CD Player/Transport Reviews

Sort By:  Post Date TitlePublish Date
CD Player/Transport Reviews
Primare CD32 CD player
Brian Damkroger  |  Jun 02, 2014  |  2 comments
Audiophiles spend a lot of time thinking about the law of diminishing returns. We'd all agree that spending $1000 to replace an iPhone and generic earbuds with one of Stephen Mejias's "Entry Level" systems is in the early, steep part of the curve: a huge jump in performance for relatively small investment. We'd also agree, or at least suspect, that after you've spent that $1000, the curve gets a lot flatter. What we don't agree on is the shape of the curve between these points. The ideal situation is to find the knee: the point at which the curve's slope changes dramatically. At the knee, we've gotten most of what we want, and the next increment of performance improvement is disproportionally expensive.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsMedia Server Reviews
NAD Masters Series M50 Digital Music Player & M52 Digital Music Vault
John Atkinson  |  May 02, 2014  |  8 comments
"Physical discs are so 20th century," I wrote back in 2006, when I began experimenting with using, in my high-end rig, a computer as a legitimate source of music. These days I rarely pop a disc into my Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP disc player, unless it's an SACD I want to hear, or a CD I haven't yet ripped into my library. But many audiophiles, even if attracted to the idea of using a file-based system as a primary music source, do not want a computer in their listening rooms. Nor do they want to be bothered by the fact that a computer demands too intimate a relationship with its user.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Rotel RCD-955AX and RCD-965BX CD players
Corey Greenberg  |  Apr 17, 2014  |  First Published: Mar 01, 1992  |  1 comments
On the mantel sat a stuffed Culo snake from Nuevo Laredo, with a red rubber tongue in freeze-frame flick. Above the bookcase hung the mounted head of a wild poi dog, killed in self-defense in Sri Lanka with only a Phillips-head screwdriver. A table-lamp made from a shellac'd, puffed-up frog wearing a sombrero and playing the contrabassoon bathed the room in a soft cream glow.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsJ. Gordon HoltAudacious Audio
Kyocera DA-910 CD player
J. Gordon Holt  |  Apr 10, 2014  |  First Published: Dec 01, 1985  |  6 comments
Those of our readers who are still anti-CD are going to be offended by what I am about to say. Partly because they do not want it to be true, but mainly because it is. I shall utter the heresy anyway: the Compact Disc is, right now, doing more for the cause of high-end audio than anything that has ever come along before!

There, I've said it. Now I shall explain it.

Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport Reviews
MSB Universal Media Transport plus
Jon Iverson  |  Mar 28, 2014  |  0 comments
My primary focus this month was MSB's Analog DAC, but since it needed some software updates, MSB suggested that the easiest way to install them was with their Universal Media Transport plus ($5995). Turned out the updates were easier via my regular Meridian Sooloos system, but since they'd sent me a sample of the UMT+, I hooked it up.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport Reviews
Parasound Halo CD 1 CD player
John Marks, Sam Tellig  |  Dec 03, 2013  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2013  |  4 comments
For the high-performance audio market, it makes a lot of sense to process digital audio data via sophisticated software running on a dedicated personal computer. Which brings us to Parasound's Halo CD 1 CD player ($4500). Some might find it questionable to release today, as one's first digital-disc player, a machine that plays only "Red Book" CDs, rather than a universal or near-universal (non–Blu-ray) player.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Audio Research Reference CD9 CD player/DAC
Fred Kaplan  |  Oct 07, 2013  |  7 comments
Now entering its fourth decade, the Compact Disc player seems to have reached a stage of maturity where the best models within a given price range will sound pretty much alike. The technology of the Compact Disc itself is set, its possibilities and limitations are well understood; and the designers of CD players who figure out how to stretch the former and finesse the latter wind up at about the same sonic place (again, for the same price), even if they've taken different routes to get there.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Aesthetix Saturn Romulus DAC/CD player
Jon Iverson  |  Oct 07, 2013  |  3 comments
Tubes?

In a CD player?

Century-old technology embedded in a modern digital design?

