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Any advice on CD player upgrade?

I am looking to upgrade my CD player. My system is as follows: Bryston 3b-St Power Amp, Bryston BP20 Preamp, B&W Nautilus 805 Speakers, Arcam Alpha 7 CD Player. Cables are Kimber KCAG Balaned Interconnect (preamp-poweramp), Kimber PJB (CD to Pre), and Stealth PC Premier speaker cables. I think the CD Player is clearly the weak component, but would also consider getting a second 3b-st for bi-amping. I'm looking at the following contenders (used if I can :-)): Linn Ikemi, BAT, Sonic Frontiers SFCD, Meridian 508-24, Naim CDX, Wadia 830 or 850. Let me know if any of you have recommendations here. Thanks!! John.
128x128outlier
rosstaman
455 posts
 
Audio Research CD-2 is a great cd player. Excellent musical resolution and tonal balance. I have both the Meridian 508.24 and the Audio Research CD-2. The CD-2 is a very sweet and detailed player. Not as "in your face" as the Meridian.
pschall
10 posts
 
If you can find a good price on Audio Research CDT-1 and DAC III Mark II, you will be pleased with the sound.
chesterdude9fda
1 posts
 
Get rid of the BP20! Put in a CJ10 preamp or YBA 3, you won't beleive the improvement. I just listened to it today. Speakers were JM Labs Cobalt 815's. We were using an Arcam 8se & 9. The CJ was by far a greater improvement than going from 8se to 9.
megasam's avatar
megasam
798 posts
 
John, if Arcam A7 has digital output you may want to consider using A7 as transport and buying used Dac here. Bel Canto, Birdland, Millenium etc 24/96 that produce sound you have to pay $2000+ in new player to get
outlier's avatar
outlier OP
381 posts
 
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 :-)
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