High quality CDs

@retiredfarmer 

Well the Wadia was pretty good with other recordings.

Anyhow, you may not be right on these chips.  The first three Wadia 16 reviews I turned up say 'Super'.  'Simply the best'.  'One of the best CD players ever made.  Hmmm

Choice of chips can be personal and a company like Wadia ought to be able to be trusted not to use turkeys.  How come their engineers and listening staff couldn't hear the problem and you can?  Digital audio using solid state components will always be an issue.

All transistors were hard and grainy from the very get go and many still are.  It's not so easy replicating an analogue experience with a stepped digital representation and a jittery clock interface.

DACS are the main issue with digital sound and in my view the problem may never be solved.  I'm not sure I've EVER heard a good digital recording of massed strings - these are really prone to hardness and especially grain.  Many LPs have much more concert realism on this.

One could say that using digital storage to listen to analogue sound is like starting with an apple, changing it into an orange and then changing it back to an apple again so we can eat it.  Obviously the repeated conversions are likely to change the character of the apple and it may not be so good to eat.  In my experience fiddling with stuff rarely improves it.

On 'one duff disc' of course I hear what you say but if you pay a premium price for a bad recording/production/disc from what should be a reputable company, it kinda puts you off buying more.  They don't tax returns - indeed I bought it in the US at a show and live in UK.  It is important such companies as Chesky run very tight quality control for their own good as well as that of their customers.

@rman9 ,I'm right there with you on the upgrade itch and don't feel bad about the rock you live under. It offers great insulation from the heat. 😄

I'm doing my level best to hold off on getting a newer and matching SACD player for my new integrated. My old one sounds fantastic with the new integrated and two different associates at MusicDirect told me that my 8 yr old SACD player is  still a great sounding unit and that I wouldn't get that much of an upgrade with the newer one. You'd think they'd like to move more product but they've always been on the level with me, yet...

All the best,
Nonoise

@clearthinker  then again I .ight be right I never received payment for my reviews as was a common practice around the audio rags. I never had to be validated by some anthers ideas. The 850 and 860 in my opinion were never as good as the press made them out to be either. 

Regards

The great thing about getting to a happy place with your system, at least digital replay, is that it is a rare CD that sounds bad.  As digital matures, more information than we ever thought possible gets pulled out of those pits.  I recently randomly pulled two CDs off the shelf that I hadnt heard in years.  The first was a Sony issue, early digital, of the Schuman PC and Quintet with Rudolf Serkin as the Pianist.  Always loved the performance but was utterly blown away after not hearing it for a few years at how stunning the sound was.  OK, the treble hardens a tad when pushed, but certainly amazing for 1959 recording.  The second was a Naxos CD of the Beethoven and Mozart Piano and Wind Quintets and the Mozart "Glass Harmonica" Adagio as a throw in bonus.  Again, my memory of most early Naxos issues was that that  they were dry and not to sonically appealing, but this sounded magnificent.  

   I really treasure my SACDs, Blu Rays and High Resolution downloads, but even plain vanilla Red Book CDcan sound so good as to be completely satisfying

FWIW,  my best sounding CDs....better even than SACD...are HDCDs, if you happen to have a player that will decode them.