Differences in CD players? Am I crazy?

Teac in Japan is not the same as Teac here I think. This is definitely not a cheap cd player, it weighs a solid 17kg and has 4 20 bit dacs and 8x oversampling. I know it retailed for about 2900USD but sadly I'm having trouble hearing any difference. I went to a hi-end shop here in Toronto where they do an upgrade to it on the anaolgue stage and compared the two, once again, hearing almost no difference. Others I know who have performed this upgrade swear by it and say that nothing under 4grand competes with the cd player.

I've been into headphones for a while, and noticed in that 'hobby', that the headphones accounted for 90 percent of the difference, and source and amp were very subtle changes.

Is it the same in speakers? How much of the difference in a system would you say the speakers account for? I bought this cdplayer as the first step in acquiring a system with Martin Logan speakers. At the shop, they salesman swore that it was necessary to put money down for a high end source.

Tomek,

How do feed the signals to the Receiver? Is it digital out from CD player ---> digital input on the receiver?

Abe

The salesman may just have been selling, but I it sounds like he was actually following the sound and widely recommended philosophy, "the source must come first". Quite simply, the best speaker in the world - whatever that is - cannot reproduce what isn't fed into it in the first place.

If you start at the back end by upgrading speakers first you risk two problems. First, revealing speakers might highlight the shortcomings of inferior components or wire earlier in the chain. Second, choosing the "best" speakers depends on what amp you'll be using. You can't choose an amp without knowing what preamp will feed it. You can't choose a preamp without knowing what source(s) will feed IT, etc. You get the idea.

Starting at the source and upgrading in the same direction as the signal path makes it easier to match components effectively and avoid expensive errors. As far as what you hear or don't hear between these particular CDP's, I'll defer to those who have more experience with your particular components.

I'd say your observations are similar to mine. Digital sources don't vary greatly, and their differences are perceptible only on quite a resolving system, unless you have a really terrible cheap source.
If I were to greatly upgrade my system I think that speakers do make the most difference, but I would buy the amp first, since expensive speakers on a cheap amp sound terrible, whereas cheap speakers and a great amp can sound quite good. I would upgrade my digital source last.
I think the salesman may have meant well, but I think the source first argument is perhaps less applicable with digital than it was with vinyl.

I agree with Dougdeacon and Seantaylor99.