CD Players- What To Look For?

Screw Sony!!! Get a used Resolution Audio CD-50. It's about as good as a Levinson 39, and you can drive your power amp directly with it. I PROMISE IT'LL SOUND BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE OUT THERE!!!! (Except maybe dCS upsampling, but that's even more money, and none of those will be on the used market for a year or two.) You'll never get a linestage preamp (to use with another CD player, no matter how good that CD player is) to disappear well enough to match the CD-50. JUST WON'T HAPPEN, DUDE...

I have a Sony X77ES player (some say it was better than the XA7ES) and have compared it to Linn,YBA,EAD,Arcam,Naim 3.5,and the Sony sounded as good as or better than. Then I compared it to the Copland 289 and the Sony sounded almost awful in comparison. Guess what I bought.

As you might have seen from the other postings, tastes differ. Make s shortlis for yourself what you want form a player: lots of feautures? Digital outputs? Upgradebility? Or do you like home-cinema? If that's the case consider a DVD-player. Anyway: make a shortlist of the feautires you want, decide how much money you want to spend, go to a dealer that has a few different players, and listen to them- preferably with your own speakers and amp- and then buy the one you like most. It's as simple as that. Oh, make sure you can change the player if you don't like it at home. I myself bought a Marantz CD-17 KI, and for me that is the best player around. Suck it and see for yourself!!!