[CFC]

after being astounded by the heavy price tag standalone CD Transports carry, i made up my mind to get a CDP or DVDP with digital out and couple it up with a DAC. for the monent, however, i wont have enough $$$ to purchase a DAC, so i am hoping to find something that would tide me over till i complete the whole set.

the candidates follow:
Arcam diva CD72T
Adcom GCD 575
Sherwood Newcastle 980
Pioneer DV-505

feel free to add or remove reasonable/unreasonable picks from the list...

the goal here is a well matched system with MGHead OTL/sound card(would be using digital out, in the near future hopefully) + HD580 while keeping the cost (of the CDP) below $250. convinience aspects like remote controller or cd changer can be safely ignored at this point. i guess i should have asked this prior to anything : what would i need to concentrate on when it comes to featuresets? i shamelessly admit that i am not even all too clear on basic terminology like HDCD...

 

[zspradlin]

I recently purchased a used Newcastle 980 from an Audiogon member for a starter system for my son. I got curious and tried it with my MG Head OTL. It is a nice match for the Head and Sennheiser 600's. I am looking for one for myself now. I paid $225 for it used and don't hardly think that at that price it can be beat. I used Straightwire Crescendo IC with this set-up.