And yet still virtually entirely fulfilling the human's hearing capabilities and that since around 40 years now. If that wasn't a marvelous achievement and rock solid product design, I don't know what is today.
I have a large collection of CDs that are ripped and available to play, but I enjoy physically inserting my discs into the player and playing them.
Glad that I'm not the only one sharing that spleen. From a technical point of view, of course the CD is hopelessly outdated as a physical storage medium in terms of robustness, access times and data rates, but it is still amazing how well they work (at least pressed ones) which like from 1982 run as on their day one.
Another thing is that using PC-based systems, due to their way higher capabilities and complexity, there is "always something". Output setting here, driver there, some instance or system sound getting in between, resampling or truncating of the data, etc. A CD and a player just works. You turn it on and that stuff just works. No network sharing shit which malfunctions, login data driving you mad ...
Stereophile used to regularly recommend Sony Playstation 1.
Which probably shows the bitter irony of that whole audiophile voodoo business when now exactly that kind of device where CDDA playback definitely was a side-product at best and thus the last one to take high-end fidelity into account as any priority gets praised after all.
And yet, once something is obscure and rare enough to be interesting again, nothing is out of question or too far-fetched. Be it scratchy and by today's standards horrible audio quality - providing vinyl, a Sony PlayStation with a crappy, floppy drive (which mystically still provides bit-perfect data, what a surprise) or belt-driven (!) Burmester CD players.
they will all sound the same when level-matched. You can likely find refurbished models as "used".
This is actually something which astonishes me. Given all that blabber about soundstage, air between instruments, texture and whatnot of music playback, it would be so easy for any manufacturer to tweak the output with an EQ just so ever so slightly to really create their "unique" sound signature which otherwise gets rather imagined by force.
Maybe it would be too easy to be revealed by measurements then but on the other hand, they aren't shy of claiming differences here and there which can't even be measured, so I really wonder why the outputs of most players and DACs in fact is very similar besides the output levels.
Anyway, from a rational point of few, the sound quality of a CD-player is the least important aspect but what rather counts is:
- pre-emphasis support. Part of the CD standard and thus mandatory but that doesn't necessarily protect against ignorance with manufacturers ("hello Topping, include that in your DACs!")
- overall reliability
- CD-RW support
- tolerance against damages, scratches, aging, variations of pit-/land lenghts, etc. Different players do implement different error correction schemes so what may still be error free on the C2 stage in one player may lead to errors on a another
- drive noise while operating
- overall functions, programmability
- additional features like a level meter. Not necessary but nice
- "bit-perfection" of the S/PDIF output. Most should do that but some might perform "funny adjustments" such as level reduction, dithering the LSB, applying resampling, etc. Can be quite easily tested though
- proper slow down of the disc before ejecting the disc. Rare, but especially CD-ROM drives really used to partly spit out the disc while still up to speed
- headroom for intersample peaks, at least from a technical viewpoint just like with the refrains from resampling or level changing, whether perceivable or not
