Please, help me buy a cd player. I'm lost!!

[BigGanja]

Hi guys

I just got a new AV system (amp is Onkyo 603, speakers Canton) and I'd like to get a new cd player as I listen to music daily (lots of classic music) and don't want to use the DVD player every time

now the difficult part: price
I wasted most of my budget on the rest of the stuff and just can't justify spending more than 50 quid for it

I had a bit of a search and it seems many of you like the Arcam Alpha series, other than Marantz, Nad and Rotel
I obviously can't afford to buy a new one so I'll go the ebay route

just, I don't have a clue
there's this one for example
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MEWA:IT&ih=003
but according to many people it struggles to read CD-R, and I have LOTS of CD-Rs

which one should I get?
Alpha 5, Alpha 1, NAD C541.......

thanks a lot in advance

[mhuk05]

One tip for getting stuff cheaper on fleabay is to search by distance to postcode- I got a CD63 for £15 this way. Going for a slightly older, less well known brand may also get you a cheaper CDP.

But what is your DVD player? Some DVD players will match cheaper CDPs for musical playback e.g the Sony 9000 something or other.

Reviews of older CDPs here:

http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/hfw/bgcdplayers.html

Can't answer your question as haven't heard them.

[Arfa]

I used to have a Marantz CD4000. It was ok, but wasn't really Marantz, was just a fairly reasonable Phillips player rebranded. Had a good transport, but the dac in it sucked. I teamed it up with a Cambridge Dacmagic 2i, which brought out a lot more detail. The CD5000 and CD6000 were both proper Marantz designed and built though. You could always check out older Marantz, the CD63 was the big famous one.

The other angle you could take, is stick with your DVD player as a transport and spend your money on a DAC to route it into. Something like the Dacmagic, Musical Fidelity X-DAC, Alchemy Audio DAC-in-a-Box etc

[BigGanja]

thanks for such informative replies

DVD player is an Onkyo 503, which is honestly outstanding, but the thing is I listen to music every day and want to it just for the odd DVD-A or SACD (and dvd movies, of course)

the reason why I'm a bit doubtful about Marantz is that many have reported problems with CD-R reading

PS
I found an auction for the CD63
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Marantz-CD63-C...QQcmdZViewItem
how's the DAC on it?

PS2
how're the old Arcam alpha (1 and 3)?

[RossFlet]

I have a Marantz 4000 and had no problems with reading CDRs or even CD RWs. I suggest most problems reported are related to badly copied CD-Rs or copied at too high speed thus introducing too many errors. But it's still a pretty average CDP and I have moved on

The Arcam player is another beast entirely and if you can get the 63 at a good price my advice is go for it. They are well built players and being a UK brand you should have no problems getting servicing if you need it. If you become an Arcam owner, don't forget to check out the Arcam owners forum on this web page. Lots of knowledge there.

Ross

[BigGanja]

great post, thanks a lot mate

just
in which way is Arcam different?

also
what about NAD C541??
there're couple of auctions right now that I might consider

[BigGanja]

any opinions on the NAD C541?