CD player needed?

[june]

Hello All,

Neighbor has the following system:
LEXICON MC-1
&
PARADIGM REF STUDIO 100'S v2

He now needs a CD player to add to his system. Any recommendations?

[Alaric]

Well....

I have a Marantz SA8260 and I'm extremely pleased with it. I'm using Paradigm Studio 60v.3 speakers and I think the sound is incredible. It will play SACD in two or multi channel , and is an excellent redbook player. I hear Marantz is coming out with the SA8001 , which is supposed to be even better. Bear in mind , the price ($1000) includes the SACD capability. The usefullness of that is a minor point of contention amongst some on this forum!
Otherwise , the Cambridge Audio Azur 640 has gotten rave reviews , by those I trust , for redbook playback , and seems to be the deal of the century ($:SQ ratio). If your friend likes the sound of valves (tubes) the Shanling line is supposed to be very good. Or , if money is no object-and I mean totally irrelevant , the TEAC Esoteric transport/DAC combo is beyond description.I heard that combo once , through speakers I will never be able to afford , and was stunned by the sound. The final decision should be made with the ears , however. I've listed a pretty wide variety with only three players , and listening is the only way to find true happiness.

[twitch54]

In the $500 -1000 range the Rotel RCD-1072 is pretty tough to beat, I'm presently using a Musical Fidelity 3.5 and at it's price point( $1500 ) I think it's a winner.

[Mukaudio]

Bear in mind , the price ($1000) includes the SACD capability. The usefullness of that is a minor point of contention amongst some on this forum!

Unless someone is expressly looking for SACD capability, I find that a liability rather than a selling feature. When I looked for my first CD Player, I wanted to put 100% of my money into CD playback. In theory a $1000 dedicated cd player is going to outperform a player that handles multiple formats...

Mark.

[BTB]

Hi June

My pick is the Arcam CD 73T. Fantastic machine at modest cost.

Cheers

[whoaru99]

I liked a Music Hall CD-25. Have not heard the newer CD-25.2.

The Onix XCD-99 is supposed to be essentially the same as the earlier CD-25. About $399...

But, with gear such as that, perhaps there's not enough panache in a $399 player...

IMO there's little, if any, difference in players if you use the digital output so that's one thing to consider in the selection. My listening was done VIA analog connections....

As a side note, does the MC-1 have analog bypass, or are all analog inputs digitized?

[pramod]

Hello All,

Neighbor has the following system:
LEXICON MC-1
&
PARADIGM REF STUDIO 100'S v2

He now needs a CD player to add to his system. Any recommendations?

I Have Nad C542 CD Player and it so amazing.... with B&W speakers...

[DrJRapp]

With his gear, your friend would be very happy with a Shanling CDT100C or the same unit as a SACD player in the 200C. They both sound fantastic and look fantastic. See my avitar. By the way, the Music Hall and Onix are both rebadged Shanling players.

[Bob]

If I had a friend looking fora CD player I would do my best to convince them to look at a computer based system instead. Even if it was just a Squeezebox.

Do a little research on the Mac Mini plus a USB DAC, there are many out there with Wavelength and Hagerman Chime being two of the most popular. The sound quality would be at least as good as all the CD players mentioned in this thread, better really, and it has so many more advantages.

[Oak244]

I second the Music Hall CD-25 or my Usher CD-100 which is pretty much identical. It sounds awesome for the price.

[JonMarsh]

Well, why not throw another opinion or two in here.

I cast a vote for the Marantz 8001 in then under 1K price range for all in one player. Very good CD sound and SACD thrown in also, not an unimportant consideration in my book. The things that make for a good SACD player (DAC, audio bandwidth, power supplies) also go for CD. Another example of that is their SA-11.

Now, that said, I'm also rather a fan of computer music servers, and favor the Mac platform for that (an iMac G5 with Front Row (standard) remote, 250 GB disk built in. If you have a large music collection like I do, this makes it much more accessible than piles of CD's. HOWEVER, I only recommend that route with a DAC setup that is very immune to clock jitter on SPDIF- I use a Benchmark DAC1, works very nicely in this application. Many DAC setups, including in processors, don't have anywhere near the jitter rejection of the Benchmark, because they don't use the kind of asynchronous re-sampling the Benchmark does. Benchmark's and Stereophile's measurements confirm that.

Now, I'm probably not typical, having nearly a couple of hundred SACD's, but I do listen to a lot of Jazz and classical, and there's about 4000 releases so far in that format. It's pretty much the only way to get real hi-rez. And I have done the thing comparing XRCD releases of the sam material against SACD- prefer the latter, though the XRCD is very good compared with conventional production CDs.

The iMac has the advantage of an integrated display solution compared with a Mac Mini, and much larger internal storage- (conventional 3-1/2" drive instead of notebook form factor drive as in the Mac Mini) probably wouldn't need an external drive in most cases. I encode using Apple lossless, which keeps the full CD resolution. There are a lot of hybrid SACD's CD layers encoded on my iMac, too. Some of the best sounding CD's you'll find anywhere are the CD layers of hybrid SACDs, as they're usually produced by downsampling the SACD part. Classic example is the "Every Breath you Take" Police SACD- the CD layer is also absolutely killer.

~Jon

[Alaric]

The Marantz SA8260 has become very nicely priced at various online outlets.I love mine.