Just wondering. Seems pretty much not useful information considering just you and the very small sample pool.
That’s why it’s FWIW for anybody to consider as they wish. I don’t think you’re gonna have many members here who have blind tested many CD players, so I thought I’d add whatever I had.
I'd think generally just not an issue, especially as that is my experience with a wide variety of them. Can't imagine wasting time that way, really.
Sure, I can see that. I don’t bother thinking about the sound of DACs or CD players these days.
But back in the 90s when I was really just getting into high-end audio, I was I guess
“ cautiously open” to some CD players sounding different or better than others.
And I was able to try a few different ones from friends, dealers etc. I had started out with the Sony CDP which was actually my wife’s when I met her, though it had been for picked out for her with other gear by her audiophile (in the ASR vein) brother and father. So it had probably measured well in stereo review or something.
When I got the Meitner DAC it seems to sound obviously different, as did the Meridian.
I was a member on one of the audio news groups at the time which comprised a number of engineer/objectivists (Arny Kruger, Stewart Pinkerton and others, for anyone who goes back that far).
There was talk that CD players should sound indistinguishable, and the technical account for this made sense to me, which is why my experience with those particular products felt at odds with my skeptical side. And that’s why I decided to do the blind testing.
The first day of the blind testing I could easily tell them apart, and I posted the results for people to investigate, and I asked for any tips to tighten up the protocol. The engineers chimed in with “ make sure you do this and that”…(which included matching the sound output levels using a voltmeter at the speaker terminals).
And I deployed those tips and did the tests again, easily telling each apart again, and posted the results. It was fun.
After that I bought secondhand Meridian 24 bit player, with some hopes of “ even better” sound. But it turned out I didn’t like it better: the 508.20 seemed to have a bit of texture that I liked that made imaging a bit more focussed and dense. So I sold the 24 bit player.
That was the last time I cared about the sound of a CD player or DAC. I eventually replaced the Meridian CD player with a benchmark DAC1 for streaming from my ripped CD collection, and never looked back (except replacing the DAC1 with the DAC2L
for some additional features I wanted).
These days I want assured neutrality from my digital source, and if I want some coloration, I play records.