"Hi-end" CD player - worth it?

I'd recently bought a mint condition "hi-end" CD player - the Primare CD32. It cost a pretty penny. With my luck - FedEx lost the package. I got my money back, and can basically hunt for another unit, but now I'm having second thoughts.

The player I was going to replace with the Primare is an Onkyo C-7030, which, while certainly modest, sounds very decent. Add to that a quality preamp, tube amp, and great speakers downstream, not to mention a good tube headphone amp - and the combined sound gets to be really really good. So, I have no pronounced need for a better CD player, and my purchase was more or less of an impulse buy, out of sheer curiosity as to what a hi-end CD player sounds like.

I guess my question comes down to this - with a digital source, just how big of a difference does a better player make, if the rest of the system is already very good, where it counts? Will it make a pronounced "WOW" sort of a difference - something to justify roughly ten times the price of the existing player? Or will the difference be more subtle (in which case why spend so much)?

Please share your thoughts.

All my gear is listed, but, to clarify, in the bedroom, where I was thinking of putting the Primare, the preamp is Cary SL-100, amp is PrimaLuna ProLogue Four, the speakers are Zu Dirty Weekend MKII, tube HP amp is currently Little Dot MkII (soon to be replaced with Bottlehead Crack/Speedball), and the cans are Senn's 600 and 650's.

 

Based on my experience, your system looks great, so I suspect investment in a better digital front end would pay off for you like it did for me. I think that Onkyo is a forum favorite for the price point, but you could try replacing it with a DAC and keep using it as a transport and borrow a DAC from someone or buy a DAC from a place that is generous with returns to see if changes or improvements seem worth it to you. I have moved from Sony CD players into DACs and now use a music streamer plus a high-end DAC and I thought it was very worth it to me.

 

You can pacify yourself into believing it's not worth it to spend the money on a high-end player but like everything in audio... you really only get what you pay for. The only reason I personally don't upgrade is because the next step for me is the $6000 - $15000 range and it's currently unaffordable territory. I "would" do it in a heartbeat though.

 

Maybe you should have asked this question before making the purchase . You'll have a firsthand answer soon enough, and that will be much more valuable than any words any of us can type.

Yes, a high end player should make an appreciable difference. I'm not personally a Primare fan, but maybe you will be. It should outperform an Onkyo in any event. I hope you like it.

 

Have you thought of a DAC? I recently went from an older Oppo 83se to a Schiit Bifrost Multi and a Tascam CD200 player as a transport. Did it for under $1000. Really happy. Noticeable jump in playback quality.

 

I too would go with a solid transport and external DAC at this point, as opposed to a, say, $3K or up dedicated player.

 

My current player isn’t really what I’d call high end, but it was much more expensive than any I had bought before. The difference in the sound made my previous players a little hard to listen to.

 

I've always gone for either a high end CDP/SACD with no DAC or a lower-end CDP/SACD with a good DAC. Right now I am using lower end CDP with external DAC and have no complaints as I listen to way more vinyl.

If you drop $1k+ on a CDP it becomes a crazy value proposition when you also spend $2k on a DAC. Nothing wrong with that route but I'm just trying to get the best bang for my buck these days.

 

The difference between a good and great cdp can be dramatic. I think about upgrading my CD/SACD player just about every day.

 

I belive if you buy a expensive, cd playet is better not to use a separate 24 bit dac, that can uppsample your 16 bit cd to 24 and also you shorter, the sound route when listen direct from the cd, the espensive cd player, was done sure, with conponents, inside the cd chassi, that mach perfect and works better togheter; than conecting the sound to a dac, just my opinion.

 

Yes, either a high-end CD player or a state-of-the-art DAC can make a world of difference listening to CDs. Look into modded CD players as well, they often provide the best bang-for-the-buck if you are looking to match the highest of high end sound.

 

I.believe they mart.
I.base this on the fact that Linn cd players ( always wanted one)
Hold their price on Ebay.
Medium price players i don,t therei s anything between them.
I use a Panasonic SLS 120 . Check it out. No op amps!

 

I suppose the question comes down to what one considers to be "high end".

The Primare CD32 appears to be a very nice player. Although at least a few years old, I very much doubt that you would not have been satisfied by it, and the rest of your gear would seem to be able to do it justice. Tough break.

