Comparing these CD players with my gear...


Hi folks, 

I'm always messing around with CD players. A longtime audio friend of mine says I have a CD fetish... well, he's probably right. In a medium that is slowly dying, I'm still spinning discs more than ever. I stream too, but there still something awesome about taking a CD or LP and placing it in/onto a machine to play the sweet music we all love. 

Anyway, in my latest jaunt for something new, I've put together my latest list of players that have caught my eye for one reason of another. My gear consists of a Creek 4330SE integrated amp and Vandersteen 2C speakers. Cables are DH Labs Q-10's and Air Matrix interconnects. 

So what are your thoughts/impressions/comments on the synergies of the following CD players and how they would sound with my gear. I'm most curious about the Naim, Cambridge Audio and Myryad. 

Naim CD3.5
Cambridge Audio 840c
Myryad MCD600
Cal Audio Labs Icon mkII Power Boss
Marantz CD6006 (or CD6005)
Rotel RCD-1072




jsbach1685
The Oppo 105D is the Swiss army knife for the little silver disc, and it is also a very good streamer.  In other words, it will play anything the cat drags in.  I use mine to feed a Meridian G68 DAC / preamp via HDMI into a Meridian 621 hub for all things digital.  In this application, it is as good as anything out there, (but Meridian is in another league from most other digital gear, so the Oppo is basically a transport.)  I haven't listened to its analog outputs, but I owned and have listened extensively to an Oppo 95 and it was pretty good - not Meridian good, but pretty good for a CD player.  Oppo is moving on to UHD, so if you want an Oppo 105D, you need to move pretty quickly.  Reportedly the new Oppo UHD players will have fewer features than their recent BDP players.

I have two Emotiva cd players, ERC 2 and ERC 3 solid build and great sounding, especially for the price
jsbach1685-

the Naim will sound good w/ your Creek amp. Keep me posted as you massage this spinner into your system. Give the player 200 hrs. to settle prior to any critical listening. 



jsbach1685, when you look at what makes the high end CD players distinct from the cheaper ones, it usually boils down to the vibration control, power supply, output stage and the DAC.

That is why there is such a large market in modifying CD players. Owners of lesser quality machines can buy a CDP for, say, $700, then spend $1,500 - $2,000 on getting it modded. For less than $3,000 they have a player that can compete against +$5,000 machines.

Instead of going the modding route, you can easily bypass the built-in DAC with a higher quality one. There are several stellar DACs to chose from in the $500 - $1,000 range (used). Paired with DAC, your CDP merely functions as a simple transport.

And adding dampening to your unit is pretty simple. I have used Plumber’s putty in the past as it never dries out. One container ($6.95) can easily cover the inside of any CDP.

Last year I upgraded from my trusty Sony S9000ES SACD/CD (one of Modwright’s favourites to tweak) player to an Esoteric DV-50S. I bypassed the Sony’s DAC when listening to CDs by routing the signal through a Teac UD-501 DAC. I was surprised how close this combination was to CDs on the Esoteric (the Esoteric was clearly ahead, but not by as much as I had expected). SACD performance wasn’t even close, however.

But the biggest consideration for choosing any component is synergy. Simply adding a $10,000 CDP into your system is no guarantee that you will be able to hear it perform to its ability.

YMMV.