Who still listens to their First Generation Cd Players?


I still like the sound of those early cd players except early problematic sonys
vinny55
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.

And I can avoid use of LPs as Raymio DAC settles the problem with analog interpretation.
I wish I still had my Philips CD-80. I had it modded by Stan Warren and can't, for the life of me, remember why I gave it away.

All the best,
Nonoise