Best Cd Player under $4000?

Are your speakers far enough away from the front wall? There should be a minimum of at least 3 feet to improve sound-staging; however too far away and you may lose some bass reinforcement, and your system could sound lean.

Have you tried removing the Line Conditioner?

If you want to improve you're front-end than you may want an external DAC?

If your looking for a CD Player, than check out a Modwright Sony 999ES or 9100ES, or 5400ES player

I'm not sure your CD Player is the problem though, you know what happens sometimes in this hobby is that, over time the better your ears get..., then we start to no longer appreciate what used to satisfy us. If this is the case, than you may want to put that $4000 plus the resale value of your current speakers into upgrading your speakers.

Assuming that moving your speakers around doesn't solve your problem, which by the way is the first thing that you should do, then you should consider a speaker with a deeper bass response than the 45hz of your current speakers, which is actually on the lean side as mentioned above. You will also get much better sound-staging, if you go up their speaker line.

Here are some Articles on Speaker Placement:

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/speakerplacement.html

http://www.thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/PDF_files/PDF_owner_info/CS3_7ownerinfo.pdf

Rich

Hi Erasto,

You know I was thinking.., regardless of what you decide to do with your system, or speakers or whatever, you should give strong consideration, into not spending $4000 on a CD Player only.

First let me say that I absolutely put tremendous value on the importance of a top-notch front-end. I also think that we're all in agreement here that your Cambridge Azur 840C is no slouch. Now, I must admit, that I have not actually listened to it, but I have read the reviews and I have heard the buzz about it, and most people on this thread seem to feel that it's pretty good.

In my opinion CD Transports have not advanced that much in the past 5 years, unless you need a Transport that plays SACD, or some other new High Resolution Formats.

I don't know how tech-savvy you are with the computer, but the future of digital is a High Resolution Music Server Set-Up. So, here is what I was thinking..., regardless of what you decide to do with your speakers. I think you should keep your Cambridge CD Player, use it as a Cd transport, and consider buying an external DAC that can handle 24Bit/96kHz or a, Logitech Transporter that plays High Resolution 24Bit/96kHz Music Files from your computer, if you were unhappy with the internal DAC of the Transporter, then an additional future upgrade can always be an external DAC that plays High Resolution Music Files.

As a matter of fact, you could always buy the High Resolution DAC "first" and use your Cambridge as the transport now, and then later, purchase a Music Streamer. If you do buy an external DAC, then please make sure that it could natively handle 24Bit/96kHz files.

See, if you think about what I'm saying, I'm actually trying to lead you down the High Resoluion Music Server upgrade path now, instead of you investing $4000 now into a better, but somewhat lateral technology move CD Player.

As a matter of fact, anyone reading this who is considering putting a lot of money into a new expensive CD Player, should also consider this path.

Rich