So, my 950/770 should be arriving soon I hope. Now I need to upgrade my source. I've got a Sony SACd/CD that I was fine with until I visited my local retailer. I feel in love with the Linn Ikemi, (OK actually I loved the Goldmund Mimesis even more but its $8k!) but who can afford $3500 for a CD player?

Anyone know anything else with superb sound where I will hear just how big the drums are and how great the room was without giving up food for the rest of the year? What's the outlaw equivalent in CD player manufacturers?

What is your experience buying used? What might I find out there that would make very happy?

Thanks!

Joy Elyse

p.s. I don't need more than one disk or SACD.

Joy Elyse, I don't have an answer just yet but you do have the wheels turning. I can't predict the future, but the horizon doesn't look too good for the old CD format. I DO KNOW that I would not spend $3,000 on one. See, I'm not sure if it was the player you fell in love with or the equipment it was being played back on. A number of years ago when HDCD first came out, I just had to have a player with built-in processing. So I purchased an expensive, (at the time), Harman/Kardon player with Burr-Brown DACS and HDCD processing. Oh how I loved this! However, one is hard pressed to find any HDCD discs anymore, with the exception of Country Music CDs. What's the point? Don't be fooled thinking more expensive means better, it just means it costs more. Hopefully some Outlaws will post suggestions for you on brands and models that are affordable and sound "better" than your Sony.

The CD players I auditioned a year ago were the Rotel RCD 972, the various Arcams, the Rega Planet 2000. All of these were higher end type players, costing under $1000. Of those, I thought the Rotel sounded best, although they all sounded better than my DVD player. I didn't buy one though, as I had a hard time buying an old format player. I've seen them occasionally on Audiogon and would recommend looking there instead of buying new, for the reason cited above.

One thing I did find though. When I hook my very old portable to my cheap kit build tube pre-amp, I get better sound than anything I ever heard in my house. A wide, deep, 3D soundstage, with the "digital edge" removed.

Rotels CD players are phenomenal. There are quite a few at Audiogon, good luck!

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Play it LoUd!!

In my experience, you can get fine sound for cheap by connecting the CD to the receiver digitally. To a very large extent, the sound quality will then only be limited by the quality of the DAC in the receiver. The exception to this is "word clock jitter" in the CD transport, which seems to be at such a low level you'll never notice unless the rest of your system cost tens of kilobucks.
A friend and I sorta tested this by doing A/B tests with a Musical Fidelity A3CD connected analog and a Pioneer Elite (model PD-F27) 300 disk changer connected digitally to a Pioneer Elite VSX-37TX receiver running into Celestion A3s. The $600 Pioneer actually sounded at least as good, with a clearly lower noise floor, than the $1500 MF. The Pioneer receiver uses the well-regarded Burr-Brown DAC, which doesn't seem typical of receivers in it's price range.
This is probably irrelevant if you're looking at CD players in the $3K range since they darn well better have DACs way superior to any receiver out there.
Note that if your receiver digitizes analog inputs in order to perform bass management in the digital domain (I don't know if the Outlaw does, but many do), spending big bucks on a CD player may be a waste of money since you'll be limited by the quality of the Outlaw's DAC regardless of how you connect.

A very good point. The Outlaw 950 has a stereo bypass mode specifically to avoid this issue. The Outlaw 1050 does perform A-D conversion on the stereo analog inputs, but not on the multichannel input, which is why they recommend connecting sources like phono preamps or high end CD players to the multichannel input.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

So we are all set up!!! (BTW, we went with 7 200's rather than the 770 per Scott's advice.) We love the Outlaw equipment so far. I'd listened to the Rotel and Arcam too. The Outlaw is much more engaging. Has anyone else noticed how up front it is? This could just be my set up. In any case, I don't mind it, but I know it would bug others.

I thought I'd report in on my CD progress. So far, we decided to see what happened if we used the 950's DAC instead of the Sony's. Awful! The Sony may not be a great CD player (though it sounds a lot better now than I ever dreamed it would), but it sounds much better using the analog out and the bypass mode on the 950.

I tried the Rotel CD players and a few Arcams along with a few others. The only one I'd consider so far is the Krell KAV-280, but it's still $2k. I'm still looking. Once I find one I like, I will likely try for it used.

Thanks for all the advice!!!

Joy Elyse

Joy, I'm just curious, what makes the Sony sound so bad? I know it's difficult to put into words the way something sounds, but would you try to tell us how the Sony sounds and what made it worse using the 950's DACs. I use my player's DACs also, they have more of a "pleasing warm" sound, especially with HDCD recordings, the 950's produce a more "harsh, crisp" sound to my wife's and my ears. This is totally subjective, just am curious what you hear.