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People are definitely forgetting how good CD sounds. Streaming is super convenient, but if you've got good speakers, you really should throw a CD on now and then to hear the difference.

This is great to hear. I have been happily buying CDs for over 35 years and will continue to do so as I love the format.

After collecting records for over 12 years now, I recently started buying cds a few months before the pandemic started. I started to notice that even people younger than me are starting to ALSO collect cds. With y2k culture and fashion making a comeback, the early 2000s are becoming vintage, WHICH MEANS that cds will become the new hipster movement. I wouldn't be surprised if vinyl goes back to a niche at the end of the decade and cds make a booming comeback.

The format is alive and well in Japan and they are doing a lot to enhance and develop the CD into an ongoing niche hi fi product

Hi everyone, CD is my favorite music media ever. I was in the 70s last century a brave defender of the LP since I listened to a CD for the first time in a public demo back in 1983. I purchased a SONY CDP-101. Since then a quite bunch of cd’s players have been set on my rack but there is one in particular I purchased in 1992, is the DENON DCD-2560. It is a keeper- winner for me. I have recently fully recapped it and swapped the output opamps for a BB opa2134s, OMG what an upgrade, it sounds richer, fuller sound with awesome mids and stunning lows and highs are sweet and spot on. I truly believe CD format will improve sales within we the lovers of the physical format and... no pops, ticks, messy cleaning products and NO stand ups to turn the thing over! LONG LIVE THE CD!

CDs will come back in style when streaming platforms will close down. Vinyl is becoming way to expensive for the average customer and streaming isn't profitable for 99.99% of the artists. While this is the worst time to buy vinyl, low prices and low demand make it an excellent time to buy CDs.

I love both cds and records. Each has its right.....👍👍👍👍

The "cds were harsh sounding" line is a myth. I have a Denon DCD-1500 which is decades old that can compete in every way with a modern setup. It's buttery smooth and has a very analog sound profile. The headphone amp is outstanding and the unit itself is built like a brick sh*thouse.

CD dead??? I think not. I love my Cambridge CXC transport and Schiit Modi 3.

Love my 20 year old Sony CD player, it just sounds like the 1990’s 🤘🤘

Listening to streamed music is like riding on the bus. Listening to your own CD is like driving your own convertible.

Bought an Arcam Alpha 7 cd player for £90 from gumtree a few years ago and it sounds miles better than streaming to my ears.

Long live the CD! I'm purchasing more CDs than ever. I just wish some hipster record labels, like Editions Mego and Black Truffle, would offer the choice of CD, instead of vinyl or download only. Since CD is cheap to manufacture, I don't understand why they can't press up at least a small number of CDs for people who prefer CDs. I refuse to pay for overpriced new vinyl. And much of the experimental music I listen to sounds horrible with pops and clicks during the quieter passages. And I will never pay for a download. I'd feel like I'm paying for air.

Thanks Paul, a reassuring video in respect of the future of CD. Following your review of the Audiolab 6000cdt I went and bought it. It connected to a chord mojo with a decent coax from chord. I love it! CD has never sounded so good to me. I love vinyl too but for CD is much better value, I've been picking up some great box sets recently. Thanks again!

New CD players are great sounding even on entry level stage. And many reissues on CD are better sounding than new vinyl reissues, and in majority cases also much cheaper. I use Denon DCD-520AE and for less than 200$ it is the best you can imagine for that money.

Following 30+ years of only taking vinyl seriously, I looked into achieving an analogue sound from CD without spending a fortune. So I now have experience with two Chinese players, both with valve output stages. The Line Magnetic LM215CD and the MHZS CD88J. They are both very musical even when compared to a top flight analogue system.

Yes the CD isn't going anywhere. Although the last 5 years or so I've gotten back into vinyl pretty seriously, I still have 2000 + CD's & will continue to listen to the CD format as long as I live. I bought a budget priced Onkyo C-7030 a few years back & am still very happy with it....

Just bought a Yamaha CD-S300B which is their base model...sounds marvellous.can't beat Yamaha for quality bang for the buck

I knew I had made the right decision, sticking with cd , I recently pushed the boat out and purchased a Marantz SA 10 . Amazing machine!!

