CD player/transport options, for your analysis


My ancient Sony CD still plays, but at twenty-five years of age, I'd like a change...

So, I'm looking at the NAD 546BEE, which comes equipped with Wolfson DAC's and low output impedance (less than 300)... which the website asserts will assist with difficulty interactions that might otherwise occur with other cables/componenets. The USB option is attractive.

The Cambridge CXC does not have its own DAC, but does have an output impedance of  <750. No USB option.

The Marantz CD 6006 has a multi-bit delta sigma DAC CS4398. Stats are here https://www.us.marantz.com/us/Products/Pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=HiFiComponents&SubCatId=0...

I also see an Emotiva player/transport, which has DAC's and no USB option...

Sonics are my main interest, but the ability to make use of the DAC with another device, perhaps my iPhone, is also attractive...

Any experiences that you can speak from, to drive my thinking one way or another? 

Thank you, in advance.




listening99
does your Sony player have a digital out? if so you may want to try a stand alone DAC as you'd get more bang for your buck if the Sony can handle the disk spinning part for another few years. Other then that your choices are going down every year with more and more people moving to hard drives and streaming. So I'd imagine the ones you have mentioned will all be fine may want to have a listen to them if you can. 

You may want to mention a budget as well so you don't get prices all over the place. also what are you going to plug the CD player into? 

I would not worry to much about the output impedances for those CD players they should all be fine in those ranges ( see question above about what your plugin it into). Unless your going to run a really long set of cables or have one of those rare supper low input impedance preamp - amps you should be fine. 
The Sony does not have a digital out. The back-panel is bare, with the exception of the out-going power cable and RCA nubs.

My budget for a CD/transport is under $750.  

I'm going into a Schiit Saga (tube & ss). Then I hop into a NuForce STA200. Then I run two RP280F's. I'm sort-of walking blind, having picked up a few things that seemed to fall my way, and now I'm trying to envision where to go next. The old CD player seems a no-brainer, in terms of moving to something else. Just having picked up roughly 40 new CD's at the closeout of Dimple Records, I've felt the push to continue with the CD format for a bit longer. However, literally in the last day or two I've been asking myself if I should be working with a hard drive and DAC, which I know nothing about... 

So... what to do... ? I'd like to go in steps, and I see the source piece as a next step, perhaps followed by new speakers. In terms of speakers, I see going to Ohm's, or an open baffle concept. I would do the Tekton DI's if I had a larger room, but I'm sitting on/in 12' by 14.5'. 

Another thought is that the draw is layered, three-dimensional sound...