I gotta agree, but i still dont dont know if a home CD player will bring the kind of improvements you are after.
I am in the UK and about 3 years decided to upgrade my technics CD player (£200) to a better unit. I wanted a real improvement. more detail etc.
I went for a Denon unit (£350). The improvement was tiny. I wasnt satisfied. So i went for a Sony X3000ES. The gold mini sized toploader one. Again, the improvements in sound, tyo my ears through headphones, over the technics, were small. i mean, they werent "worth" the extra "£300". A little more detail, i think, and generally better. But nothing great.
So i really pushed the boat out, and got a Musical Fidelity X-Ray. Supposed to be the dogs b*****ks. Well, the build quality of the CD drawer was, frankly, awful. I mean, for an £800 machine. It didnt even line up properly with the "military spec" casing. the sound, again, was a small improveement (over the techinics that is!) I mean, bass was tighter, deeper, better clarity. But £700!
SO i went and got a £1200 Meridian 506.20bit. And THEN, the differences came. Much better calrity, treble bass, depth, soundstage. The lot. I had to spend £1000 to say, yeah, thats a real improvement.
So, i just gotta say dont expect too much. Soemtimes a new cable makes a huge difference. And keeps you happy for agaes. The Discman IS an extreme though, and something like the techinics should prove significatly better than that. The thing with CD players. As they get better, one of the major improvements is with the SOUNDSTAGE. This is an area best apprecited with speakers. So sometimes you dont apprecite where your money has gone.
If you buy one of the good $500 machines, i think you would see a diff, but upgrading from that....who knows!
(that really was all alot longer than i expected. sorry)
