Need opinions on a great CD player. What's a good one for around 1000?

Northwinds said:
Wow, love the nudies of the insides!!! That is indeed an impressive piece. Maybe I need to get out from the 80s rock I am under and start exploring some of this newer stuff (used and a few years old at least so I could maybe afford to try one). That's the thing though, we get set in our ways and sometimes just plain ignore new stuff because we don't like change and defend our old shit to our last breath LMAO
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Not at all Northwinds. I am probably younger than most on this site; but am NOT ignorant of the bliss that is two-channel vintage audio. I grew up on it in a big way. There is a way to combine the two. Why do I run my speakers with PL700B's built in the 70's but use a preamp built in this decade? Looks..... brains.....AND brawn. All come together perfectly. If you are using a PL400 that's White Oaked, then you are using this decade's new tech. New components on the curcuit board. You have today's brawn in yester-years beauty. That's why we love Joe, and the great people like Lee and Jerry and others that make it so perfect. If you are chatting on a forum on your computer with the rest of us in 2014; then you are NOT stuck in the 80's. :-) Lets see what Dave thinks when he gets his oppo. Unlike me, he will be using his 700B's with it. I am just using MY B's with an "old" 1983 Pioneer PD-M6. Supposedly their FIRST 6-disc magazine changer. If OPPO made a multi-disc changer, then I'd have it. But listening to cd's for hours gets tiresome if you have to keep opening the tray.

Joe........I can take "close up" shots of the nudies if you like? Get you a real slick look at her 'solder joints'? :confused2:
 
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Dang, I love this forum!

Phase Linear Phanatic said:
And so this opens up SACD. And high end audio formats. Since regular CD players cannot duplicate this, the sound-stage opens up dramatically on SACD. The Oppo will transfer THX Master Audio as well if used on a blue-ray source while you are watching a movie. No compression, loss-less audio. The way it was mastered in the studio. Thanks to the large space on these discs. You CAN and WILL hear things a stand alone CD player cannot touch. Things the studio intended you to hear. But could never produce on a regular CD at the time.

I do not consider myself a "TRUE" audiophile. True audiophiles scoff at the Oppo. They opt for the $10,000 MacIntosh CD player or the Aiyre. (I think it's called)? And their systems would use my Arcam as a boat anchor. I've been in the local high end audio shop here. A store called "Music For Pleasure". They have a website. And $100,000 Dyne Audio speakers are in the main room with SUN amps or monoblock boulder amps I have forgotten the name of to drive them. And speaker wire thicker than line-man's cables with networks as big as brick built into those speaker cables. I am nothing compared to this stuff. I just took it up the ol' keester for a few months to buy the smidgon of a sampling of this gear at the entry end of it while I wait for my new big screen. I wanted SOME form of crystal clear audio with a great price.

Congrats Dave on the purchase. Not just a great choice, but it looks like you went top tier model too. Just wait when you have a question on it? Call them up and it will be the best customer experience you ever had! You actually TALK TO AN ENGINEER! Not some foreigner in the Philippines. All based out of CA U.S.A. Probably one of the very RARE times I have actually gotten what I paid for. And NO, I did not have the money at the time. I just saved for a month. I knew what they were and read and read and read up on them. Magazine subscriptions, web forums, their own site, CNET even reviewed a smaller version. Even speaker forum groups that deal strictly with a particular speaker brand, even mention it over and over. For the life of me I tried to pick it apart? But there were no cons? The only complaint I had was that it arrived in a plain brown box. I mean....c'mon? Sheesh? You think they could have wrapped it it gold or something? gawww.........:mad:
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What a great bunch of responses, and an education to boot. I had no idea that video technology was so rooted in the specification of the cd sampling rate, but it makes perfect sense.
Yes, I did go whole hog and got the BDP-105. It takes a lot for me to make a commitment like this, mostly because of the rapid development in digital electronics. I went back to school at age 40 back in 1992, and got my EE degree, and the textbooks on digital electronics were obsolete before they even got to the college bookstore! So I have been waiting and waiting to make the plunge and drop some serious cash on a great cd player. This one has so many features that I'm dizzy just reading about all of them. I'm really stoked about this whole up-sampling and interpolation discussion. It never occurred to me that the technology would go in this direction; it always seemed to me that the industry would focus on making money, which would not necessarily involve making the old cd's sound better...rather, I'd think that they would just produce 'remastered' or SACD releases. How cool to develop hardware that can do this.
I looked around a bit and see that Oppo has a remote IR receiver module that solves the problem I have of setting it up in my studio, which is on the other side of the wall from my bigscreen tv. $29.95 at their website, what a great deal. One other thing I noticed right off about Oppo is that they sell a replacement OEM remote control for the BDP-105 for -get this- $12.95. I couldn't believe it. You'd figure that they would charge $50 or more for a new remote. Very cool.
So thank you, gentlemen, for providing me with the needed push to get my old butt moving ahead. It started with a conversation with Lee over at the AK website, where he suggested I might like it here. He was right. I rarely get over to AK anymore, and I don't miss it.
Now I've just got to wait for seven to ten days for the brown box to arrive...:iconbiggrin:
 
Phase Linear Phanatic said:
Not at all Northwinds. I am probably younger than most on this site; but am NOT ignorant of the bliss that is two-channel vintage audio. I grew up on it in a big way. There is a way to combine the two. Why do I run my speakers with PL700B's built in the 70's but use a preamp built in this century? Looks..... brains.....AND brawn. All come together perfectly. If you are using a PL400 that's White Oaked, then you are using this century's new tech. New components on the curcuit board. You have today's brawn in yester-years beauty. That's why we love Joe, and the great people like Lee and Jerry and others that make it so perfect. If you are chatting on a forum on your computer with the rest of us in 2014; then you are NOT stuck in the 80's. :-) Lets see what Dave thinks when he gets his oppo. Unlike me, he will be using his 700B's with it. I am just using MY B's with an "old" 1983 Pioneer PD-M6. Supposedly their FIRST 6-disc magazine changer. If OPPO made a multi-disc changer, then I'd have it. But listening to cd's for hours gets tiresome if you have to keep opening the tray.

