What's the story with CD players?

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Kookoo

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#325584 18-Sep-2026 20:37

I haven't touched my CD collection in years, so feeling nostalgic I decided to give it a go. Took me a minute to realise I didn't own a CD player anymore. Never mind, should be easy enough to plug one into my receiver. Just got to buy one first.

There's the Konic CD/DVD at Harvey Norman for $59. And then next step up all hell breaks loose and you end up staring at $700+ units. For a flat CD player with audio out or HDMI! What happened? And while we're at it, is there anything wrong with just using the el-cheapo Konic?

Hello, Ground!

Dunnersfella

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#3529025 18-Sep-2026 21:06

Just get yourself a Blu-ray player from Panasonic or someone similar, then connect to your ARV via HDMI, or if you don't have that option - use optical.

This way the player will act as a transport, utilising the (typically) better DAC in the receiver - giving you the best sound quality.

jordan8thepie1

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#3529028 18-Sep-2026 21:58

I think they have just got expensive because of gen z going back to the old tech again.

I have an ONKYO 6 disc cd carrousel and i got it when cd players were going out of fashion and got the machine for cheap i think it was on clearance.

Any Blu-Ray Player with an optical out or HDMI will work fine as a CD player.

Just note that a lot of the cheap ones don't have a numeric display on the front anymore so you will need a display to be able to use most of the features and ensure you have the remote if buying second hand as they don't have have many buttons these days on the unit.

fe31nz

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#3529031 18-Sep-2026 23:37

Do not bother with an actual CD player. Just rip all your CDs to lossless FLAC format and use a software player on a PC or laptop. CDs do die with age and mistreatment anyway, so if your CDs are getting old, you should rip them as soon as possible. On Windows, EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the goto freeware for CD ripping. I have been using EAC for ripping CDs that are difficult to rip, but I paid for dbPoweramp's CD ripper software for use with my good CDs as it rips much faster and is more user friendly.

The price difference with CD players is usually about the quality of the digital to analogue converter (DAC) and how the player mechanism interacts with the DAC for the best audio quality (eg jitter control). A cheap CD player will produce crap quality sound due to having a nasty DAC and no jitter control at all. You used to have to pay > US$10,000 for a really good CD player with a quality DAC, but now you just buy a nice DAC for a decently low price (NZ$500+) and connect the DAC to a PC or other digital source so it can play the ripped CD files. Do not use Bluetooth - that causes lossy compression of the audio, unless it is a very new Bluetooth chip that supports aptX lossless protocol, and there are very few such devices. A proper digital connection these days is USB or SPDIF (copper or TOSLINK optical), or a network connection (Ethernet or WiFi). There are heaps of good DACs to choose from with various digital input options on each of them.

I use a slightly more expensive device than a simple DAC - a FiiO Q7 DAC/Headphone amp. That means that I do not need a preamp at all as it can feed my Sennheiser HD600 headphones or my Plinius SA 50 amplifier + Acoustic Energy AE-1 speakers directly. I do not ever use TV speakers or soundbars (via HDMI connection) as they are crap compared to real separate speakers or good headphones.

As always with audio, YMMV. There are lots of people who can actually use TV speakers without noticing just how crappy they are. However, even those people will actually notice the difference if they are exposed to good sound from good audio gear - they just are not bothered about crappy sound. Then there are people like me (audiophiles) who notice small differences, let alone big nasty ones. So if you are not bothered, you can just buy something very cheap and you will be happy. If not, pay a bit more and get a decent DAC and also be happy.

pdh

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#3529034 19-Sep-2026 04:25

fe31nz:

...A cheap CD player will produce crap quality sound due to having a nasty DAC and no jitter control at all. You used to have to pay > US$10,000 for a really good CD player with a quality DAC

This rather misses the point...
I don't think I've used the DAC portion of an optical player (CD / DVD / BR) since almost forever...
The bit stream leaves that box as digital - to be turned into A (analog) by the DAC in my reciever.
In most reasonable receivers or amps, the player's optical data timing will be ignored and established by their own ASRC or PLL.
So any (extremely tiny) 'jitter' introduced by a player - just gets ignored.

So - all you need is the cheapest player - even an old PC drive will do.
Just don't run the signal out of it via 1950's era analog audio cables.

richms

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#3529251 19-Sep-2026 14:40

Watch most of the new production ones, they use a data drive and fake it all.

Lousy seeking, no gapless between tracks, cant rewind into the track 1 pregap - hell one would skip right over the pregaps between tracks along with the lack of gapless that really ruined a hell of a lot of discs enjoyment.

Richard rich.ms

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#3529252 19-Sep-2026 14:55

Our CDs are packed away in the garage somewhere. I digitised a few of them a while back with USB portable blu-ray drive.

I assume if we do want to listen, our regular blu-ray player will work- it's connected via HDMI to a Denon 7.1 amp and then using ARC port to the TV.

New World

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Kookoo

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#3529253 19-Sep-2026 15:09

Ok, so what I hear is that I can just get this unit , hook it up to my Yamaha rx-v6a with HDMI, and Bob's my uncle.

Yamaha DAC will handle the digital stream, and everything else is pretty irrelevant.

Hello, Ground!

Radiotron

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#3529354 19-Sep-2026 16:32

One thing to keep in mind when using most recent DVD and Blu-ray players is that you'll need a TV or monitor to see what they are doing as very limited controls and display on actual device. Periodically decent players from the golden era pop up, however prices have gone silly for what are often pretty mediocre units. In a past life I serviced CD players. If you think it's worth the bother of physical media, buy a dedicated player from one of the retailers that specialise in component hifi. You'll likely pay more, but you'll get something decent, and it will have a warranty.

While I've kept my vintage CDP and disc collection, and have the odd nostalgia night, anything of interest has been ripped to FLAC and stored on the NAS. Playback on main system via JRiver and a Topping USB DAC.

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