Good quality CD player and descent rca cables.
speaker quality
recording quality of CDs.
quality preamp/receiver. Everything snug in all connections
a good CD player, hard to beat, for quality music reproduction.
always had great sound, bass, mids, crystal highs with a good CD player.
granted, reliability is the hard part. Gone through 8-9 players since mid late 80’s
i listened to streaming at local audio shop, with a good dac, compared to cd,
back and forth with same few songs, I thought the cd had a little crunchier midrange guitar, and more realistic cymbals, and womens singing voices lee Aaron,
heart, Linda ronstadt, Etta James, zed yago, acid, hellion, some goth band….
and. Newest 2 releases from Jenny darrin, amaranth, vixen,
then on to other: riot, Gary Moore, uli jon Roth, vandenberg, testament, Def Leppard,pyromania and hysteria metallica master puppets (both have great mastering and great tight fast Kick drum,)
humble pie, American dog, vanden plas, Lillian axe, queensryche, Judas Priest, Dio, Black Sabbath, metal church, thin lizzy, empyrium, UFO,Rory Gallagher, and a few more, the guy was pretty stringy, and didn’t like me handling the volume an player, “dude, I have a very nice system at my house, all taken very good care of, I’ve had my eldest 2 technics SL-1200mkII TT’s longer th you have been Ali young man, they are still in extremely amazing condition for being over 30+ years old,
he just made a light grunt and sigh, and let me do my thing, and would speak up ) loudly if I forgot (purposely) to turn down volume before changing CDs and changing rca cables, he about blew out his spleen and rectum, when I pulled the CD player to use my own rca cables, I kept quiet, and sullen whole time, as a professional auditioning great equipment, when I went to my truck to grab my Sunfire 600, he looked like I asked him to cut my grass and cut my bushes in a 98 degree humid summer day,I laughed inside, trying to not smirk my lips, not easy, he was like a 14 year old kid being asked to come up from his moms basement and turn off his Xbox to do chores
anyway' we went th a lot of music, loud, soft, metal, rock, blues, switching from CD player to streaming dac using his player as transport, music hall I think it was, ….no Cambridge transport,
affter 2 hours, I started with the questions , and still hooking up my amp to his preamps, and cables, etc etc he was one crabby ,whiny basement troll.
Another 1 1/2 goes playing music, I brought a good box of CDs with me, still comparing the dac with his music player, and cd players
I did buy a pair of mid level audioquest rca cables.so Didn’t feel it a total loss of his precious time.
the streaming sounded about exactly as the good CD player, minus a hint of top sparkle and bass was tighter and deeper with CD player
mcintosh, Parasound, nad, preamps
parasound, Rotel, Mcintosh amps and receivers
Cambridge transport, dac I forget, mcintosh music hall, nad CD players
plus my Sunfire amp and low level audioquest rcas, Belden rcas
had a goood time, always like auditioning audio, slacks, nice shirt, o loo the part 😎
good times
this was a few months ago, maybe go again after Christmas and check for sales
my .02
