What are views on the musical ability of say the Denon 2200 or Pioneer 668 (£500ish) vs a budget CD player eg a £220 NAD machine ? I currently use my 2 year old sony DVD player to play CD's, but will be upgrading it soon and was wondering whether it was worth buying a dedicated CD player also as I listen to a lot of music CD's.
if its the NAD C542i then i would say its better than what those dvd players you mention will be capable of
What other equipment are you useing? Most AV receivers will also be poor for stereo music, so adding a dedicated CDP to one will only give a small, if any, improvement. If you have a high end receiver or pre/pro setup then you should hear a fair improvement over a DVD player for stereo. Or you could, as I have done, add a HiFi amp to drive the front speakers from the receiver and then plug a CDP into it, bypassing the AV equipment for music. This hobby can really start to get expensive one the upgrade bug bites Mark.
well I suppose it depends what your after really, what you expectations are. I wanted to get an all in one DVD player for CD replay too but ended up with a sperate cd player. I tested the Arcam DV78, I had aproblem with the sound with the scart lead attavhed which led the showroom to lend me a Cyrus CD6 as a reference. Well good as the Arcam is it can't compete with the Cyrus, and I mean there was a huge difference. I have the NAD T752 amp which is meant to be good in stereo and the Acoustic Energy EVO 3 5.1 speakers. This combo is easily able to tell the difference between an good CD sound and an excellent one. I ended up buying the Cyrus CD6 together with a Denon 2900. When I got the Denon back home I tested the CD replay and although it is not as good as the Cyrus by some margin it would certainly be good enough for most peoples needs I'd have thought. However feed it with a SACD or DVDA and the Denon is magnificent, truely amazing!
You have a fair point there >>MarkE19 I am using a yamaha RXV640 amp, much more at home with home theatre than music I know, but I believe it is "ok" with music? I'm not in a position yet to have a separate music amp/system, and I'm actually not much of an audiophile (yet!) although I'm finding I'm listening to music these days more than watching films. I want to upgrade my DVDP to one offering prog scan, so I think any new machine that is rated "ok" with music will be better than my current set up.