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Need the recommendation on the CD player

post #1 of 23
9/11/10 at 4:50pm
Thread Starter 

Basically, I have a pretty satisfactory computer headphone system, including the DAC, amp, and a few headphones now. But the CD play in the computer is awful, so I am going to find a good CD player. I would like the CDP has the following,

 

1. I want to use the way as CDP-->DAC-->amp, so it would be better that the CDP has good digital output. The analog output of the CDP is not as important as the digital output to me, but better if the analog output is also good.

 

2. I am in US now, and I hope the CDP can be around $600.

 

3. I will NOT use it as a portable source, but I would like the CDP to be as light as possible. The reason is that I usually need to move my stuff since I live in the dorm of my school.

 

I am totally new in CDP, so hope that anyone can give me some advises on this. Thanks.

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post #2 of 23
9/11/10 at 5:04pm
First, look for used ones. There's always a good selection at Audiogon, many of them for half the price or less of new ones. Your dollar will go a lot further.

I'm a big fan of the models from Rega and Marantz. I've got an old Planet I haven't been able to part with and a SA8001. Both can be had on your budget, but also consider their other models.
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post #3 of 23
9/11/10 at 8:56pm

But the CD play in the computer is awful, so I am going to find a good CD player.

 

???

 

The CD player in your computer shouldn't be that bad.  What sound card are you using?

 

???

 

I'm currently running a Pioneer Blu-ray burner and getting excellent results.  FWIW, I'm running Win7, x64.

 

Are you ripping in WAV format or are you just putting the disk in the player and listening?  If you're ripping the albums, what rate are you ripping at?

 

What's up?


Edited by beeman458 - 9/11/10 at 9:00pm
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post #4 of 23
9/11/10 at 9:24pm
Thread Starter 


 

Quote:
Originally Posted by beeman458 View Post

But the CD play in the computer is awful, so I am going to find a good CD player.

 

???

 

The CD player in your computer shouldn't be that bad.  What sound card are you using?

 

???

 

I'm currently running a Pioneer Blu-ray burner and getting excellent results.  FWIW, I'm running Win7, x64.

 

Are you ripping in WAV format or are you just putting the disk in the player and listening?  If you're ripping the albums, what rate are you ripping at?

 

What's up?


Let me apologize for the wording, I probably should say that the CDP in computer is "not as good as" the musical CDP.

 

I use the Pioneer DVD/CD burner in my computer, and running Win7. I tried both way, just putting the disc and ripping in WAV. It seems that using a musical CDP is better than the computer CDP in both way, as compared with the pretty high price CDP with my friend. (I use the word "awful", just because of comparing to his system. We test a lot, and I think the bottleneck is on the CDP.)

 

I think there is nothing wrong, the musical CDP has less disturbance than in the computer. So it's reasonable to me that a musical CDP has better sound than a computer CDP.

 

To say the truth, the computer system is pretty much good to me, but I think that getting a musical CDP can bring even better sound to my system.

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post #5 of 23
9/12/10 at 3:06am

Cambridge Audio 840C is said to have a really good digital output. You might find one used for your budget. It is quite heavy but I guess something always has to be compromised.

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post #6 of 23
9/12/10 at 7:42am

If the small, lightweight form factor is more important than the analog output, Little Dot hasa CD transport with an optical output.

 

 

OR, why not use a cheap Philips or Toshiba DVD player?

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post #7 of 23
9/12/10 at 8:02am

twn2 wrote:

 

It seems that using a musical CDP is better than the computer CDP in both way, as compared with the pretty high price CDP with my friend.

 

What sound card are you using?

 

I have the Pioneer Blu-ray burner, coupled to an ASUS Xonar STX sound card.  Files are ripped in WAV and I get excellent sound listening to the files with a Sennheiser  HD650.

 

I'm not knocking the idea of getting better gear in my above, I'm suggesting that there's something else going on with your system to cause the final product to sound so bad by comparison to your friend's system.  Much improvement can be had by adding quality playback and that's what you're wanting to do.  An Audio-gd combo amp such as the "Fun" would be an excellent starting point as you can line out to the Audio-gd DAC, completely sidestepping the computer sound card.

 

What headphones are you using?  A decent starting point, from what others have written, would be a pair of Sennheiser HD555's.  My headphones of choice are a pair of Sennheiser HD650's.  Upgrading to an Audio-gd "Fun" and a pair of Sennheiser HD555's would go a long way in upping your sound quality and be well within your stated budget of $600.00 with a few dollars left over.  If you could stretch your budget a bit and your computer has the room, I'd suggest adding an ASUS Xonar STX to your computer as well but line outing to the Audio-gd "Fun," in of itself, will be a huge step-up.

 

Admittedly there's a boatload of choices available at your stated budget so I don't want you to think that my above suggestion is the only way to go.

 

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post #8 of 23
9/13/10 at 10:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by beeman458 View Post

twn2 wrote:

 

It seems that using a musical CDP is better than the computer CDP in both way, as compared with the pretty high price CDP with my friend.

 

What sound card are you using?

 

I have the Pioneer Blu-ray burner, coupled to an ASUS Xonar STX sound card.  Files are ripped in WAV and I get excellent sound listening to the files with a Sennheiser  HD650.

 

I'm not knocking the idea of getting better gear in my above, I'm suggesting that there's something else going on with your system to cause the final product to sound so bad by comparison to your friend's system.  Much improvement can be had by adding quality playback and that's what you're wanting to do.  An Audio-gd combo amp such as the "Fun" would be an excellent starting point as you can line out to the Audio-gd DAC, completely sidestepping the computer sound card.

