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A final CD player?

Anyone thinking of spending 555 money or even a lot more has to look at the TAD D-1000
Less money, DAC and Pre also in the box

Better than a 555 by some margin is my guess.
Not possible ?
Bet it is
 
It wasn’t a very good CD player over a decade ago brand new, never mind now. The thing was beaten by streamers practically before it came out of the box.
How was beaten? Were you there?
IME No streamer can sound as good as a cd player..
 
I’m sure Mike Reed will be here to pat you on the back and tell you it is wonderful - the bestest of the best, ever.

Well over the top as I wasn't singing the 555's praises; in fact (and you quoted me) I said " regardless of value". Don't you understand that phrase? I don't have any Naim so why should I extol the virtues of their top CDP ? I've heard it and have a friend who has one, but much prefer my own. It is still, however, i.m.o., considered to be among the top CDPs, or at least, was a couple of years ago. Don't know why, but you've got the wrong end of the stick here !
 
Re alternatives such as streaming or separate transport and dac solutions, I am grateful for the suggestions offered but I have made various attempts to pursue those in the past and been unsuccessful. It might have been a function of my poor choice of components, poor implementation or even cloth ears but having given them a shot. I am reluctant to keep trying.

The obsolescence risks re CD players are points well made but I am hoping that any unit with spare transport mechs (Isis) and/or digital inputs (Luxman, Isis and others) will partially mitigate that.
 
My CD player feeds my DAC via an 80cm coaxial cable. My streamer (which gets its music wirelessly) feeds the same DAC via a 20cm USB cable.

The streamer wins by a factor of 4 :)

Not that I can hear much difference, if any, between them...

No doubt somebody will be along shortly to tell me that I must have impaired hearing.
 
The streamer wins by a factor of 4 :)

Not that I can hear much difference, if any, between them...

No doubt somebody will be along shortly to tell me that I must have impaired hearing.

Why 4 x better if you can't hear the difference? Do you have mathematically impaired hearing, perchance?:)
 
The obsolescence risks re CD players are points well made but I am hoping that any unit with spare transport mechs (Isis) and/or digital inputs (Luxman, Isis and others) will partially mitigate that.

I'd say it would almost fully mitigate the situation. CDs plentiful, cheap as chips and still in production. Guaranteed longevity for a top player. Streaming? Can't comment but I thought that was more about new music and not caring about tactile ownership. More of an adjunct that a choice, methinks.
 
No doubt somebody will be along shortly to tell me that I must have impaired hearing.
Maybe just bias, you want that streamer to sound the same, it`s a pain in the ass to use cds..
I know people with huge flac libraries using streamers, while their high end cd players collecting dust, because streamers are good enough.
I don't think I can pick level matched a good dac out of a cd player or a streamer, but certainly I hardly listen to any album from start to finish on pc, as I do on a cd player..
 
My final CD player is a little-used Sony 777ES model. Well over £2000 when new, I paid £600 delivered.
I thought my Naim CD 3.5 was good, but this Sony is superb.
I will see me out, as I bought a spare transport for it.
Mind you, I still play lots of records...
 
My final CD player is a little-used Sony 777ES model. Well over £2000 when new, I paid £600 delivered.
I thought my Naim CD 3.5 was good, but this Sony is superb.
I will see me out, as I bought a spare transport for it.
Mind you, I still play lots of records...

A spare transport for a 777 - the rocking horse poop KSS-272A? Even over 10 years ago they were unobtanium- it took me 3 lower spec players with same mech before I found a good one, took me 2 years from memory (post here somewhere). I reckon the transport alone is worth more than £600 if you can prove its new.

Fantastically engineered players, but I didn’t like their sound compared to tda1541 based players. I’m still on the lookout for the Sony ES model with dual 1541s, missed one for £140 recently - I’d like to try modding one!
 
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Maybe just bias, you want that streamer to sound the same, it`s a pain in the ass to use cds..
I know people with huge flac libraries using streamers, while their high end cd players collecting dust, because streamers are good enough.
I don't think I can pick level matched a good dac out of a cd player or a streamer, but certainly I hardly listen to any album from start to finish on pc, as I do on a cd player..
I have about 500 recordings on CD which are not available via Qobuz; when that's the music I want, I play a CD. I still like them.

When I got the streamer I did some fairly extended comparisons between the same recording played via various routes - from CD, from SSD rip, via a stream. I kept notes. It was very hard to hear any differences; where there was one, the CD played via coaxial cable to the DAC and the ripped file from SSD (which were indistinguishable from each other) had a very slight edge over the same recording played as a stream, which was detectable only in an A/B comparison.

My experience (the one which matters to me) is that differences between speakers are considerable; differences between amplifiers are audible in some circumstances. Differences between delivery methods of the same digital signal are so trivial, if they exist at all, as to be not worth worrying about. YMMV, as they say.
 
Naim CDS3 and CDX2 are fine players though the CDS3 needs a separate power supply. However I found the Teddy Pardo PS to be as good as a Naim PS, a quarter the price and a third of the size. The CDX2 meanwhile sounds good, a little less polite than the CDS3 though.

However I do like the idea of a 'final' CDP having its internal DAC available from a separate input. This way you can access the player's very fine DAC with streamers or other inputs in the future.
 
Re alternatives such as streaming or separate transport and dac solutions, I am grateful for the suggestions offered but I have made various attempts to pursue those in the past and been unsuccessful. It might have been a function of my poor choice of components, poor implementation or even cloth ears but having given them a shot. I am reluctant to keep trying.

The obsolescence risks re CD players are points well made but I am hoping that any unit with spare transport mechs (Isis) and/or digital inputs (Luxman, Isis and others) will partially mitigate that.

If you're looking for obsolescence then just buy a Tascam pro machine from Studio Spares plus a couple of spare transports...

Tascam CD players

They have been discussed on here many times before. I'm sure there are other companies selling similar, plus Tascam also make CD recorders too...
 


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