Joe........I can take "close up" shots of the nudies if you like? Get you a real slick look at her 'solder joints'? :confused2:
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Well said and my friends know me as Ron and I consider you a friend Brother. Northwinds is too.... formal LMAO
 
IMO, the CD should have taken a breather for 3 more years to let them figure out the right hardware and sampling rate, not 44.1KHz!

Unfortunately, they settled and the industry they were targeting was driven around boomboxes, not high end and the fact that you did not have to deal with scratches all over your crappy LPs from too many parties anymore with CDs.

Yeah the Nyquist theory works but it has a miserable time sorting out the phase characteristics with only 2 or 4 samples per wavelength. That phase distortion that is evident from 5KHz upwards is downright annoying. Throw in the phase contribution of the 20KHz brickwall filter and you have quiet but annoying sound.

Contrast that with the very coherent sound of a well mastered, analog mastered LP or analog to DSD SACD recording. The difference is quite noticeable.
 
Phase Linear Phanatic said:
Not at all Northwinds. I am probably younger than most on this site; but am NOT ignorant of the bliss that is two-channel vintage audio. I grew up on it in a big way. There is a way to combine the two. Why do I run my speakers with PL700B's built in the 70's but use a preamp built in this century? Looks..... brains.....AND brawn. All come together perfectly. If you are using a PL400 that's White Oaked, then you are using this century's new tech. New components on the curcuit board. You have today's brawn in yester-years beauty. That's why we love Joe, and the great people like Lee and Jerry and others that make it so perfect. If you are chatting on a forum on your computer with the rest of us in 2014; then you are NOT stuck in the 80's. :-) Lets see what Dave thinks when he gets his oppo. Unlike me, he will be using his 700B's with it. I am just using MY B's with an "old" 1983 Pioneer PD-M6. Supposedly their FIRST 6-disc magazine changer. If OPPO made a multi-disc changer, then I'd have it. But listening to cd's for hours gets tiresome if you have to keep opening the tray.

Joe........I can take "close up" shots of the nudies if you like? Get you a real slick look at her 'solder joints'? :confused2:
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I like that they apparently shielded the small toroid transformer and shielded the PSU portion as well. I like good clean design and this is just that.
 
Gepetto said:
IMO, the CD should have taken a breather for 3 more years to let them figure out the right hardware and sampling rate, not 44.1KHz!

Unfortunately, they settled and the industry they were targeting was driven around boomboxes, not high end and the fact that you did not have to deal with scratches all over your crappy LPs from too many parties anymore with CDs.

Yeah the Nyquist theory works but it has a miserable time sorting out the phase characteristics with only 2 or 4 samples per wavelength. That phase distortion that is evident from 5KHz upwards is downright annoying. Throw in the phase contribution of the 20KHz brickwall filter and you have quiet but annoying sound.

Contrast that with the very coherent sound of a well mastered, analog mastered LP or analog to DSD SACD recording. The difference is quite noticeable.
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Thanks Joe for the explanation - I was wondering where the 44.1KHz rate came from.

What is the 20KHz brickwall filter? I should look it up but maybe someone else is interested.
 
NavLinear said:
Thanks Joe for the explanation - I was wondering where the 44.1KHz rate came from.

What is the 20KHz brickwall filter? I should look it up but maybe someone else is interested.
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It is the multi-pole filter (very steep slope, thinking it is 24dB/octave but don't hold me to that) that they employ in every CD player to keep alias artifacts from coming through.

With SACD that is a lower order filter up at 80KHz, 4 times higher.

With filters, generally speaking, the phase effects creep in long before the amplitude effects are seen.
 
Gepetto said:
Very nice layout symmetry. You know a quality product by the care that they put into the board layout. Yes you can slap down a circuit and get it to work but the optimal performance is usually always achieved by careful placement of critical components prior to the routing.
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I noticed that kind of forward thinking in the layout of the PL14-20 White Oak control board, Joe. No doubt it (and the Wima and Nichicon Audio caps) all contribute to overall low noise floor and high fidelity. Great job.
 
Gepetto said:
It is the multi-pole filter (very steep slope, thinking it is 24dB/octave but don't hold me to that) that they employ in every CD player to keep alias artifacts from coming through.

With SACD that is a lower order filter up at 80KHz, 4 times higher.

With filters, generally speaking, the phase effects creep in long before the amplitude effects are seen.
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Damn Joe - ignorance is bliss. Now what am I going to do?

I guess I'll have to give a listen to an SACD player at some point with an appropriate disk.
 
I bought a used Oppo 91 I think. It quit on me. Sent it in they fixed it and did certain upgrades for 50.00. Yes a plain brown box. with the tote bag. It is a very good DVD player. Very good customer service. I paid shipping there. It was included in the price to send it back to me.
 
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