 

What headphones are you using?  A decent starting point, from what others have written, would be a pair of Sennheiser HD555's.  My headphones of choice are a pair of Sennheiser HD650's.  Upgrading to an Audio-gd "Fun" and a pair of Sennheiser HD555's would go a long way in upping your sound quality and be well within your stated budget of $600.00 with a few dollars left over.  If you could stretch your budget a bit and your computer has the room, I'd suggest adding an ASUS Xonar STX to your computer as well but line outing to the Audio-gd "Fun," in of itself, will be a huge step-up.

 

Admittedly there's a boatload of choices available at your stated budget so I don't want you to think that my above suggestion is the only way to go.

 


I guess that you misunderstand my goal. I just want to even upgrade my system, because my computer system is almost perfect.

 

I have DAC, which is mainly DIY'ed by my friend. So I can't convince you how good it is, all what I can say is that it completely beats all DAC that I have heard, including DAC1, or even DAC64. So I don't think there is any problem in my DAC. For now, I use the Audiofire2 as the digital output to connect my PC and my DAC. I had also tried to directly connect my PC and DAC through the USB, almost the same level as the way through AF2. So I suppose there is no problem in this part.

 

I own 10 headphones, including HD800, T1, DT48e, and HD650, so it should be no problem on my headphones, otherwise, errrr....

 

My amp is also good enough, although it is also a DIY'ed one, as you didn't ask about this, let me skip this.

 

I guess you focused on my statement that the sound in my computer is awful. Well, I should say that if I put a CD in to the CDP in my computer, and compare to my friend who uses almost the same system as me except he uses a musical CDP as the source, the sound in my system is awful.

 

Just want to remind you that my goal is to get a good CDP, since there is almost no way I can upgrade my computer system.

 

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions.

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post #9 of 23
9/14/10 at 5:15am

Modest suggestion: an Oppo 980H universal player.

 

I own both this model and Oppo's cheaper blu-ray player, and they're the rarest of things - items I don't feel the need to improve on. You *can* buy better, but not at the price. (The 980H is out of production but easy to find used.) Unless you are a very, very serious audiophile - and want to spend audiophile bucks on a dedicated transport - you'll be hard pressed to find better.

 

best,

 

Scott A.

Watertown NY

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post #10 of 23
9/14/10 at 9:29am

$45 delivered - Marantz CD40 with a Philips CDM4/19 laser pick-up?

http://global.ebay.com/MARANTZ_CD_PLAYER_CD-40/290474804492/item

As the Philips single-beam swing arm type drive mechanism evolved, the extremely compact Philips CDM4 appeared. There are many versions of the Philips CDM4, the most representative of which are the Philips CDM4M with a hard resin top plate, and the die-cast Philips CDM4MD. With the appearance of the Philips CDM4, complete miniaturization of the drive unit, including the drawer mechanism indispensable in a front-loading system, became possible.
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post #11 of 23
9/14/10 at 10:56am

twn2 wrote:

 

I guess you focused on my statement that the sound in my computer is awful. Well, I should say that if I put a CD in to the CDP in my computer, and compare to my friend who uses almost the same system as me except he uses a musical CDP as the source, the sound in my system is awful.

 

What "musical CDP" is your friend using?  What sound card are you using?  The ASUS STX has a high quality DAC onboard.

 

???


Edited by beeman458 - 9/14/10 at 10:58am
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post #12 of 23
9/14/10 at 1:11pm
Thread Starter 


 

Quote:
Originally Posted by beeman458 View Post

twn2 wrote:

 

I guess you focused on my statement that the sound in my computer is awful. Well, I should say that if I put a CD in to the CDP in my computer, and compare to my friend who uses almost the same system as me except he uses a musical CDP as the source, the sound in my system is awful.

 

What "musical CDP" is your friend using?  What sound card are you using?  The ASUS STX has a high quality DAC onboard.

 

???


My friend uses a Sony CDP, which has stopped selling (hope that my memory is right ). As I said, I use a DAC now, you can think of it as my sound card. I know the ASUS STX pretty well, since both ASUS and me are from Taiwan, and I had lots of chance to hear it when I was in Taiwan. The sound quality of this sound card is, well, just sounds like a sound card in its price range. I don't want to spend too much time on this, let's save some efforts on discussing sound cards, and focus on good CDP's.

 

By the way, I am in Boston, so if you are near me and interested in my system, I can show you what's the quality of a real high end DAC, which is really too far from any computer sound card. Then you'll know why I don't want to spend times on sound cards.

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post #13 of 23
9/14/10 at 1:33pm

Rotel RCD-971 with HDCD support uses a Sony KSS-213C laser pick up, one on sale with Tentlabs XO clock here:

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/512131/fs-rotel-rcd-971-hdcd-cdp-restored-and-slightly-modded

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post #14 of 23
9/14/10 at 5:38pm

twn2 wrote:

 

As I said, I use a DAC now,.....

 

Rip lossless to your HDD and line out to your DAC.  If you worried about bits and bytes, use bit perfect such as "Exact Audio Copy."

 

???

 

Then you'll know why I don't want to spend times on sound cards.

 

I currently have another thread running as I'm trying to find out, learn if you will, if an separate DAC is worth the effort.

 

???

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post #15 of 23
9/14/10 at 7:10pm

I use a panasonic DVD-L10 portable DVD player and it has an optical audio output/line out...I love it

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