Our trusty old Yamaha CD changer seems about to expire; the drawer is showing great reluctance to open and close, although it plays fine otherwise. I’ve tried lubricating the mechanism to no avail, although I’ll keep trying other things, so the motor may be about to croak.
Which brings me to a replacement: the player is hooked up to our old but excellent sounding Yamaha RX-596 stereo receiver, but dedicated CD players are getting expensive (A$550 upwards).
Blu Ray players, on the other hand, start at $150 but I can’t get a definitive answer either from stores or Internet about whether they will play stereo CDs.
Then, connecting to our Yamaha, rather than a 5.1 receiver, might be hard as it only has RCA plug inputs. I can’t find any info about which if any Blu Ray players have RCA outputs, I suspect none.
We do have a Yamaha RXV-367 5.1 receiver in storage, but its sound, build quality and output are not as impressive as the old RX596. Also,we don’t want to have a 5.1. system in our living/listening room, so I’d rather stick with stereo.
Connections aside, does anyone know of a Blu Ray player which will play stereo CDs? I can then check whether they’re available here and whether I could connect to the old receiver. I could look at buying a s/h CD player but that’s risky.
From watching the CD player repair vids on youtube it seems cleaning the mechanism before lubing can help alot as they can get realy gummed up. And replacing the belt so it slips less.
This Tojock player has Composite audio/video outs as well as HDMI. It is one of few that have both. I’m not sure about availability in Oz, however. I got one for my daughter for Christmas.
That said, I’ve used my 2009 Sony Bluray Player as a stereo CD source since then. Mine however has all of the outputs as they still could have them at that time if you spent more.
Most SONY nowadays have HDMI output only, and can also play DSD/SACD- through the HDMI digital output. The thing is, you need an HDMI DAC or input to decode it properly and allow the playback in the first place. Essence has 2 different kinds of HDMI DACs that could be utilized In such endeavors, one single-ended/balanced and stereo unit, and a full surround version with SE outputs for all channels. Note: these are somewhat $alty DACs, but usable for other HDMI sources including a 4k UHD player.
You could also likely find a HDMI audio extractor to facilitate the transfer connection.
How is it that AI is going to take all of our jobs in a few years, but cannot answer a simple question about CD players correctly?
I asked Google for Sony Bluray players with RCA outputs and while it did correctly list some very old models, it also listed a new model that does NOT actually have RCA outs.
The BDP-S1700U is quite inexpensive but I can’t tell if it is available in Australia. It does NOT have RCA outs (see below). But can it even play stereo music CDs? (I thought they all could.) No info the typical places I looked. After finally finding the user manual on Sony’s website and getting to page 31, it does appear to play stereo music CDs.
So, what about the RCA outs? The Sony Bluray is only about USD 100 over here and DOES have a Coaxial digital out. But you could run any Bluray player that plays CD format and has coaxial or optical digital outs to an inexpensive Fosi/Topping/S.M.S.L./etc DAC. (Maybe S.M.S.L SU-1 MQA MQA-CD Audio Decoder.) An inexpensive Bluray and inexpensive DAC combination may be cheaper than a CD player with RCA outs.
You can look for older used Oppo dvd players, they make excellent CD players with analog outputs. Not sure how popular they were down under, though. the DV-980H can be had for less than $150 shipped here.
Thanks for the links to SMSL and Oppo players, unfortunately N/A here, although they might be sold under another name, as is so with several consumer electronics products.
A thought just occurred to me, though: I could just buy a DVD player - only $50-100 - as long as it has RCA outs - although those I just looked at only have coaxial or HDMI…
Very confusing, I really appreciate all you guys’ help with this
There’s also fiio CD player, AliExpress has all of them, may not be available locally in Oz. How’s the experience of getting stuff from AliExpress in Oz?
In the US, Amazon and other retailers such as Apos carry both smsl and fiio. The fiio dm3 is about 165usd
I have a Sony Blu-ray player piped to an external DAC as well as an older Panasonic sacd dvd player. Both play cds through external DAC. For sacd I have to go via HDMI else it gets mixed to stereo.
The new crop of modern CD transport seems to be a revival of the discman, some even have built in battery and anti skip, some are pure transport. Digital out to an external DAC works great.
In modern hifi, look at the Onkyo Icon C-30. It’s the new line from Onkyo. The on street price unfortunately is 399 not the 349 as stated in the launch details.
I must admit I have never owned a DAC and don’t know what to do with it, am a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to newer technology!
My ideal solution would be to find a Blu Ray player with RCA stereo outs and which will play CDs, but that’s looking difficult. As noted above, I could get a cheap DVD player if that would work, but I’ll need to get a Blu Ray player at some stage so it may as well be now.
As suggested by A4eaudio, I’ll look into the Blu-Ray/DAC option: would I connect the Blu Ray to the DAC, and then connect the DAC to the receiver via its RCA out plugs?
Apart from voltage and warranty issues, sourcing anything from the States is prohibitively expensive. I looked into a replacement belt for the Yamaha, if that might be the problem, but the belt was $25 and the post was $114.. eek.
This one’s a modest price and has a coaxial input at the back:
Onkyo used to make really nice gear but hasn’t been readily available here for many years. As I recall it was up there with Sansui, Luxman and Marantz. Re Ali Express, everyone I know who’s tried it or Temu has been ripped off, unfortunately.
My wife had a DVD player with component AV, which uses RCA style audio connections. There might have been a little bit of bleedover, but I’m inclined to think the industry had largely moved away from analog connections before blu-ray came around.
My experiences with DVD players playing CDs has not been great. I found they tend to be much slower at reading the discs, very laggy when FF/rewind/skipping tracks, more noisy, and basically no display if it isn’t plugged into the TV. And even then you are lucky if you get any more than the track number on the TV anyway. IMO it seemed to be a feature added just so they could put another bullet point on the DVD player box. So I just held off on doing much with CDs for a while until I saw the SMSL pl100. Then later snapped up a sony single tray CD unit for $10 at a reuse center. Maybe blu-ray players are better. IDK as I never had one.
Yes, just look for a Blu Ray that has Coaxial and/or Optical out (sometimes called Toslink).The SMSL DAC I mentioned was available on Amazon AU. (Not super cheap, but not crazy expensive either.)
Yes, this would be a possible option. Look into the user manual, the Player should be able to output in stereo, usually a setting since it can output multi-chamnel audio through optical or coaxial spdif. The option is usually labed as pcm stereo.
Amazon.au has very limited options compared to the US site. Couldn’t find either the smsl or the fiio CD player locally, however there’s free international shipping from amazon US, don’t know how it actually works and what taxes would be.
This would be a decent small and cheap (relatively) dac. Smsl su-1 good for starting out and then you can go crazy over overhyped dacs.
You can use the fiio to go directly to your amp or fiio via optical or coaxial to the DAC and DAC to amp via RCA. Though The fiio has a DAC built in, so if you want to add a DAC in the chain, the smsl might not be thatich of a step up.
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