Is it worth upgrading a CD player?

Fleschler,

At $500 the Audiolab is a great unit, and I am completely happy with it in my $15,000 system.....but from the sound of it, your system is higher end. For the money it can't be beat. It's easy to find on sale, you could try it and see if it works for you and return it if not. Some people may not like the fact that it is a slot loader, but the loader works really well.

Is the Jay's CD2 MkIII at $2,500 5X times better than the Audiolab?.....of course not. However one look inside will show the CD2 is the better made unit, and is clearly audibly the better unit. It is also a top loader which some/most will prefer, and adds adds I2S and AES/EBU inputs which the Audiolab does not have....big, heavy, sturdy

The Jay's CD3 at $5,000 is clearly the better built transport with very high quality components....beautiful inside. Sound wise it is the best CD transport or CD player I have ever heard by a good margin, and it adds more inputs than the CD2.....I was amazed at it's weight.....gotta be over 40 pounds

Bottom line: when I have the funds available, I will be buying one of the Jay's CD transports.....I might recommend the CD3 MkII, as I don't think it would be a limiting factor in your system.

My best friend just sent me another transport only unit to consider, the NuPrime CDT-10 for about $2,250 weighing in at 9.9 lbs.

What I find disconcerting is the conversion of the initial data stream is achieved by up-sampling to mega hertz before down converting to one of 13 selectable sampling rates for the CD format to higher sampling rates. Did they just plug in a chip which they programmed to alter sampling rates? This sounds like something is wrong to begin with.

Does anyone have experience with this unit? The ad copy is great, but how good is it musically, compared to Project and Jay’s?

@fleschler

What I find disconcerting is the conversion of the initial data stream is achieved by up-sampling to mega hertz before down converting to one of 13 selectable sampling rates for the CD format to higher sampling rates. Did they just plug in a chip which they programmed to alter sampling rates?

I am of the same mindset. I just want a high quality well thought out transport to play the native/original signal to the best of its ability. I’m not interested or attracted to any up sampling/manipulation/algorithms/digital filtering alternatives.
 

I understand that others find this approach desirable and seek it. To each their own. Many options are available for whatever one may want.

Charles

Go for the Luxman 03-X. Thank me later.

Happy Listening!

In my opinion, if you have a large collection of CDs, then yes! I would upgrade. Something to consider is to burn to something like a bluesound HD or innuous HD burner player if you have the $$$$$$. The burners sound really nice and you have all your CDs at your finger tips. You should get a good DAC in my opinion. My DAC is half the cost of the HD burner /player.