Just bought a NAD C538 and I love it! Nobody wants CDs anymore, there's a massive wave of people getting rid of theirs, all the focus is on vinyl and therefore Cds are priced dirt cheap. There's never been a better time to buy em up and grow your collection!

Few days ago I bought for 10€ a Technics SL-PG370A from eBay. Not bad at all, the sound is good for my second "vintage" system and it's fast. From the time I pop in the cd to playing even the last track it takes two second, literally. Most new CD players can't do that, the take 5 second only to open the tray. Some streamers are slower too.

I owned Cambridge Audio CXC for 2 years. I loved it as a high value transport. This week I just upgraded to Jay's Audio CDT2-MK3. Jay's is simply amazing! It's easily my endgame transport. It is connected to Denafrips Venus II DAC.

Just bought a Marantz CD6007 recently to listen to my collection of CDs dating back 30 years. It is bringing back so much memories and happiness. Has not touch the CDs for quite a while. The Marantz is quite a nice player. My simple set up - CD player hooked up to powered speakers, Klipsch The Fives and a Boston subwoofer. Am pretty happy ! Suggest you add the Marantz CD6007 to your list. Enjoyed your video. Has subscribed.

CD's and records are great. Friends don't let friends stream!!

I’m a CD veteran also, my old standby single CD Sony has started tracking erroneously and I’m now in the market for a dedicated CD transport to mate with high-end powered 2.1 system that has its own DA. Good stuff here.

I recently picked up a Denon DCD-600ne. Under $450 on Amazon. It has a decent built-in DAC, and optical output, if you want to use your own DAC. I'm delighted with it.

Hi Paul I have just purchased a new CD Player. At around the £600.09 mark it’s the Atoll MD 100. After run -in the sound is incredible! It’s almost ethereal. The French do indeed make some excellent hi-fi and had some of the best organ composers in the world ie Louis Vierne.

The only downside of CD - and one I consider fairly major - is the so-called "loudness wars" that took over in the 90s and 2000s. Mixers and CD mastering people began to prioritize the loudness of the audio over the actual fidelity, which lead to massive horrible brickwalling, dynamic range completely crushed and parts of the songs that were previously the louder parts are blown out beyond recognition. This is most obvious to see by comparing a CD release from the early 80s to any sort of "remaster" version of the same CD from a decade or so later. Often, the only kind of "remastering" they do is just turning up all the levels to the max. This was all primarily to appeal to the broadest consumer markets possible, people who wouldn't be able to tell between good or bad mixes, but would complain about their Chinese knockoff integrated stereo systems not being able to blast a properly-mixed disc loud enough to rattle windows. I have genuinely seen many online argue that the "remastered" releases of many albums sound better for reasons such as "the original was too noisy" or "too quiet". It's a depressing state of affairs, and it became such a norm and standard to brickwall CD's, that in many cases, standard downloadable digital releases, or the versions released to streaming services, in many cases are actually better mixed than the physical CD release! Dreadful. As you say, CD will sometime soon begin to enter the niche market, and I truly hope that when it does, we get proper CD mixing back, and it becomes a respectable uncompressed digital source once again.

Streaming enthusiasts love to talk figures that mean nothing. On my Ayon CD player, I can switch between the 44.1k and 192k filter while the disc is playing and instantly scan for sonic differences. I much prefer the Red Book standard filter and have found that on other machines which also give that option. So much for those extra kilobytes. The fact is, it is well established that the transport mechanics and the output stage of a CD player have always defined its sound most ( along with the support feet beneath but that's another story ) and modern streamers still don't bother to invest in getting a lot of the electronics surrounding the actual DAC and filters right. ( because high quality caps, ect, don't sell units like bragging about high-res files ) As Paul says, CD is a mature technology. So mature that a transport with a solid, CD-Pro level drive from the 1990s, feeding a Red Book DAC with a well designed output stage, on good mechanical supports, will destroy most £10K streamers, even with high-res DSD, when it comes to musically satisfying presentation rather than fancy and essentially meaningless bullshit like 'high resolution.' The great irony to all digital forms of musical playback is it is far more than a simple application or measure of numbers. Great digital music is based on solid mechanics, parasitical vibration control and good electronics, just like a turntable or loudspeaker.

