Good CD player vs. Transport and DAC

Just to clarify, are you looking for a CD player or a multi format player? Your original post says CD player. If thats the case, I think you are better off looking at something that plays CD's only. There's no reason to buy something like an Oppo that is designed to do a whole bunch of things that you will never use it for. More importantly, CD's need all the help they can get to sound good.

As far as getting a CD player or separates, that's a personal choice. Unless you are looking at something like Wadia or DCS separates, I prefer a single box solution. Generally speaking, with high end audio, things tend to get broken down into more separate, specialized pieces. (For example, instead of a receiver, you can go with an amp, preamp, phono stage and tuner.) If you look back to when high end CD playback was first getting popular, the general trend was just the opposite. To deal with problems like jitter, keeping everything in one box fixed a lot of problems. Of course, today, manufactures have come a long way fixing those problems, but for me, I still like a single box solution.

Unlike a lot of people, I have had very good luck with reliability issues. I've had CD players that were set on repeat for years just to break equipment in and keep everything warmed up. Never had a transport break. (Honestly, though, had I been more aware of some of the reliability issues that others were having, I would have shut them off, just to be safe.)

Some brands I would recommend, new or used, are: Ayre, Arcam, Wadia and Cary. I've had many others, as well, but the ones I list are my favourites.

"IMO all digital sources sound equally good through a quality DAC. Claiming that one digital source sounds different from another is bogus. It's just a bitstream. No need for a Mark Levinson CD transport, just find a $100 cheapie with SPDIF output and only your pocketbook will know the difference."

And here we have it; pure genius.

B_limbo,

"So from what I'm hearing you say is that the transport doesn't matter in terms of sound, just get a good dac?"

Only you can make that decision. I'm willing to bet, though, that you would know the difference. It looks like you are responding to the post above that says nothing matters but the DAC. That person doesn’t know what they're talking about. I don't mean that as an insult, but literally. It happens all the time. People end up in a high end audio store for the first time, or visit a web site like this and have a very typical reaction; they panic is some form. Weather it be the high prices of components or the claims that things like cables can sound different, its so far removed from what they know an audio system to be, their first reaction is to deny the legitimacy of the products in question.

Hears some examples.

"Single-box players all require their own internal DAC circuitry, and that gets expensive if you want good stuff." Ya think? Nothing like stating the obvious.

"Claiming that one digital source sounds different from another is bogus. It's just a bitstream." Really? If that's the case you can just use 128k mp3 files instead of SACD. After all, it is just a bit stream.

"No need for a Mark Levinson CD transport, just find a $100 cheapie with SPDIF output and only your pocketbook will know the difference." That's a guess. (You don't really think that person ever had a ML transport for comparison, do you?)

At this point, you may be asking why so many people are sceptical when it comes to high end audio? For the most part its how the consumer electronics industry markets digital products. They messed up big time with audio. Why do kids want a PS3 over a PS 1 or 2? Better processing power. Why do people want Blu Ray players over DVD players? Better picture quality. Why do people want MP3 players over CD players? More features - NOT better sound quality. An ipod is smaller than a CD player and holds 50,000 songs. Its the equivalent of buying a 10 year old computer and plugging a 2TB hard drive in it a calling it state of the art. Most people would laugh at you.

The reason I went on and on about this, is that it's very easy to get sucked into the features over quality mindset without realizing it.