At this point, audio CDs are essentially a dead medium, with digital files clearly taking over in terms of popularity and use. Which makes it a strange time to introduce a US$7,100, belt-driven CD player. But that’s just what CEC has done.
Beyond the fact that CDs are yesterday’s news, the idea of paying so much money for a CD player is kind of bananas to begin with. I mean, who needs a belt drive in their CD player? This isn’t a record player, it’s not like the music plays too fast or too slow on crappier CD players. I’m sure this thing does a great job of stabilising the disc during the rotation, but you won’t notice that when you listen to it.
Really, it’s understandable for audiophiles to prefer CDs to digital files just because digital files are usually compressed and sound like crap compared with CDs. But any CD player will read your CDs as good as any other. Save your US$7,100 for something more worthwhile. [New Launches]
mr mr
Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 2:07 AMThis is not a CD player, it’s a CD transport. You’ll still need an external DAC to sqeeze any music out of the discs, all this device does is READ the data off the CD and present it to an outboard DAC. Please do your homework before you feel you’re in a position to comment on things you don’t know the basics of.
OMG
Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 9:09 PMHmmm, where shall I begin? As mr mr already stated, it’s kinda ridiculous to slash something that you don’t understand. E.g., you make it seem like CDs don’t contain digital files. They do, they hold digital files in the PCM 44.1/16 format (i.e. standard Red Book). And not all digital music files are “usually compressed”. Second, the belt mechanism has nothing to do with your assumption that it’s there to assure constant speed – this is not a record player (at least you got that part right, congratulations!). The reason a belt is used is to isolate the motor vibrations from the spinning shaft. Vibrations are one of the biggest causes of reading errors in optical mechanisms (also known as C1 errors). Furthermore, how would you know the benefits of this mechanism won’t be noticable to the listener, as obviously you haven’t even seen this transport in real life, let alone heard it? You’re just stating your assumptions without even knowing what this apparatus does to begin with. “But any CD player will read your CDs as good as any other”: yeah, right! I bet your Yugo outruns a Porsche easily, because after all, any car drives as well as any other. Geez, can you make it even more obvious that these grapes are too sour to you? Next!