I see Steely Dan - Gaucho, Two against nature and The very best of there. You have great taste. They're my favourite band of all time!

I am very happy listening to CDs now. The technology has improved so much since the started in the mid 80s. I had the usual Dual 8 bit D/A converters , no dither so the actual audible portion was only about 14 bits. Poor power supply which supplied both the motor and the DAC. Anyway I always gravitated towards my vinyl. But now the audio lab transport fed into the 6000A is completely enjoyable. Air, space, a natural sound. Voices, instruments, all very musical and life like. If this was the around at the start I probably would have left vinyl. And here is another consideration about streaming : The deep state knows what you listen to and when. Look what happened in Canada recently. It could be that anyone who listens regularly to music that they believe is hostile to the state will have their bank accounts frozen and declared an enemy of the state.

I am buying a new CD player after years living without one. I recently found out that I have a pretty nice CD collection. Some CDs are even worth something. So I want to listen to them again and a CD player is a nice addition to my vintage 70s stereo system.

Thought provoking video. I'm an avid user and collector of audiophile stuff but also as an engineer, I know my Marantz CD player does not put out a better S/PDIF bitstream than my Sony CDP-201 (still running great) or the no-name Chinese DVD player that i use most often. Likewise, music CDs are just differently encoded CD-ROMs with data structures that music CD players can read. CD-ROM error correction provides even with imperfections or wear in hardware, fingerprints or jazzercise accidents. your flight sim '99 disc reads the same exact 5 billion bits each time, everytime, even likely 2 decades later. Audio CDs are much more forgiving of errors but in most cases, the its the same data no matter how the disc is manufactured or if its a cheap burned CD. The thing that interests me are the attempts to improve on the audio CD format like SACD & DVD-A of which I have probably 40 albums worth.

cd's are amazing , i love them

Ive​ tried​ Rega​ Apollo but​ im​ very, very​ satisfied with​ Rega​ Saturn​ whose​ warm​ sound​ has​ never​ ceased to​ awe​ my​ mom, a​​ jazz​ aficionado​ cousin​ and​ me.​ It​ looks​ nicely study​ and​ quietly elegant​ too.​ The​ price​ is​ reasonable, i​ think, compared to​ the​ Hegel​ Mohican​ (almost​ accessible )​ or​ Chord cd​ players​ (ridicously priced! )​ or​ any​ of​ the​ Mcintosh​ gears​.​ Im​ told​ that​ Marantz​ and​ Denon​ produce wonderful​ equipment​ too.​ Another​ nice​ brand​ (if​ you​ want​ to​ try​ an​ Asian​ up-and​-coming​ manufacturer )​ is​ Cayin.​

I just found out recently how good of a CD player my old XBOX 360 is. I've been testing a bunch of my old, scratched cd's and it plays all of them without skips! I'm 45 and my cd's have taken a beating in the last 30 years.

My studio is using a Fostex cdr500 cd recorder with tremendous success as a mastering machine. The midrange is quite smooth and the Fostex enables you to record at different ratios. The only problem we have is finding a high level recordable cd.

Part of the reason for the vinyl revival is that people are being forced to sit down and actually listen to music again. The records haven't been butchered by mastering for loudness either, in the way that CDs often are, so they sound nice. For me, CD offers the same experience of ownership and, with the right equipment and when mastered sympathetically, superb sound quality. Long live the CD! By the way, if you want to hear some stunning music on CD try MA Recordings.

It’s amazing to see now there’s been an increase in CD sales now, which I understand because of the high costs of vinyl right now. Are you going to touch on that CD news? I think it’s great!

My favourite option is to find an older player from the late 90s, my current player is a Sony cdp-s1 which is as basic as it gets, but it runs as a transport because I run it with an external dac (smsl m100 mk2) so I technically brought a new cd player without buying a new cd player.

Very good review of players, and interesting content on the manufacturing process of CD’s. Another good player from Luxman, is the D-N150. Has a built Dac also.

