Recommend CD Player with Volume Control

What preamp did you use with the Rotel, and did you use one with the CD50? I use no preamp with mine, and have found none of the aspects you name. How long was this CD50 left on in each instance, by the way? It needs a few days of being on, before it really performs its best. WHAT RECORDINGS DID YOU USE FOR COMPARISON? With mine, I hear a different soundstage size, width, depth, and tonal presentation, with each recording. I feel like I'm hearing the character of each space on each recording. And I definitely hear the rear corners of the recorded space, and hear no tonal emphasis of any kind, in any of the frequency range. If you like your Wadia better, that's fine. To each, his own. I suspect if the CD50, or CD55, costed $15,000, more people would buy one.

Look at the Metronome dude!!!

Carl- originally I left the player on for a week before any decisions were made. To many recordings to list them all-Yuseff Lateef,Speedy J,Steve Roach,Morton Feldman,Gyorgi Ligeti,Arovane,Deftones are a few. No preamp against the Wadia, just Pass Aleph 2s. Against the Rotel it was a Jolida 40 watt integrated to a pair of B&W CDM7s, I followed Resolutions advice in the manual for pairing it with an integrated amp. Have you ever directly compared the CD50 to a Wadia player in your home? I think if they were going to sell for 15k they would need a lot better looking box and a lot less cheap remote. You've got to admit that remote sucks for a 3k player. And your probably right they would sell a lot more. If I had 15k to spend I would go for the new meridian player though.

From smeone who has owned Wadia I would tell you hands down get yourself a CD50 (I imagine the CD55 is also an excellent performer but cannot comment). I have owned one for two months and have probably spent 2K on new and used CD's in that time. It presents the most nonfatiguing detail I have come across. Everything is there including proper slam but you can let it play for a week straight and never have the urge to shut it down. Mine has been working overtime. One of the key questions is what your amp would rather be driven with (opamps vs. true bipolar transitors biased in class a) Made Wadia seem archaic in my system. hope this helps. Paul

Ryan, I've not tried the 860x in my home, no. It still rolls off the top octave by 3 dB, though. Anyway, I gurantee the CD50 is better than the 830, by far. Bring your 860 by anytime, when you're in my part of the country. You know what, yes, I absolutely agree that the RA remote sucks (it's a plastic tv remote), but I bet other programmable remotes might work with it, I haven't tried. The player itself looks very nice IMO, in silver, anyway. Just because the chassis doesn't weigh more than your SUV, doesn't mean that build quality is not in keeping with any highend CD player, though. And the electronic components are beyond reproach...as Petland, me, and others know all too well. Yes, others on here have attempted to make a fool of me on issues of digital audio, but I still like Jeff Kalt very much, he is a truly honorable designer. At least he didn't buy a speaker company, and then turn around and have to divide his core company up...