Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm...."

Saturns suck.  You should have drove it through a brick wall instead of your tube dac.  And millennials buy beats headphones to stream free pandora...

Here is my 2 cents.  The best transport I have heard to date is the Audiomeca Mephisto II.  Out of business with little parts around to repair it.  Same goes for my top of the line (15 years ago) Metronome with separate power supply.  Nothing new or older in my experience sounds as good.  But again I did not buy them new and bought them used for a song.  I am able to fix audio components but when parts are not to be found, you are out of luck.

The new CEC TL5 is a great transport for around $1200 new. Hold its value, well no, nothing holds its value over time.

The Rega is a good little transport. I have used int many times as a back up.  Just did a comparison of the Saturn and and my old Metronome CDP as a transport (the Metronome is highly modified) a few days ago.  The Rega has a dynamic alive sound but the Metronome plays music.  Both wee used as transports through the same DAC.  

As for the CD versus streaming, CD's still sound better but I am still testing and experimenting all the time.

Happy Listening.

Accuphase ?
I have a 20 year old DP-55 cd player that went for 4K, I paid 3K.
The cd player was introduced in 1996
It was their entry level at the time.
I see them used for 2K.
seems like 50% of it’s value for a 23 year old cd player is pretty good.
Seems to hold its value over time.
Other Accuphase pieces seem to hold their value.
Maybe because Accuphase is extremely well built lends to its value.
Current entry cd player, I believe, goes for 6K.

mickeyb:

I’m a big fan of older rega CD players. The Saturn or Jupiter are built real well, look real cool and sound very good. I dig my Saturn and will never give it up. I run it through my tube dac toslink input and couldn’t be happier. You can get a used Saturn for a decent price and resell for probably 75% of what you paid for it. The millennials dig them a lot.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

Okay. Finally! Immediately of course someone has to diss the one and only legit example of what I've been asking for, a CD player that won't go straight to zero within years of ownership. That it took this long would seem to indicate, if I may be logical about it for a moment, that such are rare. Or at least not well known. 

The Saturn has a following, and its been around a long time. The posts here are almost 10 years old! http://www.audioreview.com/product/digital-sources/cd-players/rega/saturn.html Best of all- actually is a tie between it looks kinda cool, or at least not a boring box like most, and comes with the beautiful story line that the classic older versions are better than the newer ones. 

So that's one. Surely there must be at least one more out there somewhere? I mean, to find a 30+ year old car (with over 200k miles on it) worth more than it sold for new I need go no further than the other side of my kitchen and look into the garage. Surely Audiogon global reach can find more than one non-worthless CD player. Now that we know what we're looking for....

PS- "Your logic is so asinine" the word you were looking for mayoradamwest is, "airtight."