Being 47, I've had CD players for 30 years now. First I had a Pioneer piece of garbage, then a decent Sony and after that a nice early 2000s Denon. I always heard incremental sound quality improvements with each one. Last year I bought a Marantz CD6006 for €422 which is now connected to a Rega Elex-R driving a pair of Dali Oberon 5 speakers. The CD6006 was such a huge improvement that I fell in love all over again with just sitting on the sofa and listening to music, I never had so much fun listening to my CD collection as I do now. The detail in the highs, the articulation and "meat" on the bass is wonderful but the lushness in the mids that puts the vocals in the room with me blows me away. The voices of David Sylvian, Liz Fraser, Perry Blake, Martin Gore... they sound like never before. The Marantz also has a front usb port which reads WAV files very nicely and MP3s which don't sound horrible through it. If you buy the newer CD6007 it also reads FLAC and DSD which makes it very versatile indeed. Nevertheless, CDs are the format which always sounds best to my ears and believe me I've listened to thousands of them. Oh, and nowadays you can buy them for 2 euros a piece in a flea market... CD is here to stay indeed! Oh, I bought an AudioQuest Evergreen rca interconnect for the CD player and it muddied the sound so much that I went back to the cheaper €10 Mitsai cables. The Evergreen sounds amazingly great with my Cambridge Dacmagic 100 though, go figure... hifi voodoo.

My NAD C521BEE compliments my system perfectly including my NAD C162 pre. Whilst I love spinning vinyl, CDs still play a large part in my listening repertoire. I have quite a few vinyl/CD duplicates which is very convenient a lot of the time 🌹🇦🇺

Around the early to mid 90s, that is when the CD-players with the best DACs were sold. Think of the Technics MASH technology. this went and by the 00s, people just had forgotten how good a CD-player (or need I say, the player its DAC) can sound.

Great video. Recently got a Cambridge cxc v2 transport as a Christmas gift for myself. All i can say is i dumped all my flac and dsd files and now happily hunting cheap used cds. I dont think ill be going back to digital files. Another great cd player is the marantz cd6007. I was supposed to get the marantz but decided on the Cambridge as its a specialist product.

Forgot to add that this video is great, I still listen to and buy new CDs and will purchase a new player this year.

The Marantz hdcd1 makes for not only an excellent small footprint cd player, but also an excellent transport. It even includes a very good built in headphone amplifier.

The Rotel CD11 Tribute is quite good for the $600 US price tag. Got tired of the “convenience” of iTunes and losing items they no longer sold. Considering I already had a good sized collection of CDs and there are still quality releases of older albums on CD, I took a chance on the Tribute. I’m glad I did. Wondering when they are going to apply KI’s work to the RCD 1572. If they do that then I would take a serious look at picking that one up as well.

Just bought a Denon DCD 600NE and the sound is remarkable! Love that DVD Player!

Vinyl records are usually recorded digitally first then streaming companies usually buy up said recoding so they can be streamed and charged for this, however I prefer to either have a cd or rip it to a server of high quality thus giving me the ability to play what I want without further charged!

Paul, thank you for a very perceptive presentation (That means I agree with you) With vinyl sales equalling CDs in the US last year as I heard it, I can see CDs easily doing the same turnabout as vinyl. The quality of pressings now, I bet, are much higher than back in my day. People benefiting from these new LP records have no experience with some of the terrible LPS that were released in days past. Seems like a high quality CD Revival would be a natural consequence of living in such a temporary insecure age. I think people find comfort and a feeling of stability from being able to purchase and hold something in their hand.

Properly digitalize a CD and compare the digital file to the CD best within the same unit with a CD player & DAC/Network Streamer unit and the digital version sounds at least as good, very often slighty better. So I have to admit the differences are small and could also be declared as taste rather than quality. And I completely agree that the CD still plays a vital role and can offer great sound.

I have no qualms of being a part of a niche market as a CD users. I have a a AVR with proper speakers, and physical media will always trump streaming on many levels. I am a heavy tech user. I have Spotify. One thing I noticed with having all the music at a touch of a button on your phone or whatever you play it on, you rifle through songs, skip tracks, use it to often for background noise. Streaming has made music disposable. Almost like fast food. I recently got into vinyl, and started buying more CDs again. I sit down with headphones and MINDFULLY listen to a full album like I use to when I was a kid before the internet was a thing. It is such a great refreshing return to how I listen to music.

