Alesis Masterlink as a CD Player?

The ML is too noisy and too cumbersome to be used as a transport. It does what it's designed to do quite well, but it was never designed to be used as a transport for a serious audio system. OTOH I do use it as a transport when I want to break-in a component and need to put a CD on endless repeat. I'd rather burn up its cheaply-replaced CD-RW drive on stuff like that than the expensive drive mechanism in my primary transport.

I just read that the Alesis was selected as a class A componnets by Stereophile. Why if all the threads here point to a noisy, complicated to use, poorly built, etc. unit. I guess I will have to hook mine up after I get back to the US to see for my self.

The masterlink is a pro audio tool and does what it does for a price point that has no peers.If trying to get a sub one thousand dollar cdp is your objective there are many choices.Pro audio is a different scene than the audiophile world with reliability higher on the priority list.There are engineers who are also audiophiles but they are a minority and your cd collections sound quality will bear that out.I own a cdp that costs roughly 6x what the masterlink does and the differences are not that great.