CD Player/Transport Reviews

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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Krell KPS-20i CD player
Robert Harley  |  Apr 03, 2009  |  First Published: Apr 03, 1995  |  0 comments
The Krell KPS-20i (KPS stands for "Krell Playback System") is essentially a CD transport and digital processor in one chassis. What make the KPS-20i different from a CD player are the unit's five digital inputs, which allow the KPS-20i to function as a digital/analog converter for external digital sources.
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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.

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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Linn Classik CD receiver
Chip Stern  |  Nov 14, 2000  |  0 comments
Over the past two decades, enough advances in the high-end audio industry have trickled down to aspiring audiophiles that we now enjoy a level of high-value, high-resolution performance that would have seemed unattainable even just a few years ago. Still, immersion in a profound musical experience remains an ephemeral goal to potential converts, given the level of expertise that seems necessary to assemble a truly audiophile set of separates.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Linn Karik/Numerik CD player
Robert Harley  |  Jan 28, 1995  |  First Published: Jan 28, 1992  |  0 comments
When the Compact Disc was first introduced nearly ten years ago, many were critical of the sound quality from this medium that promised "Perfect Sound Forever." To many sensitive listeners digital playback was a travesty that paled by comparison to even modestly priced turntable/arm/cartridge combinations. Ironically, those listeners who first praised CD sound have been forced to recant when confronted by the huge improvements in digital to analog conversion (and A/D conversion) seen in the past few years.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Linn Majik CD player
Art Dudley  |  Mar 25, 2007  |  0 comments
In the early 1980s, Ivor Tiefenbrun, of Linn Products, Ltd., compared digital audio to "a nasty disease" that his company offered not to spread. Less than 25 years later, digital sources outnumber analog ones in Linn's product line—so much so that the venerable Scottish manufacturer has expanded its line of disc players to encompass two different formats: multi- and two-channel.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player
Wes Phillips  |  Feb 07, 1999  |  0 comments
A funny thing happened to Linn Product's Brian Morris when he attempted to bring Linn's new Sondek CD12 through Customs as hand-luggage:
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Luxman D-105u CD player
Guy Lemcoe  |  Sep 08, 2020  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1991  |  2 comments
The $1200 D-105u, the top of Luxman's CD-player line, is novel in its twin-triode vacuum-tube amplification in the analog output stage. This configuration is said to provide high linearity with low distortion and that hard-to-quantify musicality found in tubed products. In addition, the D-105u incorporates an anti-vibration laser pick-up mechanism and a high-mass magnetic disc clamper, the latter feature said to mass-load the disc center to minimize spindle-motor microvibration, thus improving tracking accuracy for lowest error rate.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Métronome Technologie AQWO SACD/CD transport and D/A processor
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Feb 21, 2020  |  9 comments
In an era when polar opposites compete as absolutes, it can be a challenge to acknowledge the different and equally valid ways in which audiophiles approach musical truth. But the reality is that our perceptions of how reproduced music should sound are determined, to a large extent, by how we approach the live experience.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Marantz CD-94 CD player
Thomas J. Norton, Sam Tellig  |  Nov 12, 2015  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1988  |  0 comments
Let's go back a few years. Well, more than a few, actually. The electronics end of high-end audio consisted of two companies—Marantz and McIntosh. If you were not up to shopping at their stratospheric price level—even though the industry hadn't yet invented components priced to compete with automobiles—you could always fall back on Dynaco, the poor man's high end in kit form. You hooked all this together with two-dollar connecting cables and 16-gauge zip cord purchased from the local electrical supply house, or—if you felt particularly flush—you'd spend a few (very few) bucks more at Fred's Stereo for the cables with the fancy molded plugs. Hoses were used for watering the lawns.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Marantz CD5004 CD player
Robert J. Reina  |  Mar 18, 2011  |  13 comments
After writing my very favorable review of Marantz's PM5003 integrated amplifier ($449.99) for the January 2010 issue, I began to fantasize about how it might be packaged with other components to create a dynamite entry-level system for about $1000 (excluding cables). A good place to start, I felt, was the companion model to the PM5003, Marantz's own CD5003 CD player. Since then, both have been replaced with new models, respectively the PM5004 and CD5004, so I sought out review samples of both. (To read how the PM5004 compares with the PM5003, see my "Follow-Up" on the Marantz PM5004 integrated amplifier.)
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Mark Levinson No.31 Reference CD transport
Robert Harley  |  Apr 11, 2008  |  First Published: Jun 11, 1993  |  0 comments
At a "Meet the Designers" panel discussion at the 1992 Los Angeles Stereophile High-End Hi-Fi Show, I asked a group of successful digital designers (footnote 1) each to state how much of a digital front end's sound quality they believed was due to the transport, digital processor, and interface between the two. There was virtual unanimity: Nearly everyone agreed that a digital processor accounts for about 50% of a digital source's sound quality, the transport 30%, and interface 20%.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Mark Levinson No.31.5 Reference CD transport
John Atkinson  |  Oct 26, 1996  |  0 comments
If there is a component category that causes the "objectivists" in the audio community to splutter uncontrollably over their cups of herbal tea, it is the high-end CD transport. For in their "bits is bits" world, all a transport is required to do is recover the digital data from a disc—much like a grown-up cousin of your computer's $25 floppy-disk drive. The thought of paying up to $10,000 for something so humble—and, in their eyes, unnecessary—typifies what these blinkered folks regard as the insanity of the High End.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Mark Levinson No.37 CD transport & No.36S D/A converter
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 25, 1997  |  0 comments
We are now well past the era in which every review of digital playback equipment had to begin with an apology for the medium. CD replay performance may, in fact, now be bumping up against a glass ceiling. But that doesn't discourage high-end audio manufacturers from trying to advance the art, and tempt audiophiles (at least those among us who are not hopeless digiphobes) out of our minds.
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CD Player/Transport Reviews
Mark Levinson No.39 CD player
Wes Phillips  |  Nov 26, 1997  |  0 comments
My next-door neighbor bought a late-'70s Porsche 924 last week, and I'm really glad he did. For one thing, it adds a little class to the 'hood—my 1984 Grand Wagoneer's peeling "wood paneling" is far more typical of the vehicles in my part of town. And Eric is just so obviously thrilled to own a piece of the legend—a real Teutonic driving machine.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
mbl 1611HR D/A converter & 1621 CD transport
Kalman Rubinson  |  Apr 01, 2007  |  First Published: Dec 01, 1999  |  0 comments
More than a decade ago, I bought a new pair of speakers and sought to find the most suitable cables for them. After auditioning a number of borrowed sets, I enlisted my daughter to confirm my selection. She grew up in a household where there was always good music playing on good equipment, but had no active interest in either. To placate Dad, she listened to a few of her own recordings with each of the various cables and then, lo and behold, reached the same conclusion I had. In fact, she described the differences almost exactly as I would have. I was ecstatic. Not only did it confirm my opinions about the cables, but it confirmed to me that any motivated listener can hear what golden-ear audiophiles obsess about. As I tried to express my joy to her, she left the room with this parting shot: "Yes, of course, but who cares?"
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