I used to read Stereophile religiously, that is until I completed my hifi system and started spending a fortune on photography. Back in those days (circa 2010) Stereophile reviewers gushed over the Ayre C-5xeMP, which retailed for $6,000. These days you can find them on eBay for around $2,800. They play CDs, SACDs, and the audio portion of DVDs. (Ayre still makes a CD player for $10,000.) My understanding is that the analogue section of the Ayre C-5xeMP is discreet components, not chips (which can only help). The designer (whose name escapes me) was renown among audiophiles for his exquisite sounding equipment. I used to work in a recording studio and had many opportunities to hear master tapes reproduced on Studor and Ampex tape machines. Compared to that experience, I was chronically disappointed with vinyl, which never captured that in-your-face, utterly transparent, focused sound. The Ayre C-5xeMP playing a good CD reminds me of those days. Vinyl doesn't.

Still rocking my Marantz CD-63 Mk II Signature.

Over the last 5 years I've built up a sizable cd collection on the cheap...box sets 2nd hand galore....enough classical music to last me a lifetime as they were virtually giving them away at charity shops and boot sales and ebay ..I just swooped in buying artists I liked entire back catalogues 2nd hand off ebay and amazon.. ....I've noticed though that prices are creeping up and bargains whilst still out there are harder to find...but I've slowed down as I already have more than I need...some are still in their wrappers......it reminds me of when everyone ditched vinyl....I gave away my own well kept collection of 2000 lps when I switched to cd in the late 80s ..last year someone gave me a fairly good turntable but I prefer cd...I keep a handful of obscure lps I bought purely for nostalgia purposes as I like occasionally to hold and look at the covers ( Geoff love James bond themes...a TV themes album...a The Who "the story of the who"...a bert Weedon lp .a Tommy steel family album..all childhood stuff..lol) but...but I think cds are better sounding...more pure and after decades of listening to clear precision of what cds offer I find the faint crackling you detect sometimes in quiet passages of music really annoying...I even could hear it on a brand new Celeste album my son bought me so much so that I bought the cd version which comes with extra ...long live the cd and cd players...I thought at one time thet might stop producing then so bought a new one as spare...but I've been using my technics one and an old pioneer for the last 30 years so my new marantz 6006 uk edition will probably see me out as I'm in my 50s lol....Great channel BTW...

Cyrus cd-t through an old Audiolab M-DAC with a Chord Clearway coax cable is VERY impressive, great video btw.

You nailed it with this video. CD is only dead to the industry

I just undusted my cd collection that I haven’t used for the last 23 years. The reason is that I’m currently upgrading my hifi with new speakers, and also looking into high res streaming devices, paired with a decent external DAC. That DAC got me curious how my old cd’s would sound if I’d hook up a cd player to it. So I bought a cd device with digital out for 5 euros from the local 2nd hand shop. And I’m blown away by the clarity, resolution, dynamic range and sheer power. Having said that, I still wager that if you buy music now, the best quality would still be if you buy a WAV or AIFF and play it from a ‘bitperfect prepped’ computer, to an external DAC. Though in that case, a cd player is the more convenient playback method. 😅 Question: should I rip al my CD’s as FLAC onto my media server and play it from the streamer (Wiim Pro/Geshelli J2)?

Vinyl is trendy nowadays but CD as you rightly state has improved. I bought some budget CD players a couple of years ago for around £200 a piece, they featured 36 & 24 bit DACS as used in top models & I was surprised how good they were infact sounding up with high tech products of yesteryear in the 2 to 1K range.

I went to Best Buy for a CD player last year, not knowing that they wouldn't have any. I ended up getting a cheap DVD player to use with an outboard DAC (SchIIt Audio) to play CDS. Sounds super to my ears.

I have two Pioneer DV 563a DVD players I use to play CDs and they sound fantastic, especially on my tube amp system. I have tons of vinyl records, but I’m moving back towards the CD due to the cost of first pressing and used vinyl, and the sound is great!

I recently bought a Leak CDT. I would have liked to have compared it to the Audiolab 6000CDT, but "lockdown" got in the way. All I can say is that it has increased the enjoyment I get from listening to CDs, and WAV files (It has a USB port) recorded from LPs, sound (as far as I can tell) just like the original. Well worth a listen. Used via an Arcam iRDAC II btw.

