Best Basic CD Player (no SACD, USB, etc.)

Just before the holidays several dealers were offering the Denon DCD-1600NE for $899 (normal price $1499).  Couldn't resist at that price. I can highly recommend this player.  The price has gone up since but it is still a very good bargain.  Well built, nice looking but more importantly very nice sounding.  It will play all your normal CD's beautifully as well as SACD's.  No fluff.  Simple basic player.

Tonal quality is very nice.  Well detailed and balanced.  Nice spacious soundstage. Compared to my much more expensive Marantz Ruby I was surprised how nicely this player held up in comparison.

Good luck.

I’ve been using an Onkyo C-7030 for the past five years (light use each year), and it continues to work fine. It also sounds very good for such an inexpensive player. I purchased mine on Amazon back in late 2017 for about $175 which included an Amazon 4 year extended warranty. The first year of the warranty overlaps with the one year warranty from Onkyo, so the extended warranty really covers three years. However, the warranty at the time was less than $10.

The C-7030 also has both coaxial and optical outputs in case you want to use the C-7030 as a transport with a separate d to a converter.

The C-7030 is presently selling on Amazon for under $300 for brand new units.

In retrospect, the $175 price was ridiculously inexpensive at the time, and IMO the current price is more inline with the true value of the C-7030.

Best of luck with your search!

try to find an older Meridian G08 or YBA 1 transport/cd player

both of these were excellent players in their time  and can be purchased on the used market, with YBA  be careful  sometimes the Blue laser would fail  so make sure it is working order

Meridian players were built like tanks  so even if used as a transport  with external DAc that will be a great option for CD playback

Definitely check out Pro-Ject DS 3, which can also be used as a transport. Lots of terrific features not found elsewhere

$899 buys a lot of goodness

hth

If you are OK with buying used, the SA 800X series of Marantz players (now discontinued) sound very good and are durable. I upgraded my SA8005 player to a KI Ruby and I'll be selling it soon. They go for around $750 (original price was $1200). The SA 8004 is also an excellent choice (I had one of those before the 8005). Marantz made their own drives for these players and they are very reliable.

Players that only do Redbook CD are becoming more rare. You shouldn't limit yourself to this class of players. A player that does SACD always plays regular CDs so you don't have to buy any titles in a new format. Heck, you might even find an SACD or two that you want to own.

IMO the sound quality of modern players have become quite similar. It's hard to buy a player from the last 15 years that doesn't sound good.

Three resources I would recommend are Music Direct for new players, and Audiogon or U.S. Audio Mart for used players. People upgrade their digital gear a lot and with a little research (Google the reviews on particular models you are interested in) you can get a very nice recent vintage player for reasonable money.