What Sonically is the Difference between a $1,500 CD Player and a $10K-$25K One?

Whichever way you look at it, the "loudness wars" are a huge reason to think carefully before investing in another CD player. Listen to a recording like West Side Story (original Broadway cast, Larry Kert, Carol Lawrence Chita Rivera etc) and much of your collection might start sounding a little flat with far from life-like dynamics.

No CD player, or even system, can help you with that. Unless you're into Jazz and Classical of course, or anything but mainstream Pop/Rock.

Why the **** should anybody should seek to compress Motorhead??

@fstein Expensive CD player = "The sound of money burning". Indeed.

On the bright side, its all great news for the vinyl revival and horn loudspeakers. And for modestly priced CD players.

roxy542,793 posts07-16-2019 7:18pm

geoffkait,

I actually enjoy reading posts like yours. It is true of course that digital was pretty terrible for the first number of years, but now that I have been living with a competent transport and non-oversampling DAC for years, I enjoy the great sound (perfect...? NO) and grin at all of the outdated criticisms of digital's deficiencies.

>>>Many audiophiles think their system sounds fabulous. As long as you’re happy I’m happy 😃 

elizabeth7,397 posts07-16-2019 7:27pmAnalog sucks/analog is great, digital sucks/digital is great.Well MY digital is great, and so is my analog. Doesn’t anyone else get really tired of all the whining about SOMEBODY ELSE’S STUFF?If you want to say "My attempts at xxx have uniformly sucked". Fine. Please do not then decide for everyone else theirs has to suck too. And even worse, that they must be deluded since they can't hear it sucking. 

>>>>You probably shouldn’t take it quite so personally. Well, maybe you should, how would I know? 😳

I ain't no expert, but it seems that the difference is between $8,500 and $23,500 when I do the cipherin'.

Cheers!

The cheapest CD player, given a great recording, can produce an immersive listening experience in nearly any decent sound system. 

The place to invest your time and then invest your money is speakers. Time to learn, time to listen in showrooms, audio shows, time to understand your listening space. Critically, time to understand it is best to avoid going for 'too much' (usually too much bass). Time to learn that if speakers are well chosen for your space, you won't need to plaster sound absorbing panels hither and thither.

Without a doubt, money makes a huge difference with speakers. Far beyond any source component or cable or tweak.

After the right speaker choice for your space, what will undeniably sound better in your system is all the new source material you can acquire because you didn't spend money on imperceptible, or barely perceptible differences. The joy of discovering new artists, new genres, is far far better than chasing perfect electrons.