What high-end cdp for low-end quality CD's ?

I'll take some exception to the general recommendation of "buying the very best you can afford" and spending your wad on a digital front end. I would first make sure that the differences between what is available in $2000 price range that is abundant with damn fine players (even less if you buy used) are both perceivable, and most of all worth the added $3 grand to buy some more-state-of-the-art $5k unit. Though it may sound better to you, it also may not at all, and then what a waste of scratch that would be!

As far as making bad recordings sound better; I'd agree, no CD player is going to accomplish that. I've recently gone over to a quite wonderful Wright-Sound AG1000 preamplifier (from his dealer line). That unit has 'tilt' controls for 100hz and 10khz. They have a bypass switch as well. These are not 'tone' controls, but 'tilt' controls - someone more smarter than me can splain how they differ but my poor understanding of such things is that tone simply boosts or lowers the specific octave, while tilt actually 'tilts' the spectrum around that octave...did I get that right?. I've found that I can do some bit of fudging that will definitely improve the listenability of some poorly mixed recordings and make them much more enjoyable than they were with a pre with no such controls. They've worked brilliantly on several bad recordings I've tried them on. I don't know which other high-end pre's offer this option, but it may be a better way to address the problems you wish to solve with a better front end. I can highly recommend the Wright pre as an outstanding pre as well.

Marco

Wellfed - sorry, I missed your earlier response to me. I'm not up to the task either of splaining' this stuff, but I'm not sure that I'm expressing my position well, from your response. Yes, I do think one CD player can do a superior job at creating a more listenable presentation of the same CD...no doubt about it. I don't doubt that the DAX player you mention is up to the task of doing just that. I also do like the sound I've heard from the few tube-output players I've heard as well. While I've heard some purist say that's BS. Dunno, but they sounded pretty damn good to me.

What I was positing in my original post was that no CD player, or turntable for that matter, is going to take a recording that is poorly miked and or poorly mixed in the recording stage, and make that recording sound like anything more than a well presented piss-poor recording. Oversampling or not. Oversampling may just fill in the blanks with some fabricated details which makes the digital format itself sound better to some ears, but there's no f&%ckin' way it's going to alter what was done at the mixing boards and in miking a performance. So if the poster was asking about making digititis mo'betta, then OK you folks saying there are damn good redbook players out there have no argument from me. But if you are saying your DAX player is going to correct for a recording where the highs are exaggerated and overblown, leaving the lows in the coalbin....well then, I have yet to hear that, and I'd really like to understand how that may work?!

Marco