Ruminations On CD Players

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! 

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.

@jimmyblues1959 Yeah, while you make some good points I have to disagree with this one.  There are relatively few CD players left on the market and even fewer dedicated transports, and the numbers will continue to shrink as more people just stream or rip their CD collections to a server or external drive.  Conversely, the demand — and therefore and options — for analog rigs, DACs, and streamers are experiencing huge growth.  CD players and transports still have their place for now, but the handwriting is on the wall and they are the audio buggy whips of the future, and this will only accelerate as streamers/servers continue to improve and higher and higher performance can be had at an increasingly lower and lower cost.  CDs are going the way of the cassette and VCR and for many of the same reasons.  

Naim cd5 si.

Open drawer, drop 💿, press play.

Benefit from Naim analogue stage.

Enjoy! 

@cat345  The beauty of simplicity.  I like my Naim CDi for the same reason.