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Last CD player?

Earlier this year, I bought a Bryston 4BSST2 power amp and a Bryston BP26 pre amp.  Recently I purchased a pair of PMC fact 12 speakers.  Both produced a marked increase in sound quality.

My source at the moment is a Meridian 588 cd player, which is about 12 years old.  The transport was repaired about 2 years ago, and some capacitors replaced.  I play only redbook cds, but I may look into downloading hi-rez files later.

I am wondering if buying a new cd player would produce another big improvement in sound quality.  My budget is between £5,000 and £10,000.  I have read glowing reviews of the Moon 650D and the Esoteric K05x and K03x.  The latter is rather at the extreme end of my budget, and I am curious if it is hugely better than the K05x.

I am trying to build a see-me-out system, so durability is important.  The gear I bought earlier has a 20-year warranty, which inspires confidence.  Esoteric products have a warranty of just 1 year.

I would be grateful for any opinions or suggestions.

Thanks,
Paleo12
paleo12
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 
Sorry if they seem like a stupid question but how does one use a CD player as just a DAC? Is it just a matter of connecting the output of the CD player to an input of a DAC instead of the preamp or the CD player needs to have separate output from the transport portion. Thanks.
jond's avatar
jond
5,776 posts
 
@kalali You can use a CD player as a Dac if it has a digital input and you feed that input from an outboard transport or streamer but the situation you describe is using the CD player as a transport, it spins the disc reads it and sends the info via a digital output to an outboard Dac. And yes there has to be a digital out you cannot send the signal from the analog outputs to a Dac.
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 

Got it, thanks. I overlooked the idea of using the digital output on the CD player.

arsh
367 posts
 
Musical Fidelity apparently have plenty of Nuvistors and their bases. They have very long life. 
nordicnorm
313 posts
 
Buying an external DAC gives you more options. You can pair it with a (relatively) cheap transport. Since the CD mechanisms are the part that fails most often, you can just replace the transport as required.

You can also stream hi-res files through it.

I just upgraded from a Sony S9000ES to an Esoteric DV-50S.

For redbook CD I ran the digital out from the Sony into a Teac UD-501 DAC. It came very close to the redbook performance of the Esoteric (SACD however, was not even close).

Within your budget range, there are a lot of very high quality DACs to choose from. I would recommend looking at Lampizator DACs.
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