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Is it worth upgrading a CD player?

I’ve had my Marantz CD6002 for around 14 years and it’s still going strong. I have it connected to an Audiolab M-DAC+ and play via my Rega amp. I’m mostly vinyl but have started to playvmy CD’s more recently and wondered whether upgrading the CD player would be worth it or not, given the fact it’s played via a dedicated DAC. Am I right in thinking there would be little noticeable improvement?

side22olto
jl35
4,007 posts
 

I’ve preferred the Cambridge CXC transport to any of my older CD players or my Oppo 103 used as a transport...it's inexpensive, and I find the transport does matter...

jerryg123's avatar
jerryg123
3,429 posts
 

@ghdprentice stay on topic guy asked about transports and players not streaming. 

johnread57's avatar
johnread57
234 posts
 

Until I upgraded to an Audio Research Ref CD9 I had no real appreciation of the influence of source, internal DAC, tube output stage, etc has on the performance of a CD player. This unit is not the DAC of choice for all my digital listening. And this fixed my perception of harsh leading and trailing edges from the previous Esoteric K03Xs CD player.

So my answer is certainly yes.

 

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audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,119 posts
 

Audiolab CDT6000 is very good. Being a dedicated transport, it would likely be a nice improvement over the old marantz cd player. 
But as others pointed out, DAC is at least as important as a transport. The CDT6000 just lays a pretty good foundation for a future dac upgrade. 

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