CD Player Advice

There are two classes of players that are popular, those that are extremely expensive and those that roll-off the highs or at least limit the HF dynamics.

Frankly, if you want to get rid of the sibilance and harshness, you need a better DAC, which you will never get in any player except the ridiculously expensive ones (>$10K). You are better off to get your transport modified to reduce jitter and get a modified DAC, such as the Perpetual Technologies P-3A.

Before you change your CD player, may I suggest you consider upgrading your AC supply. Perhaps a dedicated circuit with a good receptacle and decent power cord. You mentioned the Rega as being "harsh". That may not be the fault of the player.

Try a few "cheap tweaks" before you turn your back on the Rega.

Happy listening,
Joel

Try the Vecteur L4 or L4.2. These units are a real sleeper. They have tons of detail and are not bright if the rest of your system is up to the task. These units will hang with anything under 4k and won't be bested by much by anything out there.

I don't understand the benefit of the belt drive - but I also don't know how the CDP is designed...for a digital format, I would think the best solution would be to read an entire song (or the entire disc) into RAM and design the digital processing and output to be totaly separate from the input mechanism.

Or is there some reason that the input should be read and processed in real time?

I don't listen as much to digital as I do to vinyl, so I sold my CAL high-end CD player and bought a Philips 963SA SACD/CD/DVD player. It has built-in 192 kHz upsampling. I can tell you that it made my digital collection come alive with the upsampling. About half of my 500 CDs I only listened to on rarest of occasions due to their 'hard' digital edge. The upsampling has really improved this and moved the great majority into the 'good' listening regime. And SACD is truly a cut above CD. None is as good as vinyl, but I find that I listen to more than I did by quite a bit. And congratulations on your use of the Wasatch 104U. I really thought all this cable stuff was a bunch of BS until I discovered Wasatch. What a significant upgrade it made in my listening when it replaced the highly regarded Synergistic Research Alpha Sterling. Try the Philips. You can buy new for $499 at Music Direct. Gotta love those Wasatch interconnects, though.