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Sugarite
 
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Default Any difference between cheapo CD players and super expensive high end cd players?

I know a guy that just got a $1500 CD player. I mean i dont know about
you but while I understand purchasing an expensive turntable and
cartridge I have never heard any difference between CD players. If
there were a difference wouldn't you see some of these high priced cd
players poping up in high end studios? all i ever see are consumer
models. just wondering.


CD players are pretty much dead. There's nothing about CD playback that
doesn't apply to DVD playback too, so it's pretty silly to go long on a
device that is limited to CD's when it's only a few components away from
supporting DVD's too.

And the addition of buffers to eliminate jitter problems coincided with the
advent of DVD player. Buffering is of great benefit to CD playback since
virtually all CD's manufactured prior to 1998 or burned on a consumer CD-R
generally have rampant jitter. The buffering allows the data stream to be
reconstituted on a first-in-first-out basis and clocked much better than
poorly manufactured or burned CD's. Buffering is also imperative to DVD
playback in order to process the video and audio data to be properly
synchronized.

Then there's the minimum 24-bit 96kHz d/a converters required by DVD
standard, something that benefits CD playback as well. Generally the data
is up-sampled to the highest resolution which benefits a/d conversion
greatly too (I'm not going to explain here, search for yourself or better
yet try it for yourself). My Toshiba SD2900 DVD player has a 192kHz d/a
converter, cost me $80, and wantonly kicks the snot out of a $400 NAD 514
from 5 years ago (which broke). I just wish the Toshiba had a s/pdif input
to use the d/a converter separately, I'd probably find a studio use for it
sooner or later, and I'm certain it competes with the d/a converters found
in most common audio interfaces. Thank the cheap Korean crap for driving
down DVD player prices!

The key components that distinguish high-end CD players are discrete power
supplies for at least the transport and d/a converter, a tube line-amp, and
a better acoustic environment for the transport and clock crystals etc, all
of which benefits DVD playback as well. I definitely wouldn't spend
anywhere near that kind of money on any optical media deck at this point
since there's 3 new standards that aren't fully implemented yet, SACD, HDCD,
and DVD-A. For $1500 it should be able to play everything and very very
well.

Somebody mentioned Theta. Yum! I was keen on the Dynaco CD players with
tube line-amps too, great value, a few mods made them really sing. Then
there's Cali Audio Labs, Mark Levinson, Conrad Johnson, etc... But like I
said, ancient history now, unless they're applying those advantages to
multi-platform players, which should be commonplace within the next 6
months. Until then, $80 gets you a long way.