First CD player help!

OK, most CD's made before year 2000 sound crappy on most players of any price.  Most Musical Fidelity players will add some life into them,  I am unsure if they try to expand the frequency response or something else, but it does help the old CDs.  that being said, a quality used player will beat a new inexpensive one any day.

+1 ericsch   I run that player and for the money, well it's very decent and of course one may add an external DAC and greatly improve it.  The shoebox design I like also.  Very solid build.  Cheers

I recently bought a new Denon DCD-800ne CD Player for $499 and love it. I had not bought a new CD player in 30 years (my Sony and even older Magnavox were mostly doing fine). However, nothing lasts forever, and I have a fairly large collection of about 1200 CDs I want to continue to play. Yeah, I do streaming too, but CDs still sound a touch better for whatever numerous reasons.

This model has sadly been discontinued by Denon, but I found it factory refurbished or perhaps simply NOS by them at an online vendor. It looks new to me.

It performs well with its internal DAC and processing. One feature I liked and wanted on it over its little brother, the DCD-600ne, was its USB input for playing files such as FLAC and DSD. Long term, I can use it as a decent transport if I ever buy a better DAC implemented better than its 32-bit/192kHz Burr-Brown PCM1795.

Note that it does play CDs gaplessly. Unfortunately, many late model CD players don’t, which is beyond dumb. So if gapless playback is important to you, ask before you buy. Good luck.

DENON DCD-800NE CD Player with Advanced AL32 Processing Plus | Accessories4less

@moonwatcher Note that it does play CDs gaplessly. Unfortunately, many late model CD players don’t,

That’s interesting. What are some examples of the many late model CD players which don’t have gapless playback? I’ve ever only experienced CD players with (normal) precise gapless playback.

edit I see an earlier comment where the Emotiva player is non gapless.  So, that's one.  This is all news to me.

noske,

I had been looking at a Yamaha CD-S303 but had a live chat with a Yamaha tech and the CD-S303 does NOT have gapless playback. That is so aggravating in the sub-$500 price point region.

Otherwise for $380 it had everything else I wanted...great DAC (a Burr-Brown), a USB input for FLAC and other files, and even coax AND optical outputs for connecting to an external DAC if you ever wanted.

So, I ended up getting the similar, but more expensive Denon instead. I liked Denon’s build quality better anyway.

The only ones I know for sure that are gapless in this price range are the Denon and the Cambridge Audio ones. Cambridge even advertises "gapless playback" as a FEATURE. LOL.

I listen to lots of classical, jazz, prog rock, and some live concert recordings on CD, so gapless playback is essential to me. I can’t speak to other players in the sub-$500 price, ones by NAD, Integra, Onkyo, etc.

I’m happy to get the Denon and be done with it, hopefully for the rest of my life.

Main dumb thing is that you have to ask about gapless at all. Back in the 1980s and 1990s we just took it for granted that players would play "right". Guess many of today’s players use "computer programming" and act like CD drives in a PC and insert 3 seconds between tracks whether there SHOULD be or NOT. Ugh.

If I get a better DAC (the Denafrips Ares II *maybe* is as much as I want to spend on one), I’ll use the Denon as a transport. I know dedicated transports are supposedly better without having any superfluous analog output circuitry in them, but I’m OK with that.

Sadly, it looks like the number of CD players and transports will diminish quickly over the the next 10 years as streaming becomes the norm, hence my desire to buy a "good enough" one now, while I could find one. Having wav, FLAC, and DSD capabilities on the USB input is icing on the cake.