Although the 8200CD is very good considering its price it's not in the same league as some CD players the OP could buy within his budget.
+1
Where the 8200CD falls short, IMHO, lies in the build quality, where the targeted price-point has resulted in some cut corners - particularly in the disk loader tray (flimsy plastic) and in the transport mechanism used (computer-grade multi-type). Sonically, it is a pretty good player but not quite up there with other players in the OPs new player budget area (GBP5,000.00) - which is to be expected given the 8200CD's price of under one fifth of that amount.
The two one-box players listed in an earlier post (Esoteric K-07X and Emm Labs CDSA) are in a totally different league to the 8200CD and to compare the 8200CD with either of these two high-end players is an unfair comparison. Both are extremely well-constructed, employing transport mechanisms that probably cost more than the 8200CD complete with remote and packaging.
The Emm Labs CDSA is probably the most musical sounding one-box CD player I've ever auditioned - but at >$9,000.00 it should be.
While these two one-box players may seem ridiculously pricey, they are by no means the most costly CD replay options available - there are a few that would scare the cr*p out of most of our bank managers...
My own path up the CD replay ladder was, initially, a rather tentative one - I was not convinced that "perfect sound forever" was a valid claim, particularly after hearing some of those early 1980s CDs. I eventually succumbed to family pressure and bought the cheapest CD player I could find to shut them up - it was not for me but for the wife and kids and to protect my AT OC5 MM cartridge...
What came as a surprise was when a mate popped 'round with some decent CDs (Sheffield Labs) and we tried them on the badge-engineered Pacific Rim player, they actually sounded a lot better than expected.
The next upgrade saw the CD player replaced by a Rotel RCD965BX which improved things to a point where I started buying CDs (helped by vinyl vanishing from the music store shelves). Some tweaks followed: Trichord Clock 2 upgrade and then a move to the Rotel discrete analogue ouput stage.
By this stage, the CD collection had grown and now included music not already owned on vinyl and, when the next upgrade came along, the RCD965 was replaced by a CDT/DAC combo. In between buying the Rotel and buying the CDT/DAC, I'd done a lot of researching and auditioning and had settled on Theta Digital as preferred manufacturer. This first CDT/DAC combo comprised a Theta Data Basic transport plus a Theta DSPro Progeny DAC.
Burglars spoilt this burgeoning relationship and a new CDT/DAC arrived: Theta Data Basic II and Theta DSPro Prime IIa. This lasted about a year until along came a Theta DSPro GenVa (a long term object of lust).
This combo served me very well - delivering one of the most appealing digital source performances I'd heard. In the meantime, Neil Sinclair sold off Theta to some US-based mass market audio manufacturer who dropped support for Neil's babies, so when the GenVa eventually died no spares were available and the Theta brand had lost its attraction, so eventually opted for the Bryston BDA-1 as a partner to the Theta Data Basic II (still in use today).
What I liked about Bryston was their confidence in the build and QA that saw them offering 20 year warranties on amplifiers and 5 year warranties on digital products. This, coupled with "better-than-average-but-not-outstanding" sound quality, was enough to tip the balance in their favour.
The BDA-1 is NOT a Theta GenVa but does a remarkably good job given its price point of around 25% of the GenVa - plus it offers eight selectable digital inputs and can function as a source selector for digital sources.
I've had the BDA-1 for around 4-5 years now and, in the years since buying, I've noted that Bryston have released two updated DAC products - the BDA-2 and the BDA-3. These changes have seen shifts in DAC chip used, improvements in USB bit-depth/sample rate, inclusion of HDMI/DSD, and some other minor enhancements to track shifts in technology.
This last "product path" demonstrates just how fast DAC hardware/software is evolving - while optical disk transports have virtually ground to a halt in terms of evolution.
The question then of "one-box-CDP" versus "two-box-CDT/DAC" does need to be considered - even if only from an optical replay perspective. The "two-box" option does allow one to upgrade only the DAC and retain the transport, while a "one-box" approach will require a complete replacement.
The other aspect that comes to mind (based on the Bryston product road map) is the growing potential for a DAC to fulfil the role of digital source selector and, thereby, to facilitate any integration between physical-media-based audio-only, virtual-media-based audio and/or video, broadcast media based audio/video, and web-streamed audio/video sub-systems.
So, while a one-box CD replay solution will reduce rack clutter and - potentially - have better WAF and may also offer some advantages in SQ due to the elimination of digital interconnections (junction-cable-junction), there is a valid case for taking a long and hard look at a two-box solution.
Dave
