Any suggestions for an upgrade on my CD player would be appreciated. Now I’m just using a run of the mill Sony. I’m sure my Zen 25th amp deserves better. I play a lot of CD’s so wanted to start researching a better component.

Thanks, I’ll take a look. Open to suggestions.

Not very many options for high quality cd players these days, and it's telling that the two recommended so far are transports that one needs to use a DAC with.

My own experience is that the quality that great electrical treatment, isolation treatment and cabling in tandem with the wonderful revealing clarity of Decware components led me on a quest for the best cd sound I could find. I ended up with a duo that lists for 12 thousand dollars! (Though that's far more than I paid for mine). This combo makes wonderful sound, and the Zen components reveal just how amazing the formats can be, but I would hardly recommend anyone spend that much, that would be far too presumptuous of me.

First of the other two best I've heard at a better price point is recently discontinued and no longer available: an Oppo UDP-2005. Oppo Digital ceased existing as a company this year and this 1300 dollar list machine was a real bargain. If you can find one at a great price it's worth hearing. I wasn't crazy about earlier Oppos but the DAC section in this one is very good and it plays CD and SACD and Blu-ray, and can serve as a playback component for many digital file formats if you're into that, and as a preamp for the system as well.

My other favorite is a Denon 100th Anniversary universal player no longer made which also has an accessible excellent DAC section, the DCD-A100. I still see one come up for sale now and then and it's highly recommended. Very analog sounding.

Thanks guys your suggestion will help for sure. I’ll start searching.

Could not have said it better myself Donnie.

With all of the money you just saved, buy yourself a good digital cable and some good interconnects and call it a day.

Makes sense. I will say that I have heard significant differences between dedicated transports and those within a cd player used wit an outboard DAC. One can almost always do better. It's sort of a matter of how far you want to go.

It's a pain in the ass to rip CD collections to digital, but I'm so glad I did. 1300 CDs took 3 months to do, but having it all archived and backed up in two different places - I've been all digital for 5 years now and don't regret it at all.

Ease of access, especially with great systems like Roon, and being able to have a simple, easy to upgrade system is amazing. I have an Endpoint (the device that feeds the music to the DAC, in this case a computer), a nice DAC (in this case the TEAC NT-503 or PS Audio DirectStream), and Decware amp. Done and done. If newer DAC technology comes out, I can swap in a new DAC in 5 minutes and go on with life. Love it.

Sure, I sometimes miss the ritual of threading a reel to reel or dropping a needle, but I'm much happier now.  :)

StanleyG...it took me like 5 months to rip my 1000+ CD collection.  It sometimes felt like a chore, so I did it at my leisure and took my time.  

One suggestion... I would rip them bit perfect and set the output to 2 separate files for each song.  That way you create a full set for archival purposes only that is looseless, and the other set for playback only.  If something happens with your playback files...you can recreate another digital file from the looseless archived file.  For me...my archival file was FLAC, and my playback file was AIFF.   I had also saved the log file for each rip as well. Both formats are considered looseless formats, but this would allow you to easily differentiate between the archived file, and the playback file.  Like Eric...I have two copies of my archived music in two separate locations.  One is on a NAS server/ RAID drive, and the other on a separate hard drive.

At the time when I ripped my collection, I used XLD ripper for my MAC.  But once I upgraded to High Sierra, the XLD ripper does not have an update as of yet.  I believe guys are now using dbPoweramp for Mac as their choice ripper.  Just some food for thought.  

StanleyG,
I’m surprised Small Green Computer isn’t on your radar, you have dealt with them before it looks like. Give Andrew Gilliam a call and discuss your situation with him. He set me up with my SONICTRANSPORTER AP I7 4TB (ROON SERVER) and I am really happy with it. It (depending on the disc) takes me roughly 10 minutes give or take to rip a perfect copy of any disc. It’s a great companion to the gear you already have and can be had in many configurations. Anyway, food for thought, maybe you have explored this and for some reason it didn’t appeal.
Best,
Scott

I haven't heard all that gear your asking about, in fact, I'd really like to put the PS Audio Memory player side by side with my Audio Computer and see which sounds better.

That said, anything you can do to reduce jitter in your chain will give you the best sound.  I've listened to multi-thousand dollar transports hooked up to a DAC that got trumped by a flash drive with the same CD on it, plugged directly into the same DAC.  Many in the Bits-is-Bits camp will say this is bullshit, but the designers of this gear even admitted it's possible because of the reduction of jitter. You can spend thousands on a transport to get super isolated power supplies and the best components and all that to reduce jitter - or you can simply bypass all that and plug a  $30 flash drive into the same DAC and get equal or better results.

So I'd speculate a device like the PS Audio Memory Player would trump most other CD players or Transports because the whole purpose of the buffer (and the I2S if you have a PS Audio Direct Stream!!!) is to reduce jitter.

A simple $300 beater computer with good bit perfect software could blow away a $3000 transport, or it could sound way worse, again, because of jitter.  

Cost wise, I think playing files from a PC will get you better sound (less jitter) than high dollar gear, unless it's something purpose built like the PS Audio Memory Player to DirestStream which has so many advantages I expect it would spank any computer system I could build (that is built for less than the Memory Player costs).  

