Looking for a CD Player

If you are into classical music, I would highly recommend SACDs. They are about the same price as CDs, and almost always include a Redbook CD layer so they can play (at CD quality) on any CD player or transport. I play them in native SACD mode where they normally contain 5 channels of Direct Stream Digital (DSD) sound, sometimes with an additional subwoofer channel. (They usually also have a 2-channel DSD version). I do not have a center speaker and the center channel is automatically added to front left and front right by my AV pre-processor.

Over 6,000 SACD titles are available from Presto in the UK, and they also have a streaming service under A$20 a month which allows you to download, avoiding the issue of your streaming service removing the items you want.

The latest CD players I purchased are universal players and play CD, SACD, DVD, BluRay and 4K Ultra BluRay. They output over HDMI, so function as transports, and the DACs are built-in to my AV pre-processor. All 8 DACs handle DSD natively, something to really check for!

I have a very cheap Sony (about A$250) and a Reavon (about A$3,000) which is closer in execution to the famed but no longer available OPPO universal players.

The Reavon has two Burr-Brown DACs, one for CD playback, and one for multi-channel SACD. Unbelievably, SACD is reduced to CD quality when using the internal DACs. I am older than you, but instantly picked the loss of sound quality, which I have not seen mentioned in any review.

There is a cheaper Reavon which plays SACDs but skips the on-board DACs, but I have not used it so can’t comment on playback quality.

I do understand that many on this site will be horrified by my suggestions! No streaming service that I am aware of provides the full resolution of either SACD or 4K. If a recording engineer has gone to the expense and trouble of recording 5 channels, why throw 3 away! And there are newer recordings coming out in more than 5 channels, such as 2L,no and their Atmos sound-only disks (Grammy award winners)

@hasmarto How arrogant and typical of this site that you feel able to dictate to the OP what they need.  SACDs have been around for 25 years, it is just a pity that the US was not ready for them.

@hasmarto 

"Now you’re trying to draw me into an SACD vs. CD argument".

Far from it, this is a question the OP posed.  Surely no audiophile can deny the sonic benefits of SACD over CD.

I have looked up your system and I can see no SACD player there.  Of course, you might play SACDs on a CD player, when they revert to being, well, CDs.  If they are about the same price as CDs, what is the disincentive.

Many years ago, the English comedian John Cleese was asked about the differences between the US and Britain.  He said there are three things:

1. We speak English
2. When we have a world series, we invite other countries
3. When we meet our head of state, we only have to go down on one knee

@hasmarto 

The only thing you list that comes close is an Electrocompaniet EMC 1-UP CDP which as far as I know is a CD player, pure and simple.

When I comment here, I try to explain my reasoning so there can be a sensible debate.

If you are not interested, stop commenting.

@dogearedaudio 

That's an interesting twist!

Surely once the music has been recorded, silver disks just have a one time manufacturing and distribution cost.  They are an excellent way of sequestering some carbon as polycarbonate, which is expected to last a hundred years or more.

Streaming costs resources every time it is deployed.  Cloud storage, routers, repeaters, cache storage, transmission lines, cables, wireless, satellites ... and that's before it even gets to you.

It is a quirk of the Internet today that these things appear free to the end-user, apart from fixed access fees.  At the birth of the internet, it was not clear how anybody would be able to make any money from it.  Now less than a handful of US tech giants are hoovering colossal advertising revenues, which we all pay for.

The internet uses a staggering amount of electricity, and it is growing exponentially.  40% is just for cooling data centers!  Estimates of around 10 to 20% of global electricity demand next year will be for the internet.

One of the most demanding internet loads is streaming.  A CD contains 0.6 Gbytes of data, as much as tens of thousands of text messages.  DVDs and SACDs are around 5-Gbytes.  4K Blu-ray is normally 50-Gbytes, about 100 times as much as a CD.  That is why 4K video streams are dramatically compressed, and the best you can expect from most audio streaming services is CD quality.

Streaming performs an unnatural act with the internet, because the internet chunks your data into packets and sends the individual packets over switched networks. There is no guarantee of arrival time.  The internet can only reliably transmit data if data errors are detected and the offending packets re-transmitted.  Streaming gives away error correction in the interest of timeliness, and drops entire packets if need be.

We have recently seen that a routine security update knocked out much of the internet for days.  In a war, the internet will be destroyed very quickly - no more streaming.

@dogearedaudio 

Sounds as if your company uses CDs for software distribution or archiving?

Sequestered carbon means the carbon is locked up, not that it can be recycled!

You presented streaming as the eco-friendly alternative.  I am suggesting this is a furphy (Aussie slang for an erroneous or improbable story that is claimed to be factual).

At least, radio and TV are broadcast services (forgetting the internet versions!).  The last service to stay up and running in a bad bushfire is public radio, provided you have a battery receiver.  I was in Canberra when we lost several lives and 450 homes.  The firestorm was fierce enough to create its own thunderstorms.

The first thing occupying or revolutionary forces head for is the TV / radio station. The internet appears to be equally fragile.

I have no issue with the internet as a medium for distributing files but strictly speaking, that is not streaming.

@mahler123 

I share you tastes! Can I ask whether you play your SACDs in 2-channel or 5-channel surround?