Good evening,interested in moving to a DAC

Hi Robin,

Re your question about pros and cons, keep in mind that going to a separate transport and dac will not necessarily get you better sound than you would get from an integrated (one-box) cd player, especially within that price range or lower. What it will mainly get you is the flexibility to use other digital sources, such as a computer, in addition to the transport.

I'm sure others will offer suggestions of transport + dac combinations, but if you don't foresee the possibility of using digital sources other than the transport, the following are some well regarded integrated cdp's that I am aware of, which sell new for between roughly $1100 and $3500. Note that one of them can also be used as a dac.

Bryston BCD-1 (this is what I use, and have been very pleased with; about $2.9K new)

Doge 6 (about $1600 new)

Sony SCD-XA5400ES (about $1100 - $1500 new, depending on dealer)

Raysonic (various models; I'm not particularly familiar with them)

Simaudio Moon CD3.3 (this model provides a digital input, allowing it to be used as a dac in conjunction with a computer or other digital source; about $3K new)

Ayre CX-7eMP (about $3.5K new)

Best regards,
-- Al

if you go transport/dac route AND buy used, I would recommend finding a transport that uses a very robust transport such as Phillips CDMPro-2 or similar. these things last "forever" and are still available should you need to replace

Audio Note,, Bel Canto, North Star, etc use the transport I mentioned and there are surely others!

Another good transport design is the VRDS made by TEAC. Parts for a lot of them -- laser assemblies -- are still available.

Skip the transport and convert your CD's to computer files. Then you can spend all $3k on the DAC like Almarg suggested, although you don't have to. It takes a few minutes to burn a new CD before listening, but your library will become so much more user friendly you won't care.

If you MUST be at or under budget......a CD840c will fill the bill. 2 channels of input and balanced out.

DISCLAIMER. I'll be selling mine soon for reasons that have nothing to do with the player or quality of playback.

Computer files and an external DAC also make compelling sense.

To add to Al's list....both Rega and Naim make integrated players in this category.