hard sound, not that bad though. The bass was generous and full though I felt that there was to much mid bass punch, which can add to effect of some music. It was in the area of spatial presentation where I feel that it fell short. The soundstage was narrow, with a confused sense of placement to each sound, it mushed or smushed the sound together. Compared to a Rotel 855, I thought that the Rotel bettered it in this area.Tonaly the CD50 is good, but the way it presents the sounds in space, simply sounds wrong to me. Instead of it sounding wide and deep, it seemed as if the sound was formed in a half circle coming at me. There is no doubt about it that the CD50 has a BIG detailed sound, "I just don't like it because of the way it deals with space." Maybe that area doesn't matter as much to some, but I don't think that the experience works if that doesn't. Oh yeah Carl I did listen to more than CDRs on it. My vote for a CD player with Volume control in the 2000.00 range would go to the Wadia 830 -Ryan

Carl-I hope you don't think I was trying to make a fool of you on the topic of digital audio, I'm not and I'm sure you know a lot more about it than me. The main reason I bought the CD50 was because of YOUR rave comments. I'm glad I did, it was fun to compare other players, my curriosity was satisfied and I made 100.00 when I sold it. I still don't quite understand though how you can be sure that the CD50 is by far better than the 830 if you have not had one in your system to compare. Sorry for the delayed response, I don't monitor this thing 24/7