Ruminations On CD Players

A lot of over simplified cliches going on here. Let’s look at a few.

1) streaming is great because it facilitates exploration of new music, and people that listen to the same stuff all the time are dinosaurs.

Well, streaming does make it easier to hear new music. However the CD era ushered this in, because the cost of producing and storing CDs was lower than vinyl. In Classical Music, budget labels such as Naxos and Independents such as Chandos, Hyperion, and Bridge and a raft of others gave exposure to thousands of previously little known composers. Streaming lowers the barriers again, but the trend was well on its way before streaming. Internet Radio is another great way to discover unfamiliar music.

The Dinosaur Issue-most people here are on the wrong side of fifty and while we have our favorites, and keep listening to them, that is still a heck of a lot of music. I have several thousand CDs on my shelves. Several hundred of them are favorites and it is a rare CD that I don’t enjoy. Frequently I pull something that I haven’t played in 30 years and then wonder why I haven’t given it more love, and it becomes a new favorite.

2) Streaming sucks because it facilitates ADHD style listening, and artists intended you to listen to a whole album at a shot.

Streaming does allow one to jump around. In my genre I still listen to whole albums most of the, even when streaming. For example if I am listening to Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, the chances that I will want to follow the epic first movement with the Can Can by Offenbach isn’t great. However this week I have been obsessed by a short work of J.S. Bach, the Fourth Fugue from Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier. I pulled up 5 different Pianists during the week on Apple Music that I didn’t have in my collection. Wonderful! And we have no evidence that Bach intended people to play or listen to all 24 of the Preludes and Fugues in one sitting so no sacrilege committed there.

Not every pop album is Sargent Pepper or DSOM. Most Motown albums until Marvin Gaye What’s Going On were just random collections of singles. The artist and the label expected you to buy 45s, and the albums were issued as a way to buy multiple records at once when the lp format began to be popular with consumers. Miles Davis albums were someone editing hours of tape into a 45 minute finished product, and I doubt that Miles expected people to inhale them in one sitting or viewed the outcome as a planned journey.

These technologies are not mutually exclusive. One can happily play their physical media and also listen to streaming. Or not. I don’t think that we have to badger people to do it one way or the highway

@mahler123  "These technologies are not mutually exclusive. One can happily play their physical media and also listen to streaming. Or not. I don’t think that we have to badger people to do it one way or the highway"

+1

I gave up on CD players.  Library got too complicated.

So, FLAC form a PC.  I can then use a very good DAC. I am not aware of any CD player for any price with a DAC that can beat some I know of for $100, let alone a RME, CORD, Denifritz etc. 

CD transports are inherently SYNCHRONOUS, so you are stuck with the transports clock.  If it was good enough, fine. You lose all the issues of not well implemented USB and PCM outputs.  Big IF.  

My best CD player was the old "last" tray style Rotel. Internal DAC was garbage compared to today but excellent in the day.  I used at that time a SOA Wolfson.  Now, a PC, JRiver or MusicBee into a JDS Atom+ blew it away plus I can find my music, drag half a dozen CDs to the play list and walk away. 

@tvrgeek "I am not aware of any CD player for any price with a DAC that can beat some I know of for $100, let alone a RME, CORD, Denifritz etc"

Hyperbole! What high end CD players have you listened to please detail?  Any of these for example amongst them Vitus, Esoteric, Metronome, CH Precision, Neodio, Goldmund, etc?

Several in the high end stores. Did not pay attention to the brand but hooked up to very high end systems. One was a Moon, Another a Mac. 

What you may be missing is how good a select number of inexpensive DACs really are.  My dirt cheap Atom+ is much smoother than any DAC I have tested in my desk system under the price of a Aries.*  It is the only one that tames the sibilance of a Joni Mitchel, Judy Collins, or brass edginess of Harry James.  I have heard multi-thousand dollar CD players in the stores that did not. I have heard multi-thousand dollar DACs that did not.  Now, what is critical to everyone is not the same. You may ignore what irritates me and vise-versa.

Can you adjust in your high end transport  gain in the digital domain to prevent filter overshoot? Does it do it it's self for you? Can you match your filters to emphasize detail for headphones vs speakers?   I do not believe any you listed do. 

As both a music lover and an engineer, I know the transport is basically irrelevant. Any $20 disk player is as close to perfect as it gets to read a disk without error.  The sound is all about the DAC, mostly the reconstruction and analog stage.  It was not always true. Back in the day we did not have decent buffers and clocks so going back to the Phillips POOGE days, there were real improvements to be made.

Now, it is my experience the only improvement  is to the prestige CD player bank account.  Of course placebo and ego are totally relevant and I don't dismiss or criticize for that.  If it makes you feel better, then well you feel better and that is great. Enjoyment is the bottom line. If $15,000 worth of billet aluminum and slick advertising makes your music better for you, by all means.  Someday I may hear something that changes my mind.  Here in N.C., we don't have too many opportunities.  Just went through Richmond, DC, and Baltimore with little progress. 

I would be far more impressed if someone like CORD slapped a decent DAC into a $200 transport.  Use real engineering rather than advertising. 

*My next possible upgrade is to compare the Aries, Qutest, RME and maybe a Geselli to see if they can surpass my lowly JDS. Nothing SMSL, Topping, Schiit, or IFI has so far for the specific issue I hear. Amazon probably hates me. Is there a higher level? Does Dave sound better?  Not that I can hear and I have heard a Qutest vs Dave in a store. But I am not 30 any more either and I only listen to speakers, not headphones.