Vinyl guy seeking recommendation for a top level cd player

You can always identify a diehard high-end vinyl guy. Their ears are conditioned to a lifetime of listening to the best of what vinyl has to offer. Therefore, even the most pristine and capable digital playback will NEVER be acceptable to their highly conditioned ears and brain processing of analog audio.

This is not a dig at vinyl proponents, but rather, an honest assessment of their conditioned listening history. Digital presents audio with significantly higher dynamic range and more discernible mechanical detail than vinyl.  Furthermore, digital foregoes the inherent analog reproduction problems, which nonetheless have come to be identified by vinyl proponents as "the warmness of vinyl".  With subjective semantics at play, such "warmness" is the vinyl lover's way of suggesting the unobscured detail of digital equals harshness, edginess, etc etc.

BOTTOM LINE HERE:  This is not an argument to be won by either the analog nor digital side.  Listening history burns a blueprint into our brains of what music of any genre is supposed to sound like. This is true for both digital and analog proponents. If one owns 2,000 vinyl albums that they’ve been listening to for 40 years, there is likely no high quality digital presentation that will ever match and fulfill the audio expectations of such a listener, following 40 years of exposure to vinyl. Any variations in audio presentation will not sound right. And the same reasoning applies to a digital proponent attempting to adjust/listen to vinyl.  

Well, I am sure your theory fits a few people. 

I happen to own a very high end vinyl rig and have 2,000 pristine and audiophile pressing albums that I have collected over a lifetime. My digital / streaming end sounds as good and sometimes better. With the same warmth and musicality. It depends on the components you own and in some cases... your personality if they conform to your theory. 

jymc

You can always identify a diehard high-end vinyl guy. Their ears are conditioned to a lifetime of listening to the best of what vinyl has to offer. Therefore, even the most pristine and capable digital playback will NEVER be acceptable to their highly conditioned ears and brain processing of analog audio.

That's just a silly prejudice.

This is not an argument to be won by either the analog nor digital side.

Correct. It's not an argument at all. It's just a silly prejudice.

I am the OP to this thread and this is a follow up.  To summarize and bring readers up to date (2/6/2026) , with many kind responses to my original query, I purchased a Luxman D10-X in 2021.  They were in great demand and it took many months to get one as they were on back order.  It was worth the wait.  The Luxman expanded my horizons on many levels and continues to do so.  In addition, I recently put together a new system for our second home and bought the recently discontinued Marantz SA10 for it, which I will comment on briefly a little later.  As I predicted in my original post, it was indeed a good time to buy a new cd player.  Although I remain firmly committed to vinyl, old jazz primarily, as the prices have steadily climbed and desirable records have become more and more difficult to find, cd reissues have become more widely available.  It is not only possible to find long sought after and out of print records in the cd format, but often they include 2, 4 or even 8 albums by an artist of interest in 2-4 cd sets at very attractive prices.  The sound quality is typically clean mono, really better than available vinyl choices which if they can be found at all cost significantly.  So for that alone my cd player has undoubtedly paid for itself.  But there is more.  Dormant for years, the cd format has reawakened an interest in classical music.  I have purchased the entire J.S. Bach canon as a cd Box, something like 180 cds, for ~ $1 each!  Similar prices for tons of Early music, Vivaldi, Mozart, Handel, etc.  All of the Mercury Presence recordings, prohibitively expensive on vinyl, but affordable as cd box sets.  This has opened a new door for me.  Comparing the sound quality of a pristine vinyl pressing with the same recording, mastered by the same engineer, on cd in Redbook, reveals the vinyl usually sounds better.  Sometimes by a lot, sometimes by a little.  SACDs usually sound the best of all.  Usually be a lot, but not always and once in a while there is a turkey thrown into the mix.  For the record, my best vinyl playback system is as follows:  VPI HW40/Hyperion (stereo); Technics SL1200 GAE/mono cartridge varies; Consolidated Silver wire SUT, C-J ART Phono-stage.  All in perhaps 4x the cost of the Luxman D10-X.  Now a few words about the Marantz SA10.  I bought it and it's matching PM10 amp when they were discontinued a couple of months ago.  I paid approximately 50% of original list price for the pair.  In round numbers that is about 25% of what the D10-X cost.  The two cd players were exhaustively compared side by side daily for over a month.  Using the factory settings, the SA10 has a slightly softer sound than the D10-X.  Some would prefer it as the sound is easy to like.  For the analytical, the D10-X offers greater detail, perhaps the way to say it is if you are so inclined you can hear further into the music with the D10-X.  The SA10 can be adjusted via setup controls to sound more like the D10-X without ever quite reaching the same level of sophistication.  But very, very close.  I also suspect, by the look of them, the way they feel and function that they both share major components in their transports.  Both units are built like tanks.  For those who are in the market for a cd player right now this SA10, while still available, must be considered the wise buyer's preference.  In spite of my assessment that the D10-X is the better of the two, the margin is very small, whereas the price spread is too great to justify.