What is the best redbook CD player for 6K to 8K?

Alex, thank you for your involvement in this thread!

A couple of questions, if you would be so kind... The laser pickup and the transport are the parts likely to fail. What, in your estimation, is a reasonable life expectancy for these parts in 95%+ of the cases? 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? Or, more?

And, many audiophiles see a player as shot when they insert a disk, but nothing happens. Is this simply the laser pickup? If so, and it's easily repairable, for some of us who are willing to try to do it ourselves if the day ever arose where we saw this failure, is it a relatively inexpensive part?

Thank you for all of your insight!
Joe

Trelja, in 95% of the cases, when it comes to a well designed digital player that does not have faulty processors like the Philips SACD1000 for example, the laser pick-up is the only part that would fail. Whether it will start skipping or it would say "no disc" when you load a CD, it is still the laser.

When it comes to a regular CD player, it can work even 20+ years, especially when it comes to top-line CD players built around the flagship Philips and Sony (an couple of others) transports/laser pick up assemblies.

Unfortunately, this does not apply for the laser pick up designed to read CD and DVD/SACD. These latest technology devices are a lot more complicated than a usual CD laser. Also, the actual laser diodes in a CD/DVD laser are working much harder compared to CD only pick up.

Of course, it really depends on the usage. If you have CD/SACD player only, you may have it working for 5 years and more given you're not using it 24/7, and especially if you are playing CD's most of the time it will last longer. When it comes to universal players, and if you also watch DVD movies on them, the life expectancy is shorter. Depending on the quality of the laser, the life can be from few months to couple of years.

In 99% of the cases, replacement laser assemblies are available in the range of $90-200. It is fairly easy to replace them too.

Bottom line is, if you like the sound of a certain player you own and it stops reading the disc, there is nothing to worry about.

Regards,
Alex

I can say from over a years experience that the
Audio Aero Capitole MKII (preferably SE) on the used market is worth a listen.($4-5K) Totally revitalized my entire redbook collection. Full layered 3D soundstage and a very natural sound. Or get a dealer to discount the newer Capitole Referance. (Retail $9500) Truely a world class player.

TVAD, yes of course you are correct, the comparison of an APL 1000 vintage late 2004, even sporting the very latest engineering changes available at that time, is not a fair comparison with a player which retails for approximately twice as much, even though the latter was released in Japan at a similar time. In some sense that was my very point, the APL 1000 was quite a good performer at its price point, yet not necessarily the very last cry in performance at any price that it was sometimes claimed to be.
As you correctly also point out, I have not had the opportunity of auditioning an APL 3910, nor an NWO-1, nor an NW-02. Comparing one of them directly with an X-01 Limited -- the current latest and greatest in TEAC single-box purely audio players -- would be an extremely intriguing musical experience. Of course any unit involved would need to be completely broken in prior to any serious listening, or the entire exercise would be devoid of meaning. Still, at least in the case of an X-01 Limited pitted against the NWO-1 and NWO-2, the comparison would be in a sense that of an apple -- or at least of a tangerine -- with a couple of oranges, if you only consider the significant list price difference of a stock X-01 with these UX-1 based reingeneered units.

Guido, the SACD1000 mod was introduced at $1350 and then went up to $1850. At that time, the SACD1000 was on sale from Tweeter at $400. Online prices on Audiogon and Ebay were $600 max for brand new units. The X-01 retail is $13K and the X-01 Limited is $14K. So I don't really know what you mean by "twice as much" the SACD1000 price. I figure around 6 times as much. There are very positive reports and reviews from independent parties who don't even own SACD1000. Please also be aware that the SACD1000 featured an output transformer with higher output impedance so it is extremely important what load will be presented to it. Best results are obtained with non-shielded cables and preamplifiers having input impedance of 100K Ohm.

UX-1 and X-01 feature the same transports and the same Digital Signal Processing boards. It’s just that the X-01 video and DVD-A features are software and hardware disabled. The UX-1 Video can be completely shut down too with a button on the remote. So, the only advantage X-01 has over UX-1 is the differential DAC and Analog output stage with 4 instead of 2 DACs and DOUBLE the Op Amps. There are sonic differences between the two, but not huge by any means.

I suspect you may find the $6K price difference between the X-01 Limited and NWO-2 very well worth it.

Regards,
Alex