Your Preferred CD Player

[howard.zinman]

Do you have one? I am in the market for a new player. Thanks!

[jazzbo]

I've gone a transport to DAC route for over a decade but I have two friends who two years ago each bought a new cd player they were very happy with.

One: https://www.audioadvisor.com/prnt-macd6007?sku=NEW-MACD6007

a review: https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/marantz-cd6007

The other: https://www.audioadvisor.com/prnt-nac538?sku=NEW-NAC538

a review: https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/nad-c-538

Edited Sunday at 08:33 PM by jazzbo

[Dub Modal]

17 hours ago, jazzbo said:

a transport to DAC route for over a decade

Does this route play redbook, sacds, etc? 

[jazzbo]

Yes, I am using a PS Audio transport and a PS Audio DAC and they have purchased the right to pass the transport spun raw DSD files from SACD via HDMI to the DAC. Can also play files from a stick (I don't do that). 

[Dub Modal]

2 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

Yes, I am using a PS Audio transport and a PS Audio DAC and they have purchased the right to pass the transport spun raw DSD files from SACD via HDMI to the DAC. Can also play files from a stick (I don't do that). 

Nice. Thank you. My CD player has likely gone kaput so I'll be pricing options in the near future and will check this out. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

If I were in the market for a straight-up player, I would likely look at Marantz or NAD like Lon recommended earlier. I wish Oppo Digital didn't exit the business. Their players were great bang-for-the-buck.

I personally think a transport and an external DAC is a solution looking for a problem. Most of the claims of improvement using this type of set-up revolve around jitter, which is proven to be 1) not a problem with almost any CD player made and 2) not audible even if it is really really bad.

[jazzbo]

Kevin, I have had many cd players. . . the sound of my Transport and DAC together is MUCH better. There are so many more factors besides "jitter." Of course the combo is more than many would spend for an entire system, so they should be.

Edited 10 hours ago by jazzbo

[Kevin Bresnahan]

As I've told many people when I'm asked about stuff like this, try both side by side and see for yourself. I'd never stop someone from buying anything they like. We're all different.

Personally, I have heard several transport/DAC set-ups recently. One had a very expensive DAC. That system had an NAD CD player in the system as well. We went back & forth between the two playback systems and we just couldn't hear any differences. No change in the highs or lows and certainly no change in the noise levels. To our ears, there was no difference. As I've said before, this is a good thing to me, because it saves me a bunch of money by not forcing me to upgrade.  

To be honest, back in the days when my hearing was much better, I sampled a lot of CD players, probably close to a hundred players, and I was never able to tell much difference between any of them. There were stereo shops where I would compare CD player to CD player to CD player with the same CD with no discernible differences. I expected this because digital audio kinda works that way. The 1's and 0's get converted to analog and unless the player has a really shitty DAC, and I've yet to hear one that does, it will sound pretty much the same. The identical set of 1's and 0's simply cannot change the frequency response through a different DAC. Error correction can be improved, but error correction doesn't mess with the audio frequencies. Poor error correction just adds noise.

[jazzbo]

There are people who can't hear differences, and those who can, that is a conclusion I have come to over time. And there is more going on than 1s and 0s in terms of power supplies, etc. I hear all kinds of differences, not necessarily a good thing perhaps, but how it is. Over the years I have been told by you you don't hear differences. Vive la difference.

Edited 8 hours ago by jazzbo

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I get what you're saying about power supplies & noise but again, a regular CD player would have to be terribly designed and manufactured for that to slip into a commercial product. I've yet to hear one with an audible (noisy) analog output.

But if we're talking about frequency response... to change the frequency response of an analog waveform coming out of a DAC, millions of 1's & 0's would have to change, not just a few hundred. Digital audio just doesn't work that way. Every 22 picoseconds, the audio is sampled and a 16 bit word is created for that small slice of audio. Just this one 16 bit word would have to radically change for the audio output frequency to change. To have a whole passage of music have altered frequency response, every single 16 bit word, one after the other, would have to change in the exact same way to have the analog output to have a shifted frequency response.

[jazzbo]

I'm not even talking about the digital signal. What happens after that is often different, power supplies, wiring, connecting hardware. I could go on, but I'm not going to continue arguing with you about audio matters. I don't agree with a lot of your "insights," you seem to belittle the experiences of those who do hear differences, vive la difference. Hear what you want to or not hear what you want to. I know what I hear and trust it.

I gave the recommendation/opinion the OP asked for.

Edited 6 hours ago by jazzbo

[howard.zinman]

I've been looking at the Denon CD/SACD player but I've never heard an SACD.

The Marantz is very well regarded and I always have liked NAD. Thanks!