I bought a CD player when they first came out in the early 1980s. The biggest upgrade was when they went from parallel DACs to oversampling 1-bit converters. And the sound quality of CDs themselves depends on the production and manufacture. The biggest sound quality problem with CDs that needs to be addressed is the 'sound wars' of CD producers. As long as they do this, forget about any fancy playback machines. To be honest, I'm not too impressed with gimmicky audiophile gadget players. But if someone wants to impress me, and justify their esoteric audiophile magical claims, give me an error correction readout. If their quality hypotheses are valid, a lower error rate will have the largest impact on audio quality. Decent DACs and sensible amplifier/buffer design is well understood, and should be able to be provided by any decent electronics engineer.

I have a Roksan Caspian M2 CD player and matching M2 integrated amplifier and they are a stunning combo. I went from a high end Audiolab pre/power amplification with a top Arcam CD player and it beats it hands down. By the way, the amp also handles vinyl very well too.

I know this model is far cheaper than any you mentioned at around $150 US, but I've had my Onkyo DX-C390 for a few years now and I'm about as pleased as I could be. It's a six disc changer, has both coaxial and optical digital output as well as RCA and it sounds great. Nice to hear about the new manufacturing standards, too.

One of the things often missed is the fact CD is read from physical pits on the CD. Ripped files are held in a magnetic format on the storage drive. I think this is where some of the magic is lost. If you want a 3D sound-stage, with real depth, avoid CD at your peril. I love the format. Long live the CD...... ps I have a Cyrus CD XT SE2 with psx-r power supply as transport into my Audiolab M-DAC, powered with Longdog Audio's, toroidal based, linear power supply. These are connected with an Atlas Opus OCC copper coax cable. I have had many CD sources but this really satisfies. I also have the DAC board grounded and all hifi tuning supreme fuses in IEC inputs and plugs. Gone whole hog (as been upgrading for some 25 years) to all Merlin Funnel Web mains cables too. Job done.... :0)

I hate the prices for brand new cd transports. I know there were high quality cd players sold in the past. Some might need overhauling with a new laser and some new belts or motor, but if they have a digital output there are hundreds of affordable DACs that makes the sound experience an excellent one. So please let us know what were these class acts from the last 15 to 20 years?

Still loving my Linn Ikemi, fabulous sounding machine and beautifully built... as for “digital”, well CD is digital. There’s no reason why streaming shouldn’t sound awesome too, I have a Linn Klimax Renew DS/1, it’s nothing to look at (in fact it’s tucked behind a Kallax unit), but it sounds sublime, hard to imagine anything sounding notably better.

I am VERY LATE to the party here. A CD transport worth considering, IMO, is the Cambridge Audio CXC at around £550 (as of Aug 2022).

Thank you, interesting as always. Unlike turntables eBay is the place for quality bargain CD players, the hipster rip off price for any old garbage hasn't taken hold.........yet. Still buy CD's, recently, £30 for a 24 track double vinyl album or a 48 track triple CD for £9.99, no brainer. I've always had and liked Pioneer CD players, built to last and seemed to play anything, can be a touch bright but easy to tame. Last players bought by myself and family have all been Marantz (6006UK was the last) fine quality bang for your buck, plays CD-R without issue, based on my ears I couldn't justify spending a penny more.

Finally the excellent players people bought in the nineties started wearing out and given large collections people needed to replace them. I have had great luck with used vinyl and cd's. Got to know what to look for though. I look for old, original pressings on vinyl and well reviewed cd's.

Thank you for the Audiolab 6000 CDT review as it prompted me to purchase one. My OPPO gave up it's digital ghost and I was looking for a replacement. This unit is a very steadfast logging hundreds of hours now and not a bit of problem. As an inveterate tinkerer. I like having a separate DAC that I can upgrade or change at will (Now a Schiit Gungnir Multibit) I also appreciate being able to tune the sound of my system with different digital cables. I happened into an expensive ($450) silver digital cable at a good price that is quite impressive however, one day out of boredom, I decided to do some Coax cable bottom feeding and ordered several cheap Coax cables from Amazon and Ebay. I was pleasantly surprised to discover some gems. I am now listening to a $30 digital cable with the expensive one on the side lines. I also discovered that the same company that makes my expensive cable also makes an excellent $90 cable. I'll post some suggestions when I get more time just in case anyone is interested.

