Philips CD850 MkII

[admin_exported]

I'm currently using this old CD player with a Musical fidelity B200 and B&W 602 speakers. It still sounds great to me but, as things have probably moved on somewhat, would a newer player sound better?

Oh and, as an aside, I'm wondering if Andrew (or anyone else) has an opinion on what they would consider to be the best performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations on CD?

 

[Anton90125]

I have just read a few bits and pieces about your philips player. It has been described as " One of the last audiophile CD players from Philips". Various forums also say that the transport and build quality is also good. If I were you I would keep the cd player and invest in a DAC or a good quality second hand DAC. I got my Cyrus DAC-X SH for £500.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Anton90125"]I have just read a few bits and pieces about your philips player. It has been described as " One of the last audiophile CD players from Philips". Various forums also say that the transport and build quality is also good. If I were you I would keep the cd player and invest in a DAC or a good quality second hand DAC. I got my Cyrus DAC-X SH for £500.[/quote]

I think my wife would kill me if I paid out that much.

 

[Anton90125]

I like the cat! I have 4 of my own.

The reason I suggested an external dac is you already have a good transport which is well built. You will aready be used to the facilities available on the philips. Most budget CD players (in my opinion) are very flimsy, thin cheap plastic used to extensively. I had a philips CD303 from 1983/4 which was very well built and had a good sound (I regreat selling it). I had a philips CD650 which was a light weight both phyically and sonically. I am convienced that the transport part of a CD player needs to be pretty solid to isolate the read laser head from external vibrations causing read/tracking errors. The less the error correction system has to do the better the sound quality. From the various descriptions I have read about your player it would seem that you have a good solid transport. As I am sure you are aware there are a lot of dacs out there at various prices. For the same price that a new dac would cost you could get a better dac on the second hand market. I used my dac as an example as the new price is around £1100 which is way too much for me. The reason I chose it (other then its sonic quality) is it has multiple digital inputs which alows me to use my ROKU M2000 (digital streaming a} flac file from a NAS across a LAN b} from internet radio ) , digital output from Cable TV box and my CD player. Maybe if you know some one with a dac, see if you can borrow it and varify/ quantify the sonic improments. So far in the last 15 years I have had 3 dacs (last 2 SH) and have never regreted any of them!