CD players with volume control ?????

There have been many positive comments on the Opus 21 --

the review on their website mentioned that the CDROM drive makes an audible whining noise (audible when no music is playing). Has anyone noticed that, and has it been a problem, for example, in quiet pssages in the music? Also, is it common to use a CDROM in a cd player, I'm wondering about reliability and quality of the mechanism...?

Well common use of a CDROM is one of the reason they chose it, they dont have to worry about the drive becoming obsolete and not finding replacement parts for their CD players. And I do believe they have changed the CD drive to eliminate the whine. However, the whine is very quiet, and it is difficult to hear at all from 10 feet away.

The drive whine was in older models over a year ago. The new one is dead silent. Can't even hear it when your ear is close.

Yep, I purchased my Opus in May 03 and was told by the Resolution Audio guys that the previous CDRom Drive is now a DVD drive. I'm not sure why they chose it, but it is dead silent, as Platsolos indicated, with extremely fast track access. Also, the speed of volume increase/decrease has been increased quite bit over previous models. If you have the dough, this is a great player! You can't go wrong!

Thanks for all the responses! The Opus was my consensus choice here, but unfortunately out of my budget at this time. I chose to go with a pair of EVS nude attenuators from www.tweakaudio.com in place of a cdp with volume control. Thanks again.