The great cd player con..........Your thoughts please!

Oh I see you don't have the Rega dac yet. Well demo is the way to go. For a Rega system inc dac you are looking at around £2,000? MAybe others can suggest a better £2,000 system? Or have you considered some used hifi? Ive seen various items like Creek amps for half price.

Rega Brio r, DAC, Apollo R cdp, RS1 & £100 for cables a lovely system for £2k

I did read the link, and having read I thought 'Oh look, here we go again'.

Perhaps I've just been here so long that I'm seeing everything go round in circles. Which actually I wouldn't have a problem with if there was any possibility that such discussions could end fruitfully with an agreed answer. But that's no more likely to happen than in a thread disputing the credibility of cables, mains conditioners or active vs passive speakers, or any of the other regular contentious issues that frequently crop up and attract nothing but bickering and polarized arguments from people who won't listen to any opinion but theirs..

Time for me to call it a day I think when seeing all this stuff rehashed again winds me up, because I know from nearly three years experience on this forum where it's heading: nowhere.

To the O/P: sorry I annoyed you. Don't take what someone says in an article above what your ears tell you. As for the DACs a few people have recommended, I think they'd be a briliant start.

Bye.

It maybe going nowhere for you major but for the OP hopefully it is getting somewhere. MAybe the OP should have asked it in a different way, at least they got some responses, my first ever post on here about upgrading my old system got no responses what so ever, which was really helpful, thankfully joining some other posts has helped to narrown my options.

I think some of his chicks have come home to roost - rumour has it he heard a difference between the DAC in his iPhone and the one in his laptop.  When not so long ago, this was theoretically impossible according to, ah, Max of the Flinn...I had to raise a smile.  

As to this link from our OP, well, I read the first line "....there's no logical reason to continue with optical based disc players in 2010...".  Oh no?  Well, let's see.  A hi-res download is no guarantee of a great recording simply by virtue of it being a hi-res download.  See also SACD (or the other hi-res formats).  

Not every mastering is available on hi-res, so it is highly convenient to be able to obtain the one you particularly want to have, rather than the one you are limited to.  

Until the "disc based media is dead" crowd can get their little heads round the above two, then buyers like me will continue to spend on the specific CDs I'm after.  Particularly when you've some excellent labels like Union Square turning out great packages that cut the cost-per-track price down to less than 20p in some cases (as against 79p on iTunes for instance).  Or second hand sellers (such as the excellent Zoverstocks on Amazon) that offer discs for less than a £1.  Shrewd buying can net you some excellent sounds, with excellent sound quality if you know what you're looking for, for very little outlay.

I think the article gets some stuff right; there isn't a massive difference in some digital hardware to me, so my Sony TA-F 630ESD amp from 1990 with its onboard DAC can stand up to modern day digital sources or DACs quite comfortably.  Otherwise, too much opinion, which is fine to some extent, but doesn't bear up to scrutiny across the board (IMO).

To the OP, if you want a real challenge for your views, go post it over on the Steve Hoffman Forum's Hardware section.  I'll sit back and watch the rest...     

Interesting R.S.... I'm going to look at your Hoffman forum I think as interested in the music and the processes behind it.

Caped Crusaders telling me what I can and cannot hear is just getting a bit much now frankly.

Yes some good points about formats. One thing that does annoy me, is on USA sites you can't download them if you are in UK, pity because high res. downloads are only $18 for most albums whilst the SACDs are often £20-£30. Yes and other albums you can only get as cds or as downloads, I think we will see more of that in the future. I still buy cds but thinking of adding a dac so I can download and play them. 

A DAC isn't a prerequisite for  downloading and playing music.

That, the cheapest route 'to a sort of high end sound' would most likely come from a decent set of headphones, if you can live with that.

regards

"A DAC isn't a prerequisite for  downloading and playing music."

OK I know nothing about it, what is the best way to do and play through the hifi?

As for headphones OK for a short time I find but I still prefer the amp and speakers.

I missed a crucial word. I should have said that a separate DAC isn't a prerequisite. That is, any system that plays any digital media must have a DAC, so whatever you intend to play the downloads from will (almost certainly) have one. A separate one may improve things, but is not an absolute necessity.

Indeed, give it a whirl Charlotte; plus they've a few guys on there who do the mastering thing for a living - Hoffman for one and the genius Barry Diament for another.  I think some of the other US ones like Zal Schreiber and Vic Anesini (who did some great work for Sony/Columbia) are in there too.  Massive search resource too.  

Thanks for the advice...all of you. Seems like I started some sort of forum implosion in some quarters when all I really wanted was some views on the article I had found. I didnt expect it to generate such passion but never mind. Obviously these things run deep.... .Nice idea the Headphones...I still have a decent pair of Sennheiser closed back phones and also a pair of in ear Etymotic ER-4P's which are quite stunning......however I am wanting a room to be filled with music so I can feel it and wallow in it..rather than it just being in my head! The Rega gear suggestions are along the same lines I was thinking. Does anybody have any experience with Neat motive 2's with the Rega Brio/Apollo and Dac system. Size wise they look ideal but somewhere in the back of my mind I remember reading that they were a bit overpowering in the bass dept in a living room. Again ,if someone can up with some other suggestions other than Rega ,I am all ears. Anybody with experience of the Pioneer A70.....a new class D amp....or what about the Harman Kardon HK990. On paper it looks a stunner and with power to spare.....plus high current too.

The HK990 is a very powerful amp, but don't go into it thinking it's going to bowl you over with a presentation you're familiar with.  Had one on trial a few years ago and it was VERY neutral.  Ample power though, fantastic amp and worth trying.  The Home Cinema Centre in Edinburgh has one on ex-display (read: probably near mint) for around £795, worth a phone call perhaps....).

I picked up an older but still impressive HK6850 recently.  HK make some great amps and their Citation range is still highly sought after.  See also their HD990 CDP which worked very well with the 990 amp.  

Just go to your local hifi shop and demo !!!!!

We can suggest various combos on this forum but you cant decide what to buy just from opinion on here!