CD player for $400

The Marantz CD5004 is a decent buy at $350. They have a demo at audioadvisor.com for $300. They have even cheaper prices at accessories4less for refurbished units. Of course, you could just burn your CDs and use a music server and your computer.

The best way to connect a music player to an AVR is digitally. A digital connection makes the converters, etc. in the music player irrelevant, so players in the $100 price are applicable.

The alternatives add complexity and cost with no sound quality advantage.

So at that point, it wouldn't be any better than a $70 DVD player, because the DACs in the AVR are doing all the work.

Why do you want to do that?
Why might you want to do that?

Neither will make your system sound better. The first might actually preclude some real improvement to sound quality. It's hard to advise you about how to go about doing something that doesn't make much sense.

I have this Marantz player, and it does a fine job using the analog outs. I'm using it that way with a headphone amp. As someone else noted, if you connect it to a receiver digitally, you will be using the DACs in the receiver instead of the ones in the player. Hard to say which will sound better--you'd have to compare them in your system.

I'm very happy with a Harmon/Kardon HCD 990. I got it for around $400 on a deal.

If you use digital outs, all working transports will sound identical.

Yes. Balanced outputs relate only to analog.

There is no real world balanced output that has the low noise and distortion that we take for granted with digital.
Edited by arnyk - 12/11/12 at 11:34am

The Yamaha A710 is a mid range AVR. So it's not going to do as good a job at converting digital to analog as a good CD player would. On the other hand, I doubt it has a good enough pre amp or analog section to allow a component upstream to really sparkle. You might as well get a CD player with the idea of passing digital to the AVR.

Somebody else who thinks price is a technical spec.
Sure it will.
Source components are not supposed to "sparkle." They are supposed to deliver a clean signal to the receiver. And if you put a clean signal into a "mid range AVR," you will get a clean signal out.

The phrase, "mid range AVR" is really not controversial, and I was not referring to cost. Everything else in your post is not worth bothering with a response.

To the OP, I would suggest taking all opinion with a grain of salt, too many people about here these days with some kind of axe to grind. Take your time, read up on things, and don't let people brow beat you(as some already have tried) into making a decision that they approve of.

It should be. It's just audiophile bull Funny!

Have you tried it yourself?

A nicely musical cd player either the Creek or Music Hall gear. Happy Listening!

Speculation, or do you have reliable evidence to back that up?

Can you quantify this "sparkle" thing?

Can you quantify "a nicely musical"?

Please provide scientific evidence that proves your position, or it's just enthusiast guessing.

Sorry guy, but you are the guy making claims. So, it is up to you to give your claims hands and feet or just let them die.

If there is an enthusiast guessing here, its not me because I'm an EE with over 40 years of experience, dozens and dozens of DBTs, test equipment in my back bedroom, the whole 9 yards.

Trotting out your subjective experience is not evidence.

I assume you have no scientific evidence then?

DBTs are scientific evidence. I also measured test equipment bench tests which are also scientific.

What do you have beyond that highly scientific sounding "sparkle" thing? ;-)

Since you obviously don't have any DBT on the matter at hand, that is AVR vs a good cd player performance, then I won't hold my breath that you can back up your subjective opinions with anything more than guesses.

You're the guy making the exceptional claim that despite the excellent technical performance of the AVR, there's something sonically missing.

If there is something missing, where its measured absence, what is it and where did it go?

You never mentioned formats? CDs have one format. Do you want a SACD player, DVD-A player, something to decode HDCD? None of this has been part of the conversation. A 70 dollar dvd player with optical or coax output will play CDs. If you want the other formats I've mentioned then start looking at universal players from Denon, Marantz, Pioneer, Yamaha, or Oppo. The cheapest starts around 399.

Yes.