The best CD Player for the money

Milen007, check out Kusunoki's explanation.

http://www.sakurasystems.com/articles/Kusunoki.html

Muralman1, thank you for posting this interesting link. It was written in the mid 1990s and is somewhat outdated vs current transport & DAC designs. Nonetheless, the conclusion that bigger bit rates and higher sampling frequencies lead to better sound, as I indicated above, does not necessarily lead to better sound.

I just wanted to mention that I got about 60% of the same improvement that I got on my pre/dac(Oritek) when using the Lessloss power cable on my APL Denon 3910 that I use as my transport. I just mention this to show that power cables can have an impact on perceptions of cd players.

I realize this is heresy, but to answer the implied question that prompted this thread, "THE BEST CD PLAYER FOR THE MONEY"...

imho, the best CDP for the money goes as follows:

MacMini

(in additon to playing music from the HD or showing movies from the disc drive or directly on line, you can wirelessly connect to Rhapsody or Pandora or iTunes)

into
a HQ USB cable (Ridge Street Audio or Synergistic Research)

into
an Ultra Fi iRoc DAC (or other asynch DAC)

single ended IC
into your preamp or integrated amp...

and wa-lah you have the best CD player and more for the money (imho)

You probably won't miss SACD. You'll begin to wonder about your TT and vinyl collection.

You'll rip your Redbook CDs into lossless format, and (wow) they will sound better than played on your CDP.

It's pretty cool, imho, and if you get an excellent USB cable, the audio quality is absolutely stunning regardless of $ (which was the original question).

FYI, I have a Cary 303/300... that should set a perspective on the MacMini USB DAC points I'm making.

Yeah, the Cary is very, very good but... I'm really wondering about how good by comparison, and when you consider its limited functionality... it plays CDs... that's it. And it has a much bigger footprint than the above.

The MacMini combo does a whole lot more... and you don't even have to have a screen... you can use an iTouch or iPhone to control your play list and Pandora, etc. with the proper Apple software.

Just my opinion...

Happy listening,

Ed

.

"I don't know where the name redbook came from..."

It was as simple as the color of the cover on the technical paper published by Philips when they specified what a standard audio CD was.