Emotiva ERC-4 Great transport/DAC (transport and DAC can be used separately or together. Balanced and single- ended outputs

Love your videos, always look forward to hearing what you’ve got to say, with great interest.

Still using my Marantz CD 12 Transport and CD 12a Dac, that’s about 30 years old now. Still sounds fantastic.

Used Arcam DV135 for 120 usd with cheapest DAC for 6 usd in system that costed 500 usd. In future I may update DAC.

I have been buying CDs since 1986 and funnily enough the number of CDs I buy every year keeps increasing. Also, I have been buying SACDs since 2003 and Blu Ray audio discs since 2013. The silver disc is my source of happiness (along with my family, of course!)

I love that Mott the Hoople album, and the one that came before it.

It's hard to beat the bang-for-the-buck and disc-format versatility of a Sony blu-ray player w/ coax output plugged into your favorite $100-ish DAC. Great sound from your cd's AND concert video dvd's/blu-rays (Peter Gabriel's Secret World alone is worth the price of admission.) I can't see spending more on a dedicated cdp unless one is cd-centric in their listening habits.

Physical media is so great!! Especially as we see artist delete music off of streaming… STREAMING is not forever.. Vinyl and Cds are forever (if well taken care of)

Stay safe Paul. Thnx for your reviews.

Excellent presentation ... as always. Thank You Paul. Best wishes.

I still buy CDs. They sound great! If you are buying music on a streaming platfrom, you're not sure if it will not close in a few years. Nothing will ever beat a physical copy!

A central benefit of the CD/CD player, is the mere fact that not all artists are not available digitally. Prince while alive kept his catalog out of it. Other estates avoid digital or restrict catalog for streaming. "It is better to have physical music than just access to the content in the long run". Artists or estates can pull catalog from streaming. Digital platforms can be compromised, subject to crash or be sold to companies who place new terms on users. For those reasons in addition to sound quality, cd will always be a winner.

A very good budget model is the Marantz CD6007. For £400 it delivers excellent stereo separation and is great for classical music. I got one from my wife for Xmas to replace my 25 year old Marantz which I loved to bits but it stopped tracking reliably. Having just refurbished my 1978 AR XB 1 turntable and installed a new AT 540 ML cartridge, I was intrigued to do a side by side comparison using a Rogers A75 Mk 2 for phono input, feeding into a 100w a channel Cambridge amp, driving a £2000 Monitor audio speaker set up with a REL subwoofer (using the fancy REL cable to smooth out crossover). On classical music the Marantz holds its own with slightly more defined separation on choral music than the equivalent vinyl. It doesn’t have the brilliant attack, presence and timbre of the AR set up, on demo pieces like Carmina Burana on a top end 1970s DG vinyl pressing, but it does a very close second without all the worry about protecting pristine vinyl. Of course after a Christmas glass of vino, I wouldn’t risk playing vinyl, given the new stylus is close on £200 - I didn’t think of that back in the 70s when student mates dropped round to try their new ABBA albums on my fantastic turntable. I went though a few Grados in those days but my phenomenal Fidelity Research 101SE survived. Unfortunately, I could not get a new stylus. I think with inflation that cartridge would cost about £500 now. It was close on £100 in 1980. Horses for courses. Yes, a properly serviced and set up AR can track very good cartridges. With a super accurate protractor the AT tracks perfectly all the way to the inner grooves of the 1812 at 1.8g, which is the lowest recommended force for the AT. An AR was made and guaranteed to a broadcast standard and has a sprung sub chassis. Wow and flutter is less than 0.03%. Very few belt drives get that stability even at £1000+. The Marantz has a good headphone stage. Using my AT HT MX50x pro headphones, which are ruthless on exposing poor audio sources, the CD6007 was exact and uncoloured. Therefore, if you want a great mid level CD, as a complement to a high quality vinyl system, it’s very good value. It has digital outputs but I prefer the analogue connection into my Cambridge. That means the Marantz’s sound processing is very good. Hence its What HiFi awards. Great VFM and nicely made. Recommended for systems up to about £4K like mine. Definitely recommended with its partner 6007 amp and speakers up to about £1k, if they are reasonably sensitive, as the heart of a good music system. Just get to those car boot sales and buy up all the 80s and 90s DG, Phillips and Decca classical CDs you can.

