Do CD players sound different to each other?

[aagstn]

Ah, apologies. I clearly read your post backwards thinking it said early CD's player didn't get gapless right.
I don't have any experience with late model CD players, since around 2005 or so I've only played CD's via the transport in my computer or internal rips of them. Also not being into Classical music, I don't think more than a handful of my 5000 albums are gapless. Why do you suspect modern CD players are ignoring proper Red Book std, that is surprising?

Only have 1500 albums and have quite a few not classical that are gapless. Granted I have a lot of 70s rock and live albums, Beatles and others that used it on albums. I don't know for sure why gapless started disappearing, but it does seem like a lot of modern players from China are digital media players first and CD players second even though they are very expensive. I wanted a new CD player and ended up buying an Onkyo that has been are the market 20 years since it was designed before this trend started. There are others that can play CDs correctly. Yamaha I believe did a firmware upgrade to fix their players. The Panasonic and Sony 4K Blu-ray players I own can also play CDs correctly even though this is a secondary feature.

 

[Sal1950]

Only have 1500 albums and have quite a few not classical that are gapless.

You got me curious and scratching my head as I can't say I've played close attention.
So I just checked my quite old rip of Pink Floyd - DSOTM, Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc 517, and it smoothly played gapless in the Linux Strawberry player.
Damn they're getting big money for them discs on the used market now.
Thanks for making me check.

 

[formdissolve]

Only have 1500 albums and have quite a few not classical that are gapless. Granted I have a lot of 70s rock and live albums, Beatles and others that used it on albums. I don't know for sure why gapless started disappearing, but it does seem like a lot of modern players from China are digital media players first and CD players second even though they are very expensive. I wanted a new CD player and ended up buying an Onkyo that has been are the market 20 years since it was designed before this trend started. There are others that can play CDs correctly. Yamaha I believe did a firmware upgrade to fix their players. The Panasonic and Sony 4K Blu-ray players I own can also play CDs correctly even though this is a secondary feature.

I need to check again, but I believe my Sony X800 player doesn't pass any De-emphasis flags to my 90s Parasound DAC (the DAC has a nifty "Emphasis" LED that lights up if so). It's been at least 7 years since I checked that however.

I haven't used a dedicated disc player's analogue output for CD's (or anything) in quite some time.. The last player I used as a universal disc player with analog outs was the Oppo BDP-105 which I retired back in 2018. Now every disc from 4K, Blu-Ray, CDs, etc. is routed from that X800 (which lacks anlagoue outs) to either my SMSL DAC or the Parasound (for vintage fun). Local files are played back via Roon Bridge to either DAC as well.

I do miss the All-in-One solution of the BDP-105 however

 

[Anton S]

My Sony CD players were released circa 2005. They play gapless, as evidenced by the continuation of crowd applause between tracks on many of my live albums.