Originally Posted by 1UP
Nobody can make generalisations that technical improvements correlate to better sound. Look at vinyl.
People are still using vinyl. People are still playing early-gen CDPs. People are still using amps and speakers designed over 20 years ago.
Don't know your CDP so can't say if a $200 unit will beat it. However, most certainly audiophile soundcards will piss all over your Soundblaster.
if the design is right, then the component can be timeless....even some high end manufacturers tried to best their former top end amps and failed. Some design are so good, you cannot improve on them...
If you get a good older cdp, that was at least in the top segment, you can bet on it that it still can compete with most of the cdplayers out there.
Remember the NOS dacs and cdplayers, they are timeless.....no oversampling....