Best Cd Player for $2000 used

I have been lucky enough to have the Sony Xa-7Es, the Classe CDP-1, ARC CD-2 and Levinson 39 over the last three or so years. All of these are very good players. The ARC CD-2 was, perhaps, the best balanced overall, and the Classe the most romantic on female vocals..such as Diana Krall. But time has taken it's toll on all of these, and that is why you see so many for sale. Almost any inexpensive DVD player with a Bel Canto DAC-1, or other DAC that upsamples will give better results than any older one box unit. Just another view point....food for thought. Good luck. Jim

I have been lucky enough to have the Sony Xa-7Es, the Classe CDP-1, ARC CD-2 and Levinson 39 over the last three or so years. All of these are very good players. The ARC CD-2 was, perhaps, the best balanced overall, and the Classe the most romantic on female vocals..such as Diana Krall. But time has taken it's toll on all of these, and that is why you see so many for sale. Almost any inexpensive DVD player with a Bel Canto DAC-1, or other DAC that upsamples will give better results than any older one box unit. Just another view point....food for thought. Good luck. Jim

May I suggest the Muse model 5 transport and 2+ DAC. They perform the best when used thru the 13W3 interface. I consider this a "2 box" player and go for about $1500-1600 used. I have had a lot of CD players thru my system, including some of the ones above and this is the only one that got stuck for a couple of years, only to be ousted by the Model 8/296 and not because there was any radical difference on normal CD play back. I found no radical difference from the players above but there was a certain musical "solidity" about the Muse's presentation. I just kept coming back to it to listen to music. Very musically satisfying. The Model 5/2+ combo is rather rare on the used scene, but well worth the effort.

I am in agreement with the Resolution cd50; however, if you could stretch your budget a bit, you could get the cd55 and have true state-of-the-art sound from the current cd standard. Many of the above mentioned cd players have spent time in my system and I always went back to the Res. I owned a cd50 for abt 2 yrs, and have just taken delivery of a cd55 and it is phenomenal. I'm the one who turned John Marks onto the cd50 for his wallace steven's stereo in TAS. Stereophile shouldn't have anything to do with the cd55, they'd just diminish it to appease their high dollar adverts from levinson & krell. You can email me and I'll give you a good place to get a deal on a cd55 if you're interested.

Soupcon, thanks for your input. I just meant that more people would likely see it if sphl got it, but you are right, the review itself would likely be invalid and hurt more than help...although there are several at TAS that might screw it up, too.