Looking for good used 1.5k CD player

[LP1313]

Hello everyone,

I found a big box with CDs in my garage and want to revisit “good old times” ;-).

I’ve been shortlisting current offerings on used market to:
Audio Research CD3MKII
Sugden Masterclass PDT-4
Moon Neo 260D

I’m no expert in specs of CD transport, laser, DAC, etc. Therefore would greatly appreciate your advice!

Thanks and nice Sunday,
Laurens

 

[tw99]

Many people here would question the need to spend $(?)1500 on a CD player. The objective advice would be to buy any CD player that has a digital output and plug into into an existing DAC that you own, or spend a couple of hundred max on whatever Topping/smsl/etc DAC you want.

 

[Timcognito]

Any used Oppo DVD or Blu-ray player or something like this will work

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[LP1313]

Many people here would question the need to spend $(?)1500 on a CD player. The objective advice would be to buy any CD player that has a digital output and plug into into an existing DAC that you own, or spend a couple of hundred max on whatever Topping/smsl/etc DAC you want.

Thanks for pointing that out, fair point I didn’t consider yet. I’ll definitely look into such option. Nice evening

 

[Mart68]

Speaking from experience I would not buy a used one, not at that level of price.

I will post pics of my CD player graveyard one day.

Buy new - or buy a used one for not more than a couple of hundred. The used one may last decades - or weeks, or maybe just hours - and getting them fixed is not worth the trouble.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I second @Mart68 . Don't buy second hand. Buy any new cheap Blu-ray player with S/PDIF optical or coax out and pick up one of the good value DACs reviewed here. Better still, rip the CDs to FLAC using EAC and get potentially better sound with discs which are of marginal quality.

 

[DSJR]

A MODERN decent dac under $/£500 *should* be relatively agnostic to any transport you plug into it in all honesty and have good facilities/balanced outs and so on (older dacs may differ but I have no evidence to back that feeling up). Nicely solid CD players do cost a bit more, but you'll still have adapted DVD drives or cheaper CD drive behind the flash case.

You could buy a nice laptop with good storage capacity on it and built in optical disc drive and either play in real time into an external dac, or rip to the HDD or whatever (amazing the capacity of mini-micro SD cards these days). This old Dell thing has a card socket on the front I've not used as yet, so I'll experiment over the holidays as regards music storage.

 

[LP1313]

Thanks for advice everyone, much appreciated