What makes a Cd player a Great cd player

I ACTUALLY HAVE ONE THAT I USE TO USE. I would prefer not to use it for the fear of keeping the signal as pure as possible. My preamp actually has no tone controls for the same purpose. Is that to say it would be a noticable difference? I doubt it. But they have been known to.

How about a marriage between cd and analog. I am happy to have an LP copy of The Modern Jazz Quartet live at Carnegie Hall to play on my CDP courtesy of an engineer.

Very low surface noise (those old engineers have it nailed) so cd playback is all about enjoying the performance. Direct to disc? Ha.

Heard this player at the Axpona Show in Florida a few months ago:

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?anlgtabl&1280216981&/Continuum-Audio-Labs-Caliburn-+-Cobra-+

Awesome. It did not have dynamic swings relative to the material played but boy you could be tempted to sell all your toys for this one.

La45, you nailed it, dynamic swings !

I'm still keepin my digital front end, it gets close enough to satisfy (for now)

Ddan6815,

I haven't read all of the posted comments, so forgive me me if this has been touched upon.

There is a problem, as you said, that when going from a good CD Player to a better one, it does have a tendency to bring to light the difference in recordings.

I used to and still get down when listening to a CD that just doesn't sound as good as it used to. The saving grace is that the well recorded CD's now sound much better.

It is a trade-off, that's for sure. One solution is to keep the older one along with the more expensive one. But to me that would be a pain in the rear.

Chuck