I'm in the camp that considers better audio gear comes at a price. Of course, this is meaningless unless one can make some kind of evaluation based on listening experience and direct comparisons, which is largely impractical for most of us. Still, if you genuinely understand what to expect from a good sounding system, every component in that system will have an affect on the overall sound. So, yes, in my experience, a decent digital source, whether dedicated CD player, universal player, transport, DAC, is going to make some difference, but how relevent that difference is comes down to the individual who is both listening to and paying for that component.

 

HooKay, I'm a die hard analog fiend However, I have many CDs that need proper playback into the absolutely ruthless Summit's, I had been using and Onix CD2. German MBX transport, British DAC , BurrBrowns, 30lbs with the hotrodded power supply my freak in Wyoming built into it. Well, it took a dump. and no worky

Mr. Wyoming says sent her up, I'll fix it. Under review but, soon! I found a cheapo Denon DVD-1920 player for less than $100, the reviews were correct, it is not close to the Onix rig or my buddies Wadia transport with tubed DAC from Jeff Rowlands??!?? I sounds very nice with the BurrBrowns and other goodies. It is amazing how subtle the sound for so much $$'s does not matter on most music played.

 

A good transport and DAC is way more fun. If you like to experiment with different sounding dacs.

 

I'm pretty certain that I posted a message to this thread some hours ago, but it has disappeared, and I had no notification. Can administrators or anyone else delete individual postings? If so I'm not happy, I said nothing offensive.

 

Personally I've found big differences in sound quality in CD/SACD players at various price points. In your shoes I would look for a Denon DCD-A100 either used or refurbished, there are a few out there. This player is excellent and has a 32 bit DAC that can be used via inputs for other sources. It sounds very very good via its analog outputs (and digital outputs).

 

Cambridge Audio have a CD transport that has received good reviews in the UK. You could use the money saved to buy a DAC and have a future-proof system.

I've moved on from CD playback to using rips with a free program called Exact Audio Copy for bit perfect copies. The rips sounded better than the CDs due to not having to use error correction during playback. It took me two weeks to rip all my CDs but was well worth it. I ripped to uncompressed .wav as that is the closest format to what's on a CD. I use an external USB 2 hard-drive to connect to my Onkyo receiver and use Onkyo's android app to select my music.

 

The CD player that made the difference for me is one I found here in the classifieds, an all tube Italian made Lector cdp-0.6. At $550 used I could afford it, new at $2300 likely not. There’s also another model at a higher price that has a separate power supply.

Prior to getting the Lector I was using a Rega Apollo - Schiit Bitfrost Uber combo that I was happy with. The Lector is just so much better in every way, it’s all in the tubes (and it’s own internal DAC). It even plays the CD layer of hybrid SACDs with better sound quality than the SACD layer in most cases (I have a Pioneer DV79avi for SACD and DVD-A). My Lector is a slightly older model from around 8 years ago, their components have been redesigned since then, well worth checking out IMHO.

Last fall another Lector component came my way via Craigslist, a VM-200 hybrid power amp. It was a great addition to my New York system, I’ll always be keeping an eye out for this company’s gear in future.

 

Problem with using players as a transport for me is losing the ability to spin these, this is just a few I have, not counting a bunch of classical titles with Pre-Emphasis...
Finding a transport that can send the flag found in the table of contents or sub q channel via digital and then finding a DAC that can detect those flags and add the eq is probably way out of my price and search range
If Benzion's 7030 has the wolfson dac, via analog out at least he can play these+ it detects the SUBQ flag.

 

A high-end CD player system may approach a good turn table system in performance, but a TT such as JVC QL-A5 and AT VM540ML cartridge will likely outperform a $2K CD player system for under $500. Count me out.

 

The reason I wanted the Primare, in particular, is because it has a 16 bit/44 kHz play option, true to original CD format, and supposedly sounds great with it. Most modern DAC's are all up-sampling, which is what I'm trying to avoid. The other "straight" DAC's are by Audio Note UK, and are fairly expensive.

 

I have the Cambridge transport and DAC, in my living room system.

 

Yes, I've heard great things about Lector, just not sure if there's much service available for it here in the US. For Primare, at least there's a dealer here.

 

With a good CD player you won't need a separate DAC and the transport has as much to do with good sound as the DAC.
Better sound is never a waist of time. I've yet to regret the purchase of a pricy piece of gear.