Budget system recommendations

If you are interested in the Cambridge CD Players the best deal on-line is at Northampton Audio / Spearit Sound (just add .com to either name, no spaces). Free shipping. The D300SE is $289 and the D500SE is $389. These are new. I highly recommend spending the extra $100 for the D500SE. I also can recommend the dealer. I have bought from them off and on for 25 years.

Maxcast: This will not get you good sound right away, but if you have "any" kind of CD player (even a Walkman) that you can use in the meantime, you might want to hold out for one of the upcoming low cost CD/SACD/DVD players that may be on the market in the next 3-6 months. Even if you do not get into multi channel sound you should still be able to take advantage of the DVD feature (if you have a compatible TV), plus have the option of playing SACD's. Will the new models sound any good? I don't know, but you will kick yourself if they do sound good and end up costing the same as the CD players that you are looking at now. You can still build the rest of the system in the meantime and if the new combo players suck, then pick up one of the suggestions above or something else that you like. I am just suggesting this because you seem to be on such a tight budget. I also am holding off on upgrading my player/transport to see what becomes available, as I am interested in adding SACD to my system (DVD does not interest me). I figure that once the low cost players hit the market the software will become readily available (unless the companies are intending on commiting marketing suicide, which I doubt that they are).

AMP dynaco st70 on ebay for 250.00-400.00.
PREAMP foreplay preamp from bottlehead.com if you can build kit.
SPEAKERS mission, bic new. klipsch used
CD PLAYER rotel 855 used, ebay

I like Sugarbie's B&W 602 suggestion. I used to own the 603s and thought they were great. If you were to buy B&W 300 or 600 series i would advise that you spend more on the integrated amp and just get a cheap cdp. They like a decent amount of clean power, but are a bit numb to the quality of the cdp. I would recommend used Classe CAP-80 ($600-700), a pair of B&Ws, old an old Rotel cdp with radio shack interconnect and thick generic speaker cable. Although NAD is good for the money (I still own mine with a pair of B&W 302s:), for a little more the Classe is far superior. In any case i would skip expensive cables for now. Experimenting with my B&W/NAD system, I have swapped my cardas speaker cable with my generic cable and my kimber interconnect with the pair that came with my cdp and found no difference in the sound. I did however notice a huge difference between thin generic cable and thick cable with the 603s. Good luck

TNT Audio

www.tnt-audio.com