Ruminations On CD Players

Other posters have made the same points, but my two cents:

1) The DAC is the main determinant of the sound. Transports matter, but imo the DAC/transport ratio is 80/20 in terms of ultimate SQ. I have had good DACs make average transports sound better, but not the reverse

2) DACs are more durable than transports. No laser, no disc spinning mechanism to misfire, no tray or door issues.

3) should you decide to explore streaming in the future, you can get a relatively cheap streamer, pair it with a good DAC, and have excellent results.

4) used DACs tend to be more durable then used CDPs for all the above reasons.

5) you can use any old CDP as a transport as long as it has digital outs. Perhaps your old Arcam can still function as a transport. You can always upgrade to a different transport later

If your budget was around $3K I would spend around $2500 for the DAC, new or used, and the rest on the transport.

The OP didn’t mention SACD, but I think the Denon flagship CD/SACD is in his price range.  I had just pulled an earlier version out of storage after several years and was pleasantly reminded of how good it is

A lot of over simplified cliches going on here. Let’s look at a few.

1) streaming is great because it facilitates exploration of new music, and people that listen to the same stuff all the time are dinosaurs.

Well, streaming does make it easier to hear new music. However the CD era ushered this in, because the cost of producing and storing CDs was lower than vinyl. In Classical Music, budget labels such as Naxos and Independents such as Chandos, Hyperion, and Bridge and a raft of others gave exposure to thousands of previously little known composers. Streaming lowers the barriers again, but the trend was well on its way before streaming. Internet Radio is another great way to discover unfamiliar music.

The Dinosaur Issue-most people here are on the wrong side of fifty and while we have our favorites, and keep listening to them, that is still a heck of a lot of music. I have several thousand CDs on my shelves. Several hundred of them are favorites and it is a rare CD that I don’t enjoy. Frequently I pull something that I haven’t played in 30 years and then wonder why I haven’t given it more love, and it becomes a new favorite.

2) Streaming sucks because it facilitates ADHD style listening, and artists intended you to listen to a whole album at a shot.

Streaming does allow one to jump around. In my genre I still listen to whole albums most of the, even when streaming. For example if I am listening to Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, the chances that I will want to follow the epic first movement with the Can Can by Offenbach isn’t great. However this week I have been obsessed by a short work of J.S. Bach, the Fourth Fugue from Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier. I pulled up 5 different Pianists during the week on Apple Music that I didn’t have in my collection. Wonderful! And we have no evidence that Bach intended people to play or listen to all 24 of the Preludes and Fugues in one sitting so no sacrilege committed there.

Not every pop album is Sargent Pepper or DSOM. Most Motown albums until Marvin Gaye What’s Going On were just random collections of singles. The artist and the label expected you to buy 45s, and the albums were issued as a way to buy multiple records at once when the lp format began to be popular with consumers. Miles Davis albums were someone editing hours of tape into a 45 minute finished product, and I doubt that Miles expected people to inhale them in one sitting or viewed the outcome as a planned journey.

These technologies are not mutually exclusive. One can happily play their physical media and also listen to streaming. Or not. I don’t think that we have to badger people to do it one way or the highway

@knock1 

I second the remark about why certain individuals here that enjoy streaming always feel compelled to tell people inquiring about CD players to junk them .  
  It reminds me of the digital vs. analog debate, with the fanatics lined up on both sides., but here we have digital vs digital.  The analog lovers aren’t immune from this either.  Check out the ferocity of the direct vs belt drive turntables. 
   I suppose there could be worse things than audio fanaticism.  We could be screaming at each other that there is only one true religion, and murdering those that don’t share our belief.   Perhaps Audio Fanaticism is an outlet for this kind of aggression, much the way that sports channels aggression into less dangerous areas.  Whatever.

  In truth we live in a time where there are many ways to achieve excellent sound.  Analog, CD replay, streaming.  Even Internet Radio and Bluetooth have improved to a point where they probably sound better than what most of us had back in the day.  There are differences between them, enough to want to have preferences between technologiies.  It’s interesting how small differences sometimes yield the loudest controversy