The best CD Player for the money

"I don't know where the name redbook came from..."

It was as simple as the color of the cover on the technical paper published by Philips when they specified what a standard audio CD was.

Audio Research DAC 1. Far better than Rega. One of the very best ever. The DAC1 is very revealing and detailed without the slightly unatural sounding, brighter tone of the Regas. Instruments with the DAC1 sound as they should and just float about in space. Incredible soundstage. Can be had for around $750 to $850.

Just visited Xindak showroom (Lotus Audio Import)in RMAF-2008. There, Xindak Muse Deluxe 1.0 CDP/DAC-8 combo looked and sounded wonderful. To my years, however, the CDP alone sounded as detailed, open, and transparent as the combo, and at 50% the $$$. By the way, it gets you tube output as well as solid-state. Built like a tank.

Budget: USD1500

The Cambridge Audio 840C is the best CD Player I have heard for $1500. I have compared it to Rega Apollo, NAD Master Series M5, Primare 30, Naim CD5i, Linn Genki and a Sony SACD player (forgotten the model number, but around $1000 price)

Muralman - I read Kusunoki's article and have few problems with it. First is that he suddenly jumps to single picoseconds from 173ps by increasing number of bits to 20 and claims that it is not possible. we are not reading 20-bit from CD but 16. With 8x oversampling clock has to be 21.6ps accurate - quite possible. Next he assumes that FIR filters produce different delays for different frequencies - not true since they have even group delays. They delay sound constantly by the same amount of time (think of them as FIFO buffers) - no effect on sound. And most of digital filters have enough bits to avoid errors at 16-bit. He also claims that violating Nyquist causes inaudible upper frequncy repeats - it will cause foldback to low (audible) frequencies. If you output 40kHz signal with 44.1kHz clock you'll get 100Hz differential at full amplitude. In similar fashion 25kHz signal will produce 15kHz ghost at the same amplitude. There is not a lot of amplitude above 20kHz so folded frequencies are not a big problem but still sound is not as clean as it could be.