Most of the current affordable models (affordable meaning less than a kilobuck and maybe less than two kilobucks--I haven't researched it) use a cheap Sanyo CD drive. These are actually CD players, meaning they are designed for real-time play at audio speeds, but they are still cheaply made to hit a low price point. The Audiolab is slot-loading so it's probably something repurposed from an automotive application (that's a bald guess). Most of the multi-format (DVD, BD, and CD) transports I've seen use computer drives, which are definitely price-point mechanisms and I think also have different operating expectations reflected in their designs.
Computer drives are designed differently, it seems to me, around a duty cycle of reading data as quickly as possible from the media, with no synchronization required and lots of buffered error-handling, but with only occasional use otherwise. Maybe BluRay drives are still not that, but I think DVD and CD drives surely are. Reading a lot of CD's into my cheap laptop has noticeably degraded the plastic tray mechanism--it has become more rattly and if I'm not careful it will toggle the electrical connection where the unit inserts into the laptop, which causes the BSOD.
I own a large number of CD's and even though I rip them onto my computer, most of the time at home I prefer to browse the shelf and use an actual CD playing device. I have two in the system at the moment--a Cambridge Audio CXC transport (into a Topping E30 DAC) and a Cambridge Audio Azur 640C. The CXC, which is a current product, uses the Sanyo drive. The 640C is older and uses a Sony KSS213 drive (still a price-point drive but more upmarket than the Sanyo). I have a number of others that are older and in various stages of repair, and work hard to sustain a playback capability. Sure, I rip my CD's, mostly to move them onto my phone and into my car. But the last thing I want to do while relaxing with music in the evening and sipping some Scotch is having a laptop in my lap. For some reason, tracking forums on my phone doesn't put across the "seems like work" feeling that the laptop does. Having a library (of music and books) is a sign of success in life for people of may age and background, I suppose, and I derive satisfaction from exercising it. At my work desk, even though it is in my home, music has to be separate from my work computer, on which such things would attract scrutiny.
All of my CD players work just find into DACs instead of using their internal DAC. But so far I've never been able to tell the difference, even with units going back to the 80's. I think the only CD player I own that lacks a digital out is my Naim CD5, currently and apparently indefinitely languishing in the fixit pile.
Rick "not interested in the own-nothing-rent-everything mode of modern living" Denney
