Which CD Player????

I am becoming more and more disenchanted with my CD collection. I believe it may be due to my CD Player - MArantz CD 63SE coupled to a NOS DAC - Blue light version. I cant believe how poor the quality of play back on my CDs compared to most of my vinyl collection.

I played a 50p charity shop special last night, Vivaldi and Albinoni oboe concertos on a cheap MFP label and was absolutely blown away with the sound quality. My CDs dont even compare.

Vinyl play back is on a 30+ year young, almost stock standard, LP12, Linn Basik + Arm and Rega cartridge, phono preamp from a very ordinary Tag Mac Laren preamp. - not exactly state of the art.

The question is this, What CD player do I need to get that beautifully detailed yet soft and inviting sound that wraps you up in the music that I get from vinyl play back?

 

Hi,

Have you considered a valve player?
Do you have the chance to audition any near you?

I'm biased but I have to say how good my Cambridge Audio CD4SE is for sounding smooth and detailed. Not quite vinyl or valve but better than most. Although these are cheap, it seems that most people are keeping hold of their's.

I've also used it with a tube buffer and it became smoother still but perhaps a tiny loss of detail. What I have noticed with tube circuits and CD players is that the sound becomes a little less Hi-fi but somehow more emotional. It's hard to explain. It's like a beautiful haze around everything.

Does the valve thing float your boat or are you simply looking for a less abrasive conventional DAC/CD player?

What's your budget?

Regards,
Martin.

 

like what he said, borrow a tube buffer. or ditch the shrill marrantz

 

You could try and borrow a Shanling cd t80 or a minimax .I note your in Scotland there is a dealer in Glenrothes who will let you borrow or audition both.I use a shanling and replaced the valves a few times and am very pleased with it.I should point out I am not associated with the dealer

 

You could try the Rega cd players , they seem to have a house sound which some have descibed as " analogue " sounding , the
original planet can be had used for buttons , and you would get your money back quite easily if you didn't like it .

 

personally, I was also disappointed with CD reply until I finally plucked up the courage to shell out and [buy] a s/h Dax Decade as my dac (and pre-amp), initially feeding that with a good transport - such as the Meridian 200 and then 602, and then acquiring a (modded Sony) Transcend and finally going the whole hog with Black Gates/Balance & Ncode. As some others can testify (even those who tread the vinyl) that comb produces the signal that will delight.

An alternative route, that others have taken, is to try the SB+ which has a dac that some rave about.

 

I'd just caution in principle that it may not be (only) the CD player. The phono stage of the preamp could be smoothing or rounding things, whereas with line level into the preamp you may be hearing the effect of the preamp and downstream more directly. If you could also say that the preamp and downstream is fine with tuner, tape, mp3 into aux in, or similar, then the finger would point more squarely at the CD player. If not, I'd also still consider finding out the effct of things downstream from the CD player too. Just a caveat, really.

 

I agree with Steve that it is not just a CDP. I am usually very critical and CDPs - that prevents me from splashing for something more promising than my current Thule 150B. But, the biggest and the most dramatic change in performance of my CDP was when I tested a rather fantastic home made TVC preamp in my system.

I've had also once a very interesting test with CDP (Quad 99 CDP-2) feeding directly my active speakers. This option is so sensitive to cabling between CDP and input terminals of active speakers that it has to be heard to believe. With Kimber PBJ this was just an average sound, while putting VdH The Second in between produced a sound that only the best preamps out there can approach, but hardly to beat.

 

on a related but bizarre note, I have a cassette deck, the sounds from which are much much better when routed via the Dax Decade and direct to poweramp than via a pre-amp to the poweramp. The quirky thing being that the Dax has a ADX module (analogue to digital) before the vol control in the digital domain and the digital to analogue conversion. Results from the FM tuner are pretty good too (though never A/B'd). I have never had the nerve to try this with vinyl *shock*

 

I wholeheartedly agree with you ditton. I've heard the Audio Synthesis combo and I don't think it would be possible to be disappointed with it. Although I'm sure I will be proved wrong!

 

hopefully not disappointed by the AS combo but delighted with something even better.

 

Thank you all for the replies. I live on Shetland a long way from any HiFi shop so I have no opportunity to try before I buy. I do believe that a TVR passive Pre amp with balanced outputs may improve things quite a bit as my Monarchy Audio Pro70s work best in this mode and I will be going down this path - hopefully at birthday time - crawl and get WA! but I am still wondering if the problem is my player/ dac or with the medium its self. The difference between playing a well recorded LP and a good CD on my system is massive. The LP is by far the closest to live music and the most engaging and least tiring to listen too. LPs sound better at low volume levels too! Is this just my system or is it universal?

 

An interesting thought SteveC! I do have a tuner a quad FM3 but the quality of the program material doesn't cut it! My computer output goes through the preamp and its not quite so good as the CD. When I rip a good LP to Flac and play that back the sound is better than the average CD but even a lossless codec looses some life from the music and blurrs the spaces between the notes. Its the silences that make the music!

 

speaking of affordable, extremely analogue and natural sounding CD players, has anyone had a chance to hear the belt-driven CEC TL-51XR?

 

your computer is not good transport, let alone dac. It will disappoint. As transport it lacks attention to timing, as dac it is so-so and surrounded by noisy electronics. add to that some sub-standard cabling and expect no better.

If you want to do digital storage as transport, some dedicated set-up is required. Google 'squeezebox' and/or wait for others to comment.

as for belt-driven CD players, why not cook with gas?

 

Do consider the DIY alternatives.

Promethius do one, and if you'd rather buy from the UK, hifi collective do a transformer based passive too.

Both promethius and hifi collective do the transformer based passives built up for you.

They all sound pretty similar to me. Personally think 'bang for buck' the hifi collective one is the most visually attractive.


Yeah, and I also find now I have a valve DAC I find it impossible to 'swap in' a non-valve dac without thinking 'why doesnt it sound nice anymore?'... although the increase in detail is clearly apparent with the non-valve ones Ive tried.

Not to say you can't have both from a valve dac - just I'm not prepared to shell out thousands for what I personally consider not a very great difference.

*edit* the now (almost vintage?! ) CAL valve DAC I use can be had for something like £275-£350, so you don't have to spend billions on this stuff.

 

AFAIC, cooking with gas is so much better.... don't know about belt drive CDPs though.

 

How about the Marantz based Ah Tjoeb:

http://www.hifi-planet.com/hpah1.htm

 

I have own 4 marantz cdp in the past and i think they are very smooth sounding player (fwiw).
Early Linn cd12 (expensive) or Meridian 200 (cheap) are as smooth as cdp will get. imho

 

I'm quite surprised to read that the only valve part of it is an output buffer.