Who still listens to their First Generation Cd Players?


I still like the sound of those early cd players except early problematic sonys
vinny55
I'm still using my 20 year old Pioneer Elite 300 disc changers [I added a second one about 10 years ago], and love them.  I've tried some higher end single players, but they didn't sound any better to my ears.  Even if they did, the ability to store 600 CD's and access them all via one remote is worth any slight sound difference I might notice.  The discs are rarely touched, so they stay clean and mint.  They are remarkable machines, they never miss a beat and have never given me one bit of trouble.  Pretty amazing for a machine with the complex workings of a 300 disc changer.  The Sony ES line is very similar to the Elite players, and they can be had in 400 disc versions. I don't know if one is superior to the other, but I can't imagine switching from the Pioneer Elites.
I currently listen to most of my digital from a server which has my ~ CDs ripped in FLAC and easily accessible, although in my main system I do have an Emotiva ERC-3 in the main system for playing discs.

But I do have a unit that has been excellent over the years, an Arcam Delta 70 with a very rugged Phillips transport, built like a battleship and still fully functional after an almost 30 year span - not many early players have lasted like that.  Had a Black Box DA converter for awhile, then a Classe and currently a Hegel, and used the Arcam  with the first tow very successfully.
Another vote for the early Phillips gear .... mine an 880 (just below the 960 but still about $1300 back in the day).  Heavy as a concrete block, absolutely three-dimensional sound (although premature fade-to-black,as the machine had rising non-linearity below -90db as the early chipsets all did).  Mine is not operating currently but I soon hope to have it repaired and then it will go into the system alongside my Oppo 105.  I A/B'd it back in 1989 vs Sony's top model, and it beat the pants off of it.

My main music source remain CD players (and  rarely I use my Yamaha K-850 cassette deck - some cassettes give good dynamics). CD players I use are (about 20-years old) Krell CAD 300, Yamaha CDS2000 and sometimes Arcam  CD 73. Krell has  the oldest burr-brown dac which gives a reasonably good uncolored reproduction (unlike newer ess ones). But I use Krell basically as a transport with Raymio DAP 777, that somehow compensates inaccuracies in the interpretation of digital signal. I think I can accept the resultant analog sound and not worry too much about the accuracy any more. So I intent to continue to use CD source. Streaming is not good for me, its like driving a car with an automatic transmission vs manual one.