I realize that Aesthetix's Saturn Romulus is not the first disc player or D/A processor with tubes, nor will it be the last—but does combining these technologies even make sense? Are audiophiles working at cross purposes to themselves, looking for modern perfection but preferring a little old-school sweetening here and there?

Continue Reading »
Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsCD Player/Transport ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
The Mission System
John Atkinson  |  Feb 24, 2013  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1987  |  1 comments
Since its founding just over ten years ago, Mission Electronics has grown to become one of the largest "real" hi-fi companies in the UK. Although their product line originally consisted of three relatively conventional loudspeakers, it rapidly grew to encompass high-end pre- and power amplifiers, cartridges, tonearms, and turntables, and, in the mid 1980s, a system concept based on CD replay and relatively inexpensive electronics: the Cyrus amplifiers and tuner.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
AVM Evolution C9 CD receiver
Art Dudley  |  Feb 06, 2013  |  1 comments
In a perfect world, all a serious record lover would need to enjoy music at home would be a single source component, one or two loudspeakers, and one good integrated amplifier. Speaker wire would be given by the dealer, free of charge, to any shopper who spent x number of dollars on new gear. Cable risers would come in cereal boxes.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsAudacious Audio
YBA CD 1 Blue Laser CD player
Jonathan Scull  |  Jan 26, 2013  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1997  |  12 comments
ybacd101.jpgI'm about to out YYves-Bernard André as one of the great unknown tweakers of high-end audio. (My own predilection for stepping into uncharted tweakwaters is well known.) Yves-Bernard, his wife and partner Ariane Moran, and importer/distributor Daniel Jacques of Audio Plus Services seemed perfectly sanguine about letting the cat out of the bag. And why not? In a singular way, the YBA audio solution encompasses both the supertweak and the more-casual-about-equipment music lover.

The YBA CD 1 Blue Laser (or Lecteur CD 1, as it's known at home in France) breaks new ground. It is very French in that it's individualistic in the extreme, and perfectly embodies current thinking chez YBA regarding music playback in the home. Its design dates back to 1991, a point Yves-Bernard takes pains to point out in the manual.

Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsAudacious AudioDigital Processor Reviews
MSB Technology Platinum Data CD IV transport & Diamond DAC IV & D/A converter
Jon Iverson  |  Oct 07, 2012  |  7 comments
The audiophile does not pursue music reproduction because it is useful; he pursues it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If music were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and if music were not worth knowing life would not be worth living.

My apologies for corrupting the well-known statement by French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912), in which he described his relationship with science and nature. But substituting audiophile for scientist and music for nature, I feel the sentiment expresses what drives many audiophiles to the extremes for which mere mortals often chide us.

Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsBudget Component ReviewsThe Entry Level
The Entry Level #22
Stephen Mejias  |  Oct 05, 2012  |  3 comments
The Tannoy Mercury V1 loudspeakers ($320/pair; see last month's column) were already carefully packed in their box, pushed into a corner of my messy kitchen, ready to go to John Atkinson for a Follow-Up—but I couldn't stop thinking about them. Their delicate, graceful highs and tight, properly balanced bass had entranced me, and, now, as I listened over and over to a recent reissue of Bill Dixon's amazing Intents and Purposes (CD, International Phonograph LSP-3844), I felt a strange urge to unpack the Tannoys and return them to my listening room. I had to know how Intents and Purposes would sound through the Tannoys.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport Reviews
Philips CDR880 CD-R/RW CD recorder
Wes Phillips  |  Jul 20, 2012  |  First Published: Sep 01, 1998  |  8 comments
Back when the CD was a pup, I used to hear people say, "I refuse to buy a CD player until they can record." Ha ha, I thought, smart-ass audiophile that I was, they're gonna wait for a long time—that's never gonna happen. I was half right—it has been a long time coming. But I was also, as my football coach used to insist, half-fast. "Never" has arrived.
Continue Reading »
CD Player/Transport ReviewsAudacious Audio
Audio Note CD-4.1x CD player
Art Dudley  |  Jul 05, 2012  |  4 comments
For a manufacturer to squeeze money from the stone that is my CD-player budget, his products would have to be both exceptional and affordable. And as long as I'm reporting from Fantasyland, I'll ask that they also be obsolescence-proof.
Continue Reading »

Pages

X