CD player recommendations


Hello all,

Just looking for a few recommendations here. After being almost exclusively vinyl over the last few years, I've decided to break out the cd collection again. I have two CD players from the dark ages. A CAL icon mkii power boss and a CAL CL-20. Just wondering what current or newer used CD players would be up for consideration and sound significantly better. I do not have any hdcd's, sacd's, or burned cd's. Strictly red book. Amp is a plinius hautonga driving B&W 804s speakers. Balanced outputs would be a plus since the plinius accepts balanced CD player inputs. Budget is around $1,500

thanks in advance

skipper

skipper320

I would consider the age of CDs are over. The transition to streaming is well advanced. I bought a CD player over 10 years ago that was advertised as a DAC with transport. Today my CD player sound quality is indistinguishable from the streamed album. Often my steamer sounds better since the files steamed by Qobuz are often higher resolution than red book.

 

I would recommend approaching it by buying a good quality DAC and using your current players as a transport. If you current players do not have a digital out, it would be simple to get a inexpensive streamer (Bluesound). This way you would have access to virtually unlimited music for $14.99 a month.

For a DAC look at the Schiit Gungnir multibit... or if you can stretch a Yggdrasil DAC. While both budget audio components, these two are comparable to stuff twice their cost. With either of these you should be well positioned for good sound quality now and a big jump if you can later jump to a high quality streamer.

 

I have 2,000 CDs and 2,000 vinyl albums. My CDs sit and collect dust, streaming and my vinyl are equally satisfying to listen to (this is a pretty new development... over the last five years or so), although vinyl has a slight edge in detail. This is true at different levels of investment.. well chosen gear with a $10K, $25K, $100K... etc you can put together a satisfying streaming end with good choices and some money.

Emotiva  ERC-4 CD with  DAC two inputs

 

has balanced outputs  $599.00 buiilt like a tank

Marantz SA-10 Player. My dealer showed me a great streaming system. It was nice, hip, I took my Marantz in to see on my CD compared, sorry my CD sounded much better, more tone, weight and color, and dynamic, the dealer said to me well it is but and miss, but you got to look at the convinence, I told him why? I have 1,500 CD's, he said you have a point I have no answer for. I grew up on vinyl, had a huge collection, sold them all to a collector, never looked back. 

 

So I have finally added an external DAC to my system, a Topping E30 I picked up used for $80.

I am running 2 Pioneer units into it. An older DVD player via SPDIF and a 25 disc jukebox via optical.

At this point the CD players are transports only. I see that some folks have dedicated CD transports, but do they make much of a difference?

From my layman’s perspective, with the DAC out of play, the only thing that the CD player is doing is reading 1’ and 0’s from a disc and sending them to my DAC. Or am I a completely ignorant and I am missing something critical?