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Crazy to buy a 17 year old CD Player?

My ARC CD2 just died...I think the laser finally gave up the ghost.  Any how I've got thousands of red book CDs in my library and need a replacement player.  I'm thinking an ARC CD 3MKII or the Mark Levinson 390S.  Am I crazy to be thinking this?  Got a budget of around $2000.00.  My system, though dated, is made up of higher end stuff: ARC 25 pre amp, ARC VT 150 mono amps, VPI TNT IV, Wilson Witts, all running through Transparent Reference (Balanced).
cmcdaniel5
pbnaudio's avatar
pbnaudio
1,613 posts
 
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/281960796364?chn=ps&dispItem=1

Quick Google search reveals this is the one used in the CD2 - do your homework though !  but for $ 22 you might be able to get it going again - these are not difficult to replace if your handy - if not have a skilled tech do it for you.

Best of luck

Peter
mechans
3,048 posts
 
Yes it's crazy to buy an old CD player.  They one of the audio pieces that actually move and are subject to wear and tear.  That and the argument re: older technology, especially the DAC.
glennewdick's avatar
glennewdick
1,655 posts
 

lose the cd player all together and get something like the blue sound vault 2 and a good DAC there are others out there depending on your budget but CD players are dead tech.

 hell Vinyl is out selling CD's now for the last couple years.

dekay's avatar
dekay
5,544 posts
 
Someone recently posted about this Cary model on sale/closeout.

The last Cary deck I listened to was the 306, so don't know how this one sounds.

https://carydirect.com/shop-now/digital-sources/dmc-600.html

DeKay
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
cmcdaniel5
  Crazy to buy a 17 year old CD Player?
No, definitely not, not if you want the best from a RedBook (pcm) collection.
But you need one of the players that use R2R Multibit conversion to get the best from RedBook (pcm).
Your choice of the ML 390s is OK, but it's a Delta Sigma dac converter based unit, you'll be far better off getting the earlier ML No.39 as it's R2R Multibit PCM1702 and it has the HDCD PMD100 HDCD filter chip, a far better choice.

Cheers George  
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