Is it unwise to buy a state of the art CD player at this time?

I am about to purchase an Esoteric K-01X SACD/CD player. I have yet to buy any streaming device, and may never buy one. Why do I want to listen to a product that gives me "CD like resolution"? Plus on top of that now I have to pay for a subscription every month for convenience over quality? I have an acquaintance who sells audio gear. He has been on me for a year to start streaming. The lure of multiple genres of music is alluring but not when it is a step backwards. I'm not lazy and don't mind getting up and changing discs in the player. I still have my LP's and may eventually buy another turntable. The reason for that is we did a side by side level matched comparison of the Mario Biondi song "This is what you are". The vinyl sounded more natural compared to the CD. If we had not done the side by side the results would have been different as both units sounded great!

The Esoteric K-01X player would be my first choice , if and when my Audio Aero CD/Dac player dies.

tidal is lossless streaming .. as good as any cd transport is ..tons of new music in true CD quality for the measly sum of $20
I compared tidal vs my ripped cd's and physical cd's on a transport.. no difference at all...

here in SA we have special pricing for tidal , $9.95 .. which I pay willingly..and I am listening to about 50% tidal albums
along with Roon , which is a user interface , you rediscover your own music collection and can explore tidal..
All you need is a closed laptop and a usb input on your DAC...simple .. you run a remote ap on your i/droid/pc/mac ...
My music listening habits have been expanded and changed fundamentally since going ROON/Tidal ..much to the better

to the OP .. buy what you fancy right now .. try buy used if you can as you lose little if you dont like it 6 months down the line and want to shift it without taking a bath
YOLO....

There are many excellent CD players currently on the market that will spin CD's, SACD's and has digital inputs which allow you to use the units DAC's for streaming Tidal or music from a server in your system. There is no need to have either or when you can have something that does it all.

Rodney Gold said:

tidal is lossless streaming .. as good as any cd transport is ..tons of new music in true CD quality for the measly sum of $20
I compared tidal vs my ripped cd's and physical cd's on a transport.. no difference at all...

here in SA we have special pricing for tidal , $9.95 .. which I pay willingly..and I am listening to about 50% tidal albums
along with Roon , which is a user interface , you rediscover your own music collection and can explore tidal..
All you need is a closed laptop and a usb input on your DAC...simple .. you run a remote ap on your i/droid/pc/mac ...
My music listening habits have been expanded and changed fundamentally since going ROON/Tidal ..much to the better

to the OP .. buy what you fancy right now .. try buy used if you can as you lose little if you dont like it 6 months down the line and want to shift it without taking a bath
YOLO....

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+1
+ more

NorthStar said:

* Notice the amount of jitter? ...Only 1ps!

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It looks great on paper but that doesn't really tell the story in practice because the physical CD medium itself (i.e the disk) is inherently and relatively high in jitter to begin with. It is why different CD / CD-Rs sound different in the same player even though they contain precisely the same data and it is why the sound often (but not always, depending on the circumstances) improves if the disk is secure ripped. In my experience the biggest challenges in CD reproduction comes from the combination of the transport and the physical media properties itself. If I compare, for example, two CD players with which I have actual experience - a relatively inexpensive Rega Saturn-R versus their very expensive (for most people) Isis model, I can make the Saturn-R sound better than the Isis simply through taking the data on a commercial pressed CD and burning it to a Taiyo Yuden Mastering CD-R (worth around $10 per individual blank disk if you can even still get them) using an audiophile quality Pioneer burner and playing that burned disk through the Saturn-R versus the original one. The reduction of jitter is the only difference and to me these sorts of examples support the notion that the biggest stumbling block in relative terms with the CD format is the disk itself and the manner in which it is produced (specifically materials, manufacturing and pressing quality).

None of this is really new though since Wilma Cozart-Fine first noticed this way back around 1990 when she started re-issuing the Mercury catalogue. She was getting tests disks back from the factories that had exactly the same data but they sounded different to each other (and all sounded worse than her masters which again contained precisely the same data). All I have done is able to ratify her findings myself using the modern technology alternatives currently available today. And it is not a subtle difference either - as you might imagine given just the CD media itself can make a bigger difference than many thousands of pounds difference in price between CD players.

