Parasound CD-1

Thanks. I have narrowed my choices down to the cd1 and the Marantz sa7s1. They are used in my price range. I also may look into mods eventually when I educate myself more on what they can and can't do. I will be on the lookout for one of these two. They are in my range.

I bought one. This is superb. It completely blew away a $10K digital front end of Denon 100 anniv CD transport, Jeff Wells Custom DAC (hot-rodded 'signature' edition) and JPS best Aluminata Digi cable.

I bought at $3500 'demo' from Audio Advisor, with 30 day return privilege. I knew in 10 minutes I was keeping it.

Its like streaming files. The delay of start up and booting discs mentioned by some reviewers is not out of the ordinary at this level. Once playing, track access is the fastest I've experienced.

I'll still be searching for a DAC under $10K that can take it up another level, and with BNC/SPDIF and AES outputs this is a worthy platform and Class A jitter-free transport. Rating it as a CD player is above my pay grade, but as I say, I love it.

This is just stunning digital DONE RIGHT. No hash!! You've never heard it this smooth from a rotating silver disc.

The two output choices are subtly different:

The OPAMP has superb spatial cues and greater depth.
The recording is slightly more exposed.
The two circuits vary in bass presentation in hard-to-describe ways.

The DISCRETE output circuit is slightly creamier in the upper half, bass tonality different somehow.

Transport features are bare bones. I've rarely seen a more spartan tranport: no repeat, shuffle or any programmable function. Play, forward, rewind, skip, stop, eject, invert. That's it.

Its very responsive to AC filtering and Power cord tweaks, but not much to physical ones like plates and etc. But it likes the Synergistic Reasearch big MiGs I put underneath.

Auditioned it, loved it, bought it.

$3500 from Audio Advisor with 30 day return.

It replaces $10K worth of Denon and custom Jeff Wells DAC (super signature version) and $2K JPS digital link.

A very worthy player/transport.

Dave R

I got one. It sounds great. Happy cd1 owner. Excellent player.

Congrats calvinj!