I was listening to my CDs on my Luxman D-03X paired with it's brother the 509x and I was hearing many more things that I didn't hear before when I used my Sony XA5400ES. I actually listened to 4 cds in a row with no track skipping, which never happens. The D-03X DAC while streaming and using it's internal DAC is very composed. Vocals and strings are crisper with more sustain, it's dynamic and smooth like its CD player! No fatigue at all! I've been listening for 6 hrs straight and have ordered more discs for as little as $5. 👍

Am i the only one who likes both CD's and Vinyl haha, i dont think we need to fight about the 2 platforms.

A lot of this comes down to the mastering of the album. There are some cassettes back in the day that sounded better than some vinyl releases today! All because of the mastering process.

The Onkyo C-7030...now discontinued...was a fabulous player that performed high above its price point

I have a lot to learn about modern hifi being an audiofile from the 1980’s/90’s. I am using a Technics CD player that I have had for about 10 years that I thought sounded good but it looks like technology has come on. I had been concentrating on just buying records, CD’s and tapes with my expendable income and neglected to update my playing equipment but watching your channel has made me realise I could maybe do a bit better. Once I get back on my feet and the world gets back to some sort of normality then I will need to visit some hifi stores and have a good listen once again.

A couple of CD transports not included in your list were the Cirrus CD-T and the Audio Note CDT Zero. I tried to get a used Audio Note, but the CDT Zero model was no longer available. I was able to get a low hours demo Cirrus CD-T unit. I'm using a Meridian Director DAC which seems to be quite a good pairing. Thanks for explaining the rationale to get CD player / transport from a specialist manufacturer. So far I'm very pleased with the result.

A great overview, Paul. I have to make one correction though: Leema is indeed based in Wales, but in Welshpool, a long way north (about 100km as the crow flies) of the Valleys.

I have an excellent CD transport and two DAC's, a T+A and a Mojo. CD's do sound quite good however part of the limitation in my opinion and those of some people I know who ar smarter than me, is the connection. Most music servers and many streamers, obviously including those that are computer based, connect via USB. USB introduces jitter. The cable is a factor but the USB connection degrades the sound. Some cables, sources, and DAC's can reduce it but there is still inherent jitter. I recently added a new music server/streamer (Aurende N20) which had an AES output. Connected to either DAC the sound is superior to USB. Rips I make using DBpower amp sound closer to the CD played in real time via the transport. SPDIF is limited to 24/192 speed and also can't handle the higher DSD resolutions so there is that. I don't disagree with anything you've stated but suggest USB as a contributing factor in many cases. On the production side, a number of years ago a friend of mine was in charge of JVC's XRCD project. This was not different than Red Book CD, just really well executed from start to finish. The difference was quite notable. My friend was also the producer of some of the selections offered.

Someone should do a blind test on different cd players and see if there are any improvements the more expensive you go

Lyngdorf CD-2 💿 I believe it has their ICC (anti - clipping ) proprietary circuit to deal with the infamous CD “loudness wars”

I have a very old CD player, the Sony CDP-111 from 1984. Of course it's not new but it sounds so phenomenal. I bought a new Yamaha CD-S1000 and that too is so nice to listen to. That one is around 1300 bucks. I prefer CD over anything else. Using a new modern DAC with a CD player is also great. Great time to be alive and into music.

Oh, forgot​ to​ mention​ my​ favorite​ Wave​ Bose,​ a​ very​ practical​ (with​ Bluetooth ), stylishly ​ designed, producing​ a​ beautiful​ly​ sonorous base​ that​ fits my​ small​ condo​ room.​

I have a second-hand Sony CDP-XE510 from 1997 which I got for about 13 GBP. All it needed was a new tray belt and output RCA connections resoldered. Now I mostly use it as a transport with Yamaha RX-V685 receiver, hooked up via optical. I must say that I prefer its own analog output though, it sounds a bit more smooth than the pack of Burr-Browns in the receiver.