Who listens primarily to Redbook CD?


My primary (only, actually) source is a CEC TL5 Transport feeding an Audio Note Kit 1.1 NOS DAC through a Cerious Technologies Graphene Extreme AES/EBU digital cable. They are both decked out with CT GE power cords, Synergistic Research Quantum Black fuses, Herbie's Audio Lab Tenderfeet isolation footers, plus other misc. tweaks.

Sounds great, and I have very little desire to add another source. Pretty much all the music I want is available on CD, and is usually quite cheap. I hope to upgrade to an AN factory DAC (3.1x/II, or better, would be nice), and a Teo Audio liquid metal digital cable (I have their Game Changer ICs, and absolutely love them!) in the future.

Who else is happy with Redbook CD as their primary source?
tommylion
I use an Ayon CD5s (which includes transport, DAC and Preamp) with NOS Russian Tubes. I music I hear from Red Book on well recorded discs is top notch, with no desire to go into downloads, computer audio or turntable in terms of sound.
I do listen to CDs, SACDs and blu-ray.
I discover music through Pandora and Spotify, and I buy a copy of what I feel is worth listening in higher resolution.
When high capacity SSD becomes affordable, I will start to build a hi-res library, downloaded .  But for now, CD and SACDs....
LP and CD in equal measures, CD being mostly 16/44. I had been getting more and more heavily biased towards LP as far superior SQ until the power supply I had been working on was tested for the first time. This revealed that digital suffers quite badly from it's mains power connection. The transformation of the sq from digital needs to be heard to be beleived, with 16 bit cd now very very good, it's difficult to imagine it getting much better, but we shall see. A very good friend has recently placed his order for a T+A PDP3000HV, which we may compare to my MBL/Concert Fidelity/Esoteric combination with the Symetrica power supply feeding them. (Same friend will also have a power supply soon, as it is essential for better sonics). Other friends have like me, concluded that non physical media is inferior to physical; and this goes all the way up to DCS Vivaldi full stack.

Long live the humble silver disc!

Rgds, Paul.
IMHO there is a greater variance among performances and recording quality than between Redbook versus other formats. I have an AncientAudio LektorPrime CDP.