Still, I'd love to take the Pepsi challenge and see if I could build a cheap PC that bests the Memory Player or other high end transport. It might provide insights into how to make the PC better.

My DirectStream has a form of the Digital Lens buffer in the Bridge II network interface if I recall correctly. I'm not sure there is anything like that, software wise, that could be done on the PC. That kind of memory buffer (which is what the digital lens is) is something that usually gets implemented on the DAC....because that's where the jitter needs to be filtered out just before it hits the DAC chip. Doing it on the PC *might* help, but then you're still at the mercy of your interface and cable *between* the PC and the DAC.

For example, we do some sort of Memory Player buffering magic on the PC and reduce the jitter from 10 to 5 (just making up arbitrary numbers for my example), but then you go out an optical port and it's 50 cent (from the lowest bidder) converter, through your fancy $300 TOSLINK cable, and now your DAC converts it through it's $1 (from the lowest bidder) converter and it gains 10 jitter....your total jitter would be 15.  Better than without - but your real goal would be to have that Digital Lens technology right where the data is coming in, buffer and reclock to reduce that jitter to my arbitrary example of 5.

Where a combo like the PS Audio Memory Player and DirectStream knock all the other systems on their butts, is because the Memory Player takes your data in the buffer getting you my imaginary measurement of only 5 jitter, then feeds that data directly to the DAC chip via I2S.  I2S being the native interface of DAC chips, it doesn't need to go through any jitter causing 50 cent interfaces.

At least that's how I understand it. Ted Smith says it's all a moot point because the DirectStream ignores any clock information so the external jitter is a non issue....but then I wonder why the I2S sounds that much better?

Again, my point is all about Jitter - so in the end it's really your DAC that will make the *biggest* impact on jitter reduction and sound quality - but I still feel the better the signal is you can give your DAC to work with, then less it has to work to make it sound good. (shrug).

I hope some of that made sense. It's tough because every DAC does it's thing differently (at the audiophile level) depending on how the designer tackles their goals (and their budget).

Quote:


I still giggle at how I almost fell out of my chair when you told me how many CDs you have. I agree, that would be a non-starter for archiving - and I think you have the best setup you could have for CDs.

I think I get what you're saying about the I2S vs AES/EBU - I could you see preferring the latter and myself the former.

But you know, there's still guys out there that say we are deluding ourselves and cables don't matter...or our cables must be defective if we hear a difference. LOL

Guys,

It may be time to think about ripping your large CD collections. I have roughly 1500 CD's, a good many at least 30 years old. I've had 2 in the last month start sounding crazy. Not skipping, but the sound just breaking up real bad. I take very good care of my albums and CD's, so its not a handling issue. Bottom line is that a CD will not last forever, and that age may cause some kind of breakdown in chemistry. We are the testing community. Some of us were there to buy them from the beginning. Time will tell, but i don't want to lose what I have, so I'll soon get set up to rip mine.

Very sound advice Geno!  You are correct in that optical media is time limited.  

And Lon, if I were you, I wouldn't bother either.  That is WAY too many discs to rip yourself.  The only alternative is sending them out to be ripped by a service company.  But then you must contend with the hassle of packaging them up and of course, the cost of the service itself.  But, I would imagine you have a real asset in your collection so the small price per disc to pay to have them ripped by a third party would still be far outweighed by the value of that music, even in digital file form.

Jeff, that's probably true. But I don't want them ripped. I don't do computer audio, I don't use portable players, I don't want to do anything other than spin discs. And I haven't had "failures" to contend with and honestly don't expect to, and if I do, I can't say I don't have a lot more discs!

I'll leave all the ripping, files and streaming to those who like that. I'm not among those.

dbpower amp and never look back.  trust me you can get use to the convenience of having 2k worth of perfectly ripped cds at your finger tips, very quickly.  just do a few at a time while on the computer and you'll be done quicker than you think.  its so nice!  ive been doing this for ~5yrs.  yes it's a pain to get started, but after that...
then back them up and give a friend a copy too.  then you're covered.

save the need to play something that spins for your analog rig.

Sorry guys, ripping cds seems such a waste of time for me as I have no intention of using rips. Personally I never listen on a computer so there would be no ripping as I listen going on. Enjoy the ripping and the files! I'm enjoying my discs.

Archie,
On JRiver you can scroll through all of your album covers if you would like. I like looking at mine by artist and then going down from there.
Truthfully, most of the time I just let the software pick what to listen to because, well, I'm lazy that way.
https://www.jriver.com/index.html

@lon
most aren't listening to them on computer.  i am using dbpoweramp to rip them using my computers cd drive.  they are ripped to a unique internal hd that i use as a "server".  they are perfect flac file rips.  you can do anything with them from there.  
i use Daphile (it's like jriver) as my headless OS and a player (like the ones lonely raven builds (i build my own), or use an intel nuc).  i control it with anything on my network (phone, pc, tablet, etc..).
i have 3x of these setups in my house that all pull flac file music from that "server" on my pc.
now, using os's like daphile, jriver, roon, etc... you can play other things too.  i enjoy streaming radio paradice using a daphile addon.

i love spinning a lp, but most of the time i just want to sit back and relax and this setup allows for that.  

gotcha!  i forget some/most don't have big pc with all that shit on them anymore.