With all due respect, many posts here give very short-sighted advice which might address the original question re: CD player, but not the big picture. OTOH, @mahler123 , @@2psyop glennewdick , and @2psyop point you to a better direction for long term enjoyment of classical music in particular. SACDs and downloads of highrez SACD-equivalent files offer many opportunities to improve the sound quality of your favorite classical recordings and will continue to do so. Ripping your CDs can be done using your computer's drive, saved to a network drive(i.e. NAS) and you can do that WHILE you are listening to other music so it doesn't have to eat into your precious listening time.
The post implying sound via a transport is superior in dynamics etc. to via playing a ripped file is FLAT OUT INCORRECT. The opposite is true and has been explained in detail in hundreds of posts here & more deeply on computeraudiophile. Spinning mechanical drives directly attached to your audio rig have numerous disadvantages vs. playing same files from a NAS in another room via ethernet (or even wifi) to the same dac.
Invest in a good dac and a NAS. You can get a used Marantz etc. SACD player to spin CDs for the short term and rip them as time allows to the NAS. If you buy music, highrez downloads of SACD-equivalents they will often, but not always sound better than playing discs of the same. Ironically, red book CDs sometimes sound better...it's all about the provenance of the recording...read reviews by listeners when possible.
I can tell you that there are certainly amazing quality Mahler high rez recordings that trounce the CDs. Also in a few years, CD will probably be entirely dead from new music availability perspective. Cheers,
Spencer
The post implying sound via a transport is superior in dynamics etc. to via playing a ripped file is FLAT OUT INCORRECT. The opposite is true and has been explained in detail in hundreds of posts here & more deeply on computeraudiophile. Spinning mechanical drives directly attached to your audio rig have numerous disadvantages vs. playing same files from a NAS in another room via ethernet (or even wifi) to the same dac.
Invest in a good dac and a NAS. You can get a used Marantz etc. SACD player to spin CDs for the short term and rip them as time allows to the NAS. If you buy music, highrez downloads of SACD-equivalents they will often, but not always sound better than playing discs of the same. Ironically, red book CDs sometimes sound better...it's all about the provenance of the recording...read reviews by listeners when possible.
I can tell you that there are certainly amazing quality Mahler high rez recordings that trounce the CDs. Also in a few years, CD will probably be entirely dead from new music availability perspective. Cheers,
Spencer