Good cd player and a great DAC or great cd player?

Joy Elyse, thanks very much for sharing your impressions here. Your experience is of great value to me.

I went to Audio Asylum and found a good number of suggestions with a search for "CD transport" in the Digital Drive forum. One of them was a machine I know : the discontinued Parasound C/BD 2000, which is UHF magazine's reference. It's a belt-drive machine made by CEC. I've heard it at four shows now.

Another transport I thought was very good for the money was the Cambridge DiscMagic. I think it may still be available by special order.

The TEAC VRDS transports have a considerable number of fans. I have no idea of pricing on these.

You might try searching the archives here for more suggestions, or starting a thread on the subject.

I just thought I'd post my "final" system. I decided to go with the new Denon 5900 universal player as my transport. I just brought it home yesterday, and I am in love.

At a trusted adviser urging I tried the Sony DVD99ES first, and was totally unimpressed. The ways in which the 5900 is better the the 999 are innumerable. As a transport, the 999 was better than my a carousel, but the difference was subtle. As a DVD player, it was totally unremarkable. It has the chroma bug, and the picture is not what it should be for a flagship. I found SACD almost unlistenable.

Now the 5900: Audiowise, I'm a convert to SACD. I had never understood the fuss before. The Bel Canto DAC2 is wonderful, but it's not SACD. I think the differences are well documented, so I won't reiterate them here. The 5900 also makes a great transport. On a A/B test, it was immediately obvious how much better the Denon sounded than my Sony carousel. My DAC2 still sounds significantly better than the unit's internal DAC, but that is to be expected. I listened to every CD player in the Boston area under $6k before deciding on the DAC2. Memory is a funny thing, but I think the 5900 may even make a better transport than the Linn Ikemi, but I no longer have the Linn here to compare. We don't even plan to mod the unit and get the Superclock 2, because we are happy just as it is. We're afraid to screw it up.

And the picture, it's amazing. I've never seen anything like it. And for those of us who don't have HDTV's yet, the interlaced picture is superb.

No doubt the unit is pricey, going between $1600 and $2000, but I spent a total of $2550 for the Bel Canto and the Denon (both new), which is still $1000 less than a new Ikemi would have cost me, and I have a great DVD player too.

It took a lot of research and dealer trips, but I am now thrilled with my system exactly as it.

Joy Elyse

Concious,

I would also consider the Classe CDP-10 CD player. It is next on my wish list to replace my Musical Fidelity A3 CD. I believe it retails around the $2k mark and comes with HDCD decoding plus balanced and RCA outputs.

I would start at the source and work my way back were I you. Good speaker won't sound good if all you are feeding them are low end signal. As you are reasonably happy with your PSB's I would consider replacing them last. They can only sound better with better upstream components. Consider seperate pre and amp unless you go for one of the premium intergrateds. Consider a tube pre as by tube rolling you can tailor the sound to your tastes/ room. Don't ignore that a good chunk of your budget will go towards good cabling which also makes a big difference. Above all, enjoy your time spend auditioning new equipment. I find doing that a lot of fun. Good luck.