Sell quality turntable to buy top CD player?

For less than $2700, you should be able to pick up a used ModWright Sony 5400 or an MW Oppo 95. My guess is, if you want a cd player, either one of those players is going to be hard to beat in that price range if you can wait for one to come up for sale.

If you are willing to go with a computer based system, you might want to think about the Sony HAPZ1. I think most people would be surprised how good this thing is.

BTW, the situation you describe is exactly why I have not invested in vinyl. No nasty comments here.

SunnyJim, I haven't heard the Ayre or Ayon players, but the ModWright Sony 5400 is much, much better than the stock unit on both Redbook and SACD. If you could find a used ModWright Oppo 105, that, by all accounts, substantially betters both the modded 5400 and the Oppo 95. If you could stretch to $3800, you could probably get a new Oppo 105 and have it modded.

The ModWright route is a leap of faith on your first purchase. You buy something you can't hear, based on reviews and word of mouth. He has a lot of happy customers. On the other hand, if you are buying used equipment on AG it is almost always bought without audition.

A few follow up comments on Lowrider's post. The ModWright Sony 5400 is a very good piece, and is certainly much better than the 840C, which I owned for a couple of years prior to the ModWright 5400.

That said, progress in digital gear, whether servers or cd players, marches on. Without a careful A/B in ones own system, it is really tough making comparative judgments. The MW Oppo 105 is reported, by Dan Wright and others, to substantially better his 5400 mod. My stock HAPZ1 server, in most respects, also bettered my Sony MW 5400 in most respects. I expect that after the modding, its going to blow the 5400 out of the water, but that remains to be demonstrated.

Increasingly, I am convinced that the only way to improve ones system is to bring in multiple pieces, do a careful comparison, keep the better piece and resell the "looser." That is a tough proposition in the digital realm, where one generally prefers newer pieces due to the rapid advance in sound quality.

Another way to approach this is to take a best guess and be satisfied if you find that what you buy is better than what you have. It is interesting that having sent my HAPZ1 to Modwright 2 weeks ago, I'm as happy as a pig in mud with my MW 5400. I think most people would be extremely satisfied with it unless they had heard something clearly better in their own system.

From what I know of the Rega sound, and the OP's move from vinyl to digital, I suspect he might want to stay away from Esoteric players (many of which I have heard) and Krell. I also suspect that the Ayon, Modwright sony or oppo, or Ayre might well provide a suitable transition away from vinyl. The cambridge 840C to my ears was decidedly digital sounding.

Dentdog, good comments. You touched on something most of us who have gone all digital think about frequently. If one were starting from scratch (no pun intended) with a 5K budget for a source, would one do better with a vinyl set up or with one of the high quality/high value digital systems, like a Modwright Oppo 105 or Modwright Sony HAPZ1?

I dearly loved vinyl. I never owned a cassette deck or reel to reel machine. The transition to digital back in 83 was driven by one consideration-- Money!

My entire rig was worth about $1200, I had a vinyl collection < 100, and I thought I could do better going with a CD system. It was probably the correct choice.

Resetting the clock to 2014, I think we are starting to understand how to do digital right. Over the last few years, the emotional element has returned to my listening in a very strong way. This is something that was largely absent in my listening during the period from 84 to 09. I've had the pleasure of using a source that doesn't scream digital, and has all the virtues of digital- S/N, dynamic range, absent vinyl noise, etc. For this reason, and because I now have a CD collection of ~ 1500, and because of the extensive availability of classical music on CD, digital remains the better choice.

As far as sound quality, I can't argue how a $5K investment in tt, arm, cartridge, and phono pre would stack up against my recently modded ModWright HAPZ1 or MW Sony 5400. Its an experimental question, which I am not really motivated to answer. It would seem the OP went through the same analysis and came to the same conclusion.

I think it is good that this thread has been largely devoid of dogmatically derived answers. Let the music answer the question.

Lew, good points. Back in 83 my $1200 system included not just the source but the whole works, speakers amps and all. I had a $250 tt, a $90 cartridge, and replaced it with a $350 cd player when the tt developed a hum I couldn't fix. I didn't have $1500 for a vinyl rig. You are right that in 83 all digital sources sucked, as did most of the recordings. However, a lot of the vinyl was based on early digital recording, so it wasn't always that great either.

You could be quite right, and believe me, I have second guessed myself more than once. I came close to investing in a vinyl rig once about 10 years ago, and honestly, the main reason I didn't was because my beloved began to express an intent to dig out her ancient fuzzy warbles to play through my main rig. I went pale, then green, and decided a new vinyl rig wasn't going to happen in this lifetime. True story. Let me put it this way, I'd rather have digital + my current wife than vinyl plus my ex wife. :)

As for Johnny Football, time will tell. I loved the Browns draft, but I'm a little dubious on Manzell. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out. Hoyer is a hometown boy, and is very popular with the fans.