Ruminations On CD Players

John, just food for thought for the present or future if you do go down the separates route. Transports are not all the same SQ wise and will either hold back or release the potential of the DAC. Benjamin Zwickel, Mojo Audio DACs, clued me into this when I was purchasing one of his ,and he was correct. I went from Cambridge CXC to Simaudio DT 260 and the SQ materially improved. Check out the threads on the top Project transport or the Jay’s transports and you will find similar experiences. Also, when you go beyond the likes of the Cambridge or Audio Lab transports one of the digital output connections might be optimized for SQ so you may want to have a DAC that accepts that connection. I initially used the SPDIF on the Simaudio and it sounded very good. However, out of curiosity I asked Simaudio if one of the connections was optimized for SQ and was told the AES/EBU was. The result was a further uptick in SQ. I believe the top of the line Project is optimized likewise, though folks using the SPDIF connection appear to be very pleased with its SQ. I don’t know if either of the Jay’s transports have an optimized output. Again, just some things to possibly consider.

I also need to track down the source of a mid-range screech, which I'll address in a future post.

Eeeek!  That sure don’t sound good.  Is that present with both vinyl and CDs?  I noticed your amp only puts out 36 Wpc in ultra linear mode (and obviously much less in triode) and recall the Totems tend to require some power, so I’d be a little concerned your amp may be straining to power your speakers and might be a source of what you’re hearing.  But this is just a semi-educated guess so just chalk it up as food for thought.  

It amazes me how the saying "the more things change the more they stay the same" applies to audio.  As a teenager back in the 1970's I had a turntable and many LP's.

When CD came along in the 1980's the popular belief was that vinyl playback would go the way of the dinosaur. However, Hi-End audio manufacturers didn't like the sound of compact discs and refrained from manufacturing CD players for nearly a decade, until they realized that CD had  become a viable alternative to analogue.

Yet, turntables didn't become obsolete at the time and instead have continued to experience a Renaissance, where more quality oriented turntables in various price ranges exist in the modern day than ever before.  

Then various other physical digital media formats entered the marketplace to compete with CD, all of which have since been largely displaced by non physical digital media formats which offer incredible convenience.

Meanwhile lots of enthusiasts still own many CD's, so CD players and transports are experiencing a similar type of resurgence to Vinyl and turntables.

As for the belief that CD playback benefits from using a separate transport and dac,  a case can certainly be made for this.  However, there are also many well designed CD players that do a fine job of CD playback.  I still use a 1992 Naim CDi for playing my CDs and it remains an excellent sounding source in spite of its age.

What amazes me is that my Onkyo C-7030 ($169 US in 2017) used as a CD transport with a number of my affordable dac's, gets so close to the CDi at a small fraction of what its inflation compensated value would be today (over $9000 US).  

In spite of its only being 16 bit 4X over sampling, the CDi has a sense of refinement that the C-7030 does not. Yet, IME, for casual listening the subtle improvements with the CDi go largely unnoticed.  

If you have a large CD collection and listen mostly to CD's -  and you listen critically - it's probably wise to make a significant investment in your CD playback system. 

Whether you choose a one box CD player or a separate transport/dac system has as much to do with the design implementation of components as it does with their quality.  It all comes down to what your audio needs are.  

Best of luck in your search and remember to enjoy the journey! 😊

I still own an Arcam Delta 70 they were very good players. Not using it now (I only have one of my 3 systems with a CD player, an Emotiva, but rarely use it since I ripped my entire CD library (thousands of them!) and boxed them up)  Consider streaming as an option.  It is a bit of work initially but has a lot to offer.

Naim cd5 si.

Open drawer, drop 💿, press play.

Benefit from Naim analogue stage.

Enjoy!