Best CD player under $5K?

hi ivan:

excluding the tube vs no tube issue, what sonic attributes of your mooded oppo do you find exemplary ?

thanks

how about changing the question tto "best player under $5000, with a classic tube character " ?

for example, is there a player that sounds like the havana dac?

i ask this question, because i think my trusty audio note cd2 , circa 1990, may be in a state of disrepair, or very expensive repair, and so i may be looking for a cd player myself, which has a tube sound like the mhdt havana. i am not aware of any.

Hi Mrtennis, didn't mean to imply to anyone that I actually have Ric's OPPO, although I've considered getting it at some point. Currently I use a Ric Schultz-modified Behringer DEQ-2496 as a DAC. He modded the power supply, upgraded the DAC chip and completely reworked the analog output stage and it blew me away even though the mod cost was less than $350 at the time. But, I've gotten to know Ric by talking to him on the phone at various times for the past couple years and found him to be very forthcoming on all things audio. Although we've discussed the Oppo 95, what really got me going on it was reading the user reviews online. I've been in this hobby for 40 years and reading all that time. After you've been doing that for that long you do indeed begin to realize how to "read between the lines" on a lot of topics and I did notice something diffrent with these reviews: it was something of a 'there-are-rave-reviews-and-there-are-rave-reviews-and-then-there-are-reviews of-Ric's-Oppo-95' kind of thing, for me. As if folks just couldn't begin to imagine anything ever sounding better, at any price. You may not care to put all that much stock in that kinda thing, especially when it's coming from someone else, but after my time spent in this hobby I can say that that kind of thing does in fact really tend to stand out and catch your eye. But, I leave it to you, if you're interested, to take the reading of reviews from here.

Anyone spending close to 5K on a cd player is a fool.

The Cambridge Audio 840C is real steal at $1500. I had to spend many times that amount to find something better. The Cary Audio CD500 gets the thumbs up too but do budget for a decent power cord is third party feet to optimise it.