Rega Planet or Cairn Fog

I van tell your from experience the Rega skips. I had a Jupiter and a heavy bass not would reset the laser to track one. Not a fluke Lauerman replaced it and it did it again. Sam Tellig in Stereophile also makes mention of this. It is airborne vibration all the dampening I tried failed. Can't help you with the Cairn

Get the Planet with some suitable ICs.

I have the Fog (with upsampling) and it is a great sounding cd player, use the balanced outputs. It replaced an Audio Research CD2 in my system. You will not be disappointed.

The Planet 2000 is a great player for the money. I played it until the floor shook in my system and it never skipped. Inexpensive Alpha Core Micro Purl copper interconnects worked great with it. I've never heard the Frog player but beware of French electronics in my experience.

I have the Planet in one of my systems, works great. It has never skipped, even with 15 year old cd's.

If the Cairn is anything like the Planet, then shame on them. the Planet is way old technology. We compared it to a whole slew of new players and it just sounded dull in comparison to all, even a new Pioneer 47. Some four years back, yeah, it was a winner.

What genius named a cd player fog? how about the "veiled" or the mote.Oh and by the way that cairn terrier sounds great.I tjink we all need to take everything less seriously folks.

Get the planet. Mine has never skipped even when people are dancing right next to it. It also sounds incredible. It's not the most analytical player, but it manages to convey emotion better than much more expensive players.

-Patrick

I recently had a Cairn Fog in my system for an extended demo. Great sounding player. Very detailed but never pushy about it. I wouldn't call it lush but it did have an ease about. I was very tempted to buy it, howver there is a reason for the "Fog" name. It refers to the logic used by Cairn in the way the thing works. All of the buttons perform double functions and lack a tactile feel. The remote is just as poorly executed, too many small buttons all performing dual functions. How a manufacturer could take something as simple as basic CD operation and make it difficult for the end user is just amazing. On top of that the display can't be read from just a few feet away. In my book the sound quality just didn't make up for the poor ergonomics. Just too many choices in the marketplace to put up with a badly executed user interface.

No matter what player you decide on the Wasatch interconnects are 'suitable'. I used the Wasatch 105u and Ultima during my audition of the Cairn. They are not well know cables but they do sound very good and have displaced some very well known and reguarded cables in my system. Have you considered the Jolida JD100 CDP? This looks to be the CDP to beat under $1500.

I second the Jolida vote.