Naturally as you get into the esoteric realm of CD transports such as being discussed in this thread, the physical characteristics of the media matter less, but still - I rate the quality of the transport itself much more highly than I do anything else in the CD reproduction chain simply because it is so incredibly difficult to deliver a low-jitter output via the combination of a CD and a CD transport versus the jitter levels inherent in the DAC section (which these days is much easier and much cheaper to achieve measured excellence). And it goes without saying that most people are not going reap the audible benefits of burning an entire CD collection to those mastering disks when they would instead simply rip the disks to an alternative form of storage.

Mind you, I am still a strong advocate of CD and use it myself for pleasure listening even though I am mucking with music workstations and thus music data files all the time. I still prefer CD to the computer audio / DAC combinations that are ubiquitous these days, especially if the music is delivered via the USB interface. And for someone who has money to spend but does not want to spend endless hour and months grappling with the incredible, time-sapping complexities of computer based audio, considerably better results will be obtained using a very high end CD transport that is built for no other reason than to extract the best possible results from the CD audio format.

Rodney Gold said:

tidal is lossless streaming .. as good as any cd transport is ..tons of new music in true CD quality for the measly sum of $20
I compared tidal vs my ripped cd's and physical cd's on a transport.. no difference at all...

here in SA we have special pricing for tidal , $9.95 .. which I pay willingly..and I am listening to about 50% tidal albums
along with Roon , which is a user interface , you rediscover your own music collection and can explore tidal..
All you need is a closed laptop and a usb input on your DAC...simple .. you run a remote ap on your i/droid/pc/mac ...
My music listening habits have been expanded and changed fundamentally since going ROON/Tidal ..much to the better

to the OP .. buy what you fancy right now .. try buy used if you can as you lose little if you dont like it 6 months down the line and want to shift it without taking a bath
YOLO....

Click to expand...

It all depends on user preferences and system. I own a Devialet 200 (it was a 400, but I have now sold the other 200) and sorry to say, it sounds much better when it is connected to the Metronome Calypso with a Transparent XL AES/EBU cable. To the point that the usual friends now say that using the Calypso in comparisons is "cheating". Even a CEC TL51 transport sounds better than redbook directly via USB. As well as using the excellent Berkeley Audio USB - AES/EBU converter. In my surely limited experience, direct USB to a non optimized average PC sounds poor. All IMHO and YMMV.

microstrip said:

It all depends on user preferences and system. I own a Devialet 200 (it was a 400, but I have now sold the other 200) and sorry to say, it sounds much better when it is connected to the Metronome Calypso with a Transparent XL AES/EBU cable. To the point that the usual friends now say that using the Calypso in comparisons is "cheating". Even a CEC TL51 transport sounds better than redbook directly via USB. As well as using the excellent Berkeley Audio USB - AES/EBU converter. In my surely limited experience, direct USB to a non optimized average PC sounds poor. All IMHO and YMMV.

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Indeed.

FrantzM said:

Indeed.

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What is your experience, YHO and YM?

Mobiusman said:

Amir,

I am also considering cancelling the SDR 4000SL and getting a better DAC than my current Meitner, which is quite good, and buying a better transport than the OPPO 103 D that I am currently using.

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This is a good idea. IMO, It is better to spend for a good DAC (preferably R2R). You have a quite long list.
Furthermore, you can use your current CD player as digital source associated with the DAC, waiting to rip all your CDs.

Rodney Gold said:

tidal is lossless streaming .. as good as any cd transport is ..tons of new music in true CD quality for the measly sum of $20
I compared tidal vs my ripped cd's and physical cd's on a transport.. no difference at all...

here in SA we have special pricing for tidal , $9.95 .. which I pay willingly..and I am listening to about 50% tidal albums
along with Roon , which is a user interface , you rediscover your own music collection and can explore tidal..
All you need is a closed laptop and a usb input on your DAC...simple .. you run a remote ap on your i/droid/pc/mac ...
My music listening habits have been expanded and changed fundamentally since going ROON/Tidal ..much to the better

to the OP .. buy what you fancy right now .. try buy used if you can as you lose little if you dont like it 6 months down the line and want to shift it without taking a bath
YOLO....

Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more, Rodney! While I do have an excellent CD player currently, I am clearly not in the camp willing to spend an arm and a leg on another state of the art CD player. Like in your case, the tidal/ Roon combo has changed my life completely, for the better, and is a no brainier frankly considering Tidal's SQ doesn't give up anything to normal 16/44 CD.

Vinyl, however, is a completely different animal (and format) altogether and I would still consider spending on it rather than a CDP.

Cheers

Sujay

history repeats - years ago, people threw out their lp's and record players......

analog brother said:

history repeats - years ago, people threw out their lp's and record players......

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Yes, they should never have bought those CD players in the first place

Al M. said:

In fact, it could be that many SACDs came from 16/44 PCM. They simply may have sounded better than the CD counterpart because greater care was taken in the mastering. Again, mastering trumps format.

This potential issue became apparent already in the first review of SACD in Hifi News & Review by Martin Colloms from 1998. He said the SACD layer of a particular SACD sounded much better than the CD layer, but then a simple frequency sweep over the content revealed that the mastering of the two layers was not the same! Comparing apples and oranges.



I sure know DACs that sound better in the DSD format (of which SACD is one example) than in the PCM format. One example is the NADAC. PCM through this DAC sounds best when upsampled to DSD.

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Another example i suppose of why Martin Colloms has been a well respected reviewer for so many years. I believe there is a youtube video or article somewhere showing LPs and CDs of the same album where the masterings are also different.

LL21 said:

Another example i suppose of why Martin Colloms has been a well respected reviewer for so many years. I believe there is a youtube video or article somewhere showing LPs and CDs of the same album where the masterings are also different.

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The article Pace, Rhythm, & Dynamics by Martin Colloms is in my view one of the best ever written in high end audio:

http://www.stereophile.com/reference/23/

(The problems with digital rhythm & timing that he discusses have now been solved, but they have been a significant headache for a long time.)

LP vs. CD: The masterings often have to be different. For example, LP masters have to be "de-essed" (reduction of the sharpness "s" consonants in the singer's voice) because otherwise there may be tracking problems. For some then the LP sounds more pleasant and "natural". Of course, this is not exactly a sign of vinyl's superority....I do think though that top analog has some real advantages in some cases, but that's another discussion.

Rodney Gold said:

tidal is lossless streaming .. as good as any cd transport is ..tons of new music in true CD quality for the measly sum of $20
I compared tidal vs my ripped cd's and physical cd's on a transport.. no difference at all...

here in SA we have special pricing for tidal , $9.95 .. which I pay willingly..and I am listening to about 50% tidal albums
along with Roon , which is a user interface , you rediscover your own music collection and can explore tidal..
All you need is a closed laptop and a usb input on your DAC...simple .. you run a remote ap on your i/droid/pc/mac ...
My music listening habits have been expanded and changed fundamentally since going ROON/Tidal ..much to the better

to the OP .. buy what you fancy right now .. try buy used if you can as you lose little if you dont like it 6 months down the line and want to shift it without taking a bath
YOLO....

Click to expand...

Wisest of the wisest posts. Music is all about new discoveries. ...Expansion of our musical horizons.

* I wonder if the Spectral SDR-4000SV or SL CD player/processor can give new life to my purchased CDs from the 80s and 90s, which the majority of them sounds like total crap.
Today only few record labels do a good job in recording the music I love, on CDs. ...And on SACDs. And my old humble Rotel CD players and Denon universal SACD player...they give me enough listening satisfaction for less than few thousands.

Can't wait to read a pro review of that twenty grands new Spectral CD processor.
______

Regarding "jitter": I only mentioned it before because it is the lowest figure I ever saw from a manufacturer's specs (white sheet, paper). ...One picosecond.
And true; CDs can be recorded with thousands of ps already on them, plus out-of-phase. ...LPs too...some are out-of-phase.

Turntables and records (long play @ 45rpm) sure are the cream of the crop. And every year they are gaining more and more ground...like a resurrection.
There is nothing more blessing and transforming then to spin a great quality music jazz album. ...With a Cuban cigar and a glass of XXXX Cognac...the best.

