Thinking About a New CD Player

Buconero117 - Oppo 83se costs $900 while Benchmark DAC1 costs $995. What excuse to spend more you're talking about?

Buconero - in a previous post about the Oppo, you stated that one would have to spend ten grand to better it. Now you say it will better "some units costing $5K and above". What caused you to lower opinion of this unit?

why not the oppo 83SE? it will blow away some units costing $5K and above. Don't buy into the 'jitter' stuff as an excuse to spend more. hearing is believing. enjoy the music.

I upgraded my 1997 Meridian 508.24 to a Cambridge Audio 840c player 6 months ago and I couldn't be happier. I did audition a $6500 Mark Levinson player and it was marginally better than the Cambridge, but the additional $$ didn't justify the price. Plus the 840c is now broken in and sound wonderful. Plus I use the internal DAC for my Squeezebox 3 music, Pandora etc.

Bob - you won't get 24 bits. It is called 24-bit but real resolution is most likely below 20-bits. Traditional (ladder type) converters don't get any higher than 18-bits because of component tolerances while sigma-delta variety won't get higher because of timing accuracy and noise floor (your 20 bit is equivalent to 120dB). Why to upgrade if you like the sound?

If you upgrade - have you considered DAC. I use jitter rejecting Benchmark DAC1 ($1k) with inexpensive DVD player (good tracking) and Mac mini server. I have also HDTV connected. DAC makes system transport independent.