New cd player or old ?

[Byelovzorov]

Hi people. Need to buy a new cd player. Respective benefits of a shiny new Marantz Cd6004 or a venerable Arcam CD92?
I have a bi-amped setup using Arcam A85 integrated amp and P90 power amp into even more ancient Spendor speakers.
Old or new? Not fussed about SACD or HDCd playback capability.

Thanks for the thoughts!

[P700DEE]

There is little point investing in brand new and shiney when you can buy better quality at a discount and get pre owned (just like cars Go for quality but keep in mind format changes in the future. Whilst SACD is not likely to go any where I like the ability to read DVDs as it is nice to play your music DVDs through your Hi-Fi, this usually works for DVD-A too. I use a cheap Pioneer DVD-656A which reads anything and kicks all but SACD digital out to a Chord DAC64 but this is still out of your price range.

[HiFiHunter]

In your shoes, I'd hunt down an old Rega Apollo, or if funds permit, pick up the new Rega Apollo-R. Top notch CD spinner. No faffing about with SACD etc.

Although if you do want to cover all bases, the Cambridge Audio 751BD and Marantz UD7007 universal players seems to well regarded. The Marantz has the edge for music, but you might be able to pick up the older Cambridge Audio ones up second for a decent price; 650BD, 651BD, 750BD etc.

[telecat]

The Arcam CD92 is a rare beast due to the dCS Ring DAC it is equipped with. If you know of one at a good price grab it it will out perform many new CD players. The 6004 would be a worthy adversary however. With SACD playback as well you probably would not find much better at the £250 to £300 it currently retails at. Their are a lot of SACD's about and the advent of Disc images on the net makes it very desirable. An outsider to look at would be the Denon DBT-1713 which is a Blu Ray player, but it has been designed to work well as an Audio player as well. To the degree that unless you use the HDMI link it only outputs a Stereo signal.

[Byelovzorov]

Thanks, all. The Arcam cd92 sold for just£100 before I had chance to make an offer. Someone had quite a bargain, I suspect. I tried to get a look at the Cambridge Audio 651 multi disc, but would have to travel too far to get hold if one as now limited to in store clearance only. So have ended up with Cambridge Audio 351 which seems fine at the
£250 price point. Time will tell!

[JABB]

Or get my Meridian 598 for £400 and have DVD-A

[johnvthe2nd]

copying them to FLAC (other lossless formats are available) and streaming to your existing equipment with almost anything would give you better results - you'll never look back!

there, someone had to say it

[Byelovzorov]

John, that sounds interesting, if time consuming for someone! Where do I start?

[johnvthe2nd]

you can start burning your cd's to disc anytime .. your time won't be wasted, as once it's done it's done (as long as you go lossless) .. look at software such as dbpoweramp.
have a read around, ripcaster.co.uk is a good start
you can start slowly by streaming from a pc, then upgrade no a NAS and go from there
get a 2nd hand squeezebox or similar from ebay to cut your teeth on .. when it falls into place with you you'll work out how far you want to go with it!