State of the art CD player? Only if you do this.

Update. I did google a $5000 plus studio digital recorder! Mike

I have listened to state of the art at the time in digital A Krell cd player that cost well over 4G. It was being compared to my Jvc 1010 cd player. The Jvc stood toe to toe and in some ways sounded even better. Till today I would not spend a fortune on cd sound.. used is best and I buy them as cheap as I am offered.

I would just like to point out a couple things in my humble views of CD players.

I bleieve the most important aspect of a CD player is the transport beyond all else. It seems as if the 30lb CD players play forever and will play the most destroyed thrashed discs exellently where a normal player would start to skip consistently it just politely passes through the content ever so perfectly that your bummed but you can still play a couple forever lost songs.

It is for this reason that you will see the auction of the denon 1650 is pretty hot right now (its not my item but i like the 1650, SCD-777ES, and the Marantz SA14 for transport/SACD value minus the 1650).

They seem to me to be mostly like a receiver. The amplification is the same just new processing or video conversion, YOU NEED A NEW UNIT!!!, It personally makes more sense to go with a new DAC every 3 or 4 years that you buy one or 2 years old (Im 26 and on a tight budget) so you are never stuck with a beautiful box with a worthless chip in it.

As far as pro gear goes. There are a few huge things to be factored in.

1. A studio should have the cleanest form of AC available

2. It seems all of the equalization is done in the digital realm so they would really only need a rock solid transport to feed a digital signal to there boards, or a rock solid recorder to record the digital signal which would have nothing to do with digital to analog conversion and once again only transport and digital feed I assume.

3. The CD player will never ever sound anywhere near as good as the original disc. I believe they record hundreds of discs at a time in series, the first cd recorder should sound better than the second and third and so on by that logic. What it will allow you is a few parts they were only able to offer in a more high end model a few years ago or brand new parts they have just created.

I am not an expert it is first assumption on the topic and it is just what makes the most sense to me. Also these are statements from someone on a budget. Im curious to see what other responses come up

State of the Art equipment in any category is only for those with lots of money, a well matched and tuned system, and excellent hearing and listening skills. People for whom a 1% improvement in sound will be worth the many thousands of dollars spent to get it.

IMHO, cd mastering and playback has been steadily improving and will continue to improve for many years. I think that you can get excellent cd sound at reasonable prices these days. Cds will still sound horrible to die hard vinyl listeners though.

12-02-10: Bigbucks5
I would think it is far easier to turn analog to digital than vice versa. So the equipment needed to digitize the recording doesn't have to be 'as good' as the equipment needed to turn the bits to analog.

this statement is not true; quantization errors that occur during the analog to digital process would mean that the digital signal does not precisely reflect the analog signal. in that case, your cd player could have the "best" digital to analog conversion in the world and you would still have errors in the sound reproduction. in other words, a cd player cannot reproduce a signal that is better than that which is recorded on the medium. now, the cd player can always "color" the signal in ways that sound pleasing to a particular listener. in many regards, that coloring is what you are paying for in many high end cd players.

many cd players add bits during the digital to analog conversion process so that the various digital signal processing tasks (for example digital filtering) can be performed without losing significant bits. but at the cd player you can still get other sources of error, for example those related to timing, that can throw off the quality of the reproduction.