Any advice on CD player upgrade?

Thanks to everyone for their expert advice - really apprecaited. I ended up getting a Bel Canto DAC 1 to partner with my Arcam 7. To be honest, I have been a little disappointed with the improvement. The combo is perhaps producing a less fatiguing sound over long listening, but when I test it back to back with the Arcam's analog outputs, I cannot for the life of me notice any quality difference. I've tried partnering the DAC with my Pioneer DV525 DVD player as well - I found the Arcam worked better as a transport (even though I set the Pioneer to output at 96khz). Again, I found little/no improvement against the DVD player by itself. I tested as stringently as I could - on my main system (Bryston amplification and B&W Nautilus 805), and on a Musical Fidelity xCans V2 & Sennheiser 600 headphone combo through the tape output of the preamp (back to back seamless comparison of cd player compared to cd player plus DAC). One could argue that my ears are simply not refined enough to notice the improvement, and yet I found all my other audio upgrades dramatic improvements over their predessors. Oh well, I guess my search for digital front-end excellence will continue - the journey is part of the fun :-)

hi outlier, shoulda taken my adwice & gotten a better preamp! ;~) see my previous comments about this from another thread (vinyl vs cd): <<<<<<>>>>> going to better preamps have made *big* improvements to all my sources - cd, vinyl, tuner. regards, doug

sorry, dunno why this dint print the last post - here's my experience regarding cd players: w/my ~$500 nad cd changer, my digital is far from state of the art. but, i a-b'd my nad w/a $1700 alchemist nexus cd player, on *my* system, and there was *no* difference between the two. my brother-in-law a-b'd this same alchemist on *his* system w/a $3500 resolution audio cd-55, & he said there were "miniscule" differences between the two, only noticed, & yust "barely", when run in a direct a-b comparison. i can see no reason to upgrade my nad cd player - i wonder how much $$$ i'd really have to spend, if i wanted cd to come close to analog on my system. i agree that cd is way-convenient, but i'm waiting until the 24-192 format (or whatever) is commercially awailable before spending any more $$$ on cd-playback. doug

Outlier, have you tried a toslink connection between your 525 and the DAC1? If not, please give it a try. There is a mention in the new ST review http://www.onhifi.com/product.shtml Hope this helps. Charlie

Danvetc, thanks for the advice. Believe it or not, I did just that a few days ago and ordered a 2M Toslink as per Wes' advice at onhifi.com. I haven't received the toslink yet, but after burn-in I'll post whether I found an improvement. Thanks.