Hello,I own a musical fidelity kw 25 dac and transport combo that I purchased from audio classics for 1500 dollars used retail at the time for7000 and never looked back.Wonderful sounding combo very fine sound and the option of tube or solid state output if you can find one used that would be in my opinion highly recommended.
Recommendations for CD Player/DAC Combo
I was slightly surprised that there isn't a very large selection of CD player/DAC combos out there. Yamaha, Marantz, Musical Fidelity, and a few others make them, but not many other companies. It seems like building a cd player into a DAC makes a lot of sense, like an integrated amp. Can anyone recommend one these? My budget would $3000 tops. Thanks, J
- ...
- 63 posts total
In response to OP question, I have an Aesthetix Romulus Eclipse CD/DAC unit. I use the DAC to process signal from my media bridge streamer. I’m very happy w the SQ. I don’t play CDs as much as I stream, but I think there’s value in a quality transport to spin w/o jitter and in my case, the tubes add a lushness to the digital signal that I find appealing. |
Over the last 15 years or so my interest in CD music led to my searching for what I thought would be most likely to yield well engineered with a focus on quality construction, optimization of digital info,, etc. at a reasonable entry/mid level price with results that would in the final analysis yield better results than current products which means of the last 20 yrs. Vintage equipment so to speak.. From the 90's likely. Enter Philips mechanisms--- CDM1 Mk ii which can be found in a number of transports.. such as my Museatex Melior CD-D with the MK ii mechanism -- this unit gone through by Stephen Sank. I picked this up for a mere 300 dollars thereabouts right here on the Gon. My other transport is a PS Audio Lambda (got here on the Gon as well) with the Philips CDM9 pro which is arguably the last of the best Philips mechanisms. Scoring one of these vintage decks that were made they way they were made at the time because it was possible to do so without high cost and without an excess of cheap components gives a certain satisfaction when I am using them. My Dacs are more recent examples -- Burson DA-160 and a Metrum Octave mkii. Some good info here on transports enabling to identify what company uses what transport mechanism in their offerings. Comparing and seeing what companies used what at what price point ,, etc. http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/homepage/ |
Speaking of transports. There is a Proceed PDT listed on here now. it has the Philips CDM1 mk ii mechanism and I recall an old Stereophile review comparing a number of transports of which Proceed got high marks. The PDT 2 & 3 while not having as low jitter as the PDT Stereophile says they sounded better. Heres the very extensive review https://www.stereophile.com/content/transport-delight-cd-transport-jitter-page-8 |
- 63 posts total