Disc Players

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Richard Stevenson & Paul Miller  |  Mar 05, 2009
Just occasionally very creative people can pair two otherwise completely incongruous items and come up with something truly special. Take strawberries and cream: who would have thought mixing a ground fruit with the soured milk of a lactating mammal would sire an international tennis tournament and two weeks of eastern European girls running around in short skirts? Marvellous. But an SACD player with a traditionally video-centric HDMI connection? I’m not so sure. The reason is multichannel SACD audio and getting that data to an external DAC with almost zero jitter.
Review: Ken Kessler  |  Jun 04, 2025  |  First Published: May 01, 2025
hfnvintageThe latest ES model from the SACD originator is a luxury player at a middle-market price. Ken Kessler samples its sound in stereo and 5.1

You don’t have to be a marketing analyst with a subscription to the Financial Times to understand why SACD might win the format war. Clearly, the SACD crew has delivered more hardware and (most importantly) in the order of ten times more software than DVD-Audio, according to the estimates of music vendors I’ve canvassed. All of which makes the arrival of a high-end SACD player with a mid-range price point something worth considering.

Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 14, 2024
hfnoutstandingStill big in Japan, the SACD takes pride of place in Soulnote's 'ultimate digital playback system' that also includes the option of digital filterless conversion and external clocking

With Soulnote having already proved its analogue mettle in these pages with the E-2 phono preamp , does the brand have similar prowess with digital? And not just with CDs, for this S-3 flagship is a fully-fledged SACD player.

Paul Miller  |  Nov 19, 2011
Swiss player combines SACD replay, digital inputs and sumptuous aesthetics to great effect The new 540 SACD ‘Digital Player’, a snip by Soulution standards at £17,850, benefits from the trickle-down of technology from its flagship 745 model. Finish is sumptuous, and the curved edges of top panel and front fascia combine to soften the 540’s physical presence, making it disappear more than most big hi-fi boxes, leaving one to focus on a single rotary dial, a meagre trio of buttons and a slender disc drawer. Screw heads, heatsinks, logos, etc are absent. Digital inputs include coaxial, optical and balanced connections which can all handle incoming data up to 192kHz/24-bit.
Martin Colloms  |  Jun 03, 2022
hfnvintageAt last, Krell Digital presents its CD player system, the MD-1 transport plus SBP-64X, and the less costly SBP-16X DAC. Martin Colloms listens

Krell has determined that digital audio should form part of its future, and has created a separately financed division called Krell Digital Inc. The MD-1 digital transport was shown last year together with the SBP-64X processor/decoder – an amazing combination at a price which left the industry breathless, being around £15,000 the pair.

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Mar 24, 2023
hfnoutstandingThe final, or should that be first, component in T+A's 200 series quartet is a CD-playing, network-attached media transport that boasts a proprietary 'SYS-Link' connection

After delighting headphone lovers with the HA 200 DAC/amp [HFN Aug '20], which nicely matched the Solitaire P headphones introduced at the same time, T&A has been on a roll. The HA 200 transpired to be just the first in a range of units forming the new 200 series – all compact separates, but all designed to dovetail seamlessly together.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Aug 01, 2018
'Bridge' digital sources, the link between conventional physical media and computer-based audio, are very much on-trend at the moment – what can T+A bring to the party?

So, are the twin threats of downloaded music and streaming services putting the final nail in CD's coffin? In the future will our music collections exist only as files on a home server, or indeed not as collections at all – figures seem to suggest downloads are flagging – but rather as infinite libraries accessed on demand from online services?

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Dec 05, 2019
hfnoutstandingAre the days of the disc almost over? Evidence to the contrary comes in the form of this flagship SACD/CD transport and network DAC/preamp from T+A's 'High Voltage' series

I think I can be pretty confident in saying there aren't too many new British hi-fi components out there whose development has been government-funded. Clearly they do things differently in Germany, where the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy underwrote the design and development of the network-capable DAC/preamp forming half of the subject of this test, T+A's £23,400 SDV 3100 HV. The project has borne fruit in the behemoth of a digital converter you see here, all 26kg of it, described as a 'Super High Definition Audio DAC with bit-perfect data transmission and resolutions of DSD1024 and PCM768'.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Apr 23, 2025  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2024
hfnoutstanding

Conceived as the ‘command centre’ of a modern high-end system, T+A’s powerful all-in-one system embraces CD and streamed audio, in all its flavours, and radio too...

Looking for a simple, no-frills, ‘straight wire with gain’ amplification solution? If so, it’s a case of ‘move right along, please – nothing to see here’, for T+A’s R 2500 R, available in black or silver at £12,905, is a prime example of large-scale integration in the quest for one of those ‘just add speakers’ systems. Yes, you could connect other source components to it, thanks to a choice of analogue and digital inputs – but really, why would you want to?

Review: Paul Miller, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Aug 21, 2025  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2025
hfnvintageWith its massive construction, bespoke drive mech and advanced 20-bit DAC, can this silver disc spinner measure up to Paul Miller’s expectations?

Appearances are almost always deceptive. Take Teac’s new £1300 VRDS-25. Here’s a CD player that looks rather like the established VRDS-10 and VRDS-7 [see below], featuring the CMK3 version of its VRDS transport with wafer-thin drawer mechanism, elegant orange-coloured display and basic range of onboard controls.

Review: Tim Jarman, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 19, 2022
hfnvintageThe first CD player from the Japanese brand to boast real 'kerb appeal', this mid-'80s machine also inherited key technology from previous models. How does it sound today?

Any early Compact Disc player from Matsushita (Panasonic/Technics) holds a particular fascination. The company was excluded from the top table when the CD format was created, in spite of (or perhaps due to) its pre-eminent position as the world's largest producer of electronic consumer goods.

Review: Tim Jarman, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Dec 14, 2022
hfnvintageBelieving portables to be as good as their full-sized rivals, many music lovers sought out the smallest – and this CD player was a compact king. How does it sound today?

Think about portable CD players and the chances are that the Sony Discman [HFN Jul '19] will come to mind. The company's ability to produce enchanting and compelling miniature versions of existing products has been pretty much unequalled, and 'the world's smallest' is a phrase that can often be seen in Sony's vintage catalogues. In comparison, the company's larger models were frequently bland and derivative.

Review: Tim Jarman, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jul 05, 2023
hfnvintageCompact, clever and priced to entice, this quirky little late-'80s machine caught the imagination of those buying into digital for the first time. How does it shape up today?

When Toshiba unveiled its lineup of new CD players in 1986 it was clear the format had come of age. Just three years after the first machines were launched onto the European market they'd gone from being exotic and expensive to something so accessible there was little point in any keen listener not owning one.

Tim Jarman, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Sep 09, 2024
hfnvintageGimmick or grand plan as Toshiba looks to spice up the mid-’80s CD scene with a dual-disc player offering over two hours of continuous music. How does it fare today?

Anumber of our recent Vintage Reviews have featured CD players designed to broaden the appeal of the format by making the hardware available at progressively lower price points. This was one way to maintain sales, but another approach was to add additional features at little or no extra cost.

Review: Tim Jarman, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Mar 09, 2020
hfnvintageBased on Sony's second-gen 16-bit/2x oversampled chipset, the DP-850 established a toehold in the CD scene for the Trio-Kenwood Corp. How does it shape up today?

While not a name often associated with early CD players, Kenwood was not lacking in ambition with its first entry into the field. Rather than test the market with a quiet offering buried deep in the backwaters of its catalogue, in 1983 the company added the L-03DP CD player to its range of top-line components.

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