Methinks that there is more info to be discovered inside the LP's grooves/walls than in the CD's pits, valleys and bumps.

Yeah, I agree with Rodney here above quote.

______

And of course that LPs and CDs cannot be mastered the same. They both have their deficiencies and have to be accommodated in that regard. ...In the lows, in the highs, in the order of the songs.

Mobiusman said:

Any thoughts or experience about the Ayon CD-T transport and the Ayon Stratos DAC?

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Mr. Russ, you sure made me research.

• http://www.enjoythemusic.com/superioraudio/equipment/0814/ayon_audio_sigma_dac_preamplifier.htm ? I like the list of music selections.
• http://www.audiophile-magazine.com/bancs-d-essais/dac-ayon-stratos/ ? French review (5 pages) ...Google translator.

Those two separate components (transport and DAC) are half the MSRP price of the Spectral SDR-4000SV CD processor. ...Half easier to digest. :b

1. Ayon CD-T Transport: http://www.ayonaudio.com/products/digital/cd-transport/cd-t.html
2. Ayon Sratos DAC: http://www.ayonaudio.com/products/digital/dac/stratos.html

* I have never heard of them before, till you mentioned it. I love their designs, and also their easier affordability.
What's left to do is a listening audition. :b

** Also only 1ps jitter claimed for the DAC.

analog brother said:

history repeats - years ago, people threw out their lp's and record players......

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Not me, I still have my LP albums. I have never followed the "in crowd"! I was hesitant on buying the Esoteric at first. Not now for sure.

Mobiusman said:

Thank you everyone for your input. I am still totally confused other than that the Spectral SDR4000SV is an amazing sounding machine.

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So let me share a recent experience with you.

My father who brought me into the audio world has been a CD man forever until his birthday this year. Even with Analog he has remained in the digital camp of cds. Even when he listened to my first streaming system when I picked up Linn he stayed the course on cds.

Then I got him a Raspberry Pi with Digi+ output to connect to his Theta DAC (no usb unputs) and his life instantly switched to streaming. I loaded Volumio via a wizard on the HifiBerry site. Few clicks to select the drivers and done. His brithday was an excellent one let me tell you. We listened to music until 4am (9 hours straight) before I headed out to do the Newport show. I couldn't sleep when we were having such a good time.

In less than a week he picked up a new optical cable and power supply for it to get better sound.


When faced with the idea of going ripped and streaming vs tried and true cds comes down only to comfort level. I dont believe you are confused as you are reluctant to change and make a decision you might regret. So dont. Go pickup a Raspberry PI and try it for a bit before plunking down big money this CD player. The experience is what you need to decide.

Believe High Fidelity said:

So let me share a recent experience with you.

My father who brought me into the audio world has been a CD man forever until his birthday this year. Even with Analog he has remained in the digital camp of cds. Even when he listened to my first streaming system when I picked up Linn he stayed the course on cds.

Then I got him a Raspberry Pi with Digi+ output to connect to his Theta DAC (no usb unputs) and his life instantly switched to streaming. I loaded Volumio via a wizard on the HifiBerry site. Few clicks to select the drivers and done. His brithday was an excellent one let me tell you. We listened to music until 4am (9 hours straight) before I headed out to do the Newport show. I couldn't sleep when we were having such a good time.

In less than a week he picked up a new optical cable and power supply for it to get better sound.


When faced with the idea of going ripped and streaming vs tried and true cds comes down only to comfort level. I dont believe you are confused as you are reluctant to change and make a decision you might regret. So dont. Go pickup a Raspberry PI and try it for a bit before plunking down big money this CD player. The experience is what you need to decide.

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I can reinforce your findings. The Pi does streaming duties in my rig. With a Linear Power Supply the performance is even higher. The cost vs performance/ convenience ratio is staggering. Of all the software I have found Volumio 1.55 to be the best. Very reliable and Apple Airplay works great too. One of the greatest bargains in audio. There is an extensive thread here;-

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?37480-Analog-Dinosaur-succumbs-to-the-joys-of-FBA-enter-Raspberry-Pi-2-IQ-Audio-DAC-!!

Regards

Cyclopse