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Compared to 3 others

I bought a CXC for $275 locally and enjoyed it quite a bit. I thought enough of the improvement to sell my Onkyo 7030 CD Player which I had been using as a transport via the digital out. Everyone sales "just use the digital out" of your CDP. But in my experience that's an opinion based on little to no actual experience with a CD Transport.

I decided to try others and went down a year long rabbit hole with CD Transports.

The CXC is a really good option - good enough CD drive mechanism and pleasant overall sound quality.

Here's where I went next:

AudioLab 6000CDT - Better build, great sounding Transport. Soundwise my favorite. But it's slot loading and that part was not great. I didn't try a 7000CDT but it's a tray loader and that's probably a great option. Bought used for $325.

Jay's Audio CDT2-MK3 - wow, huge device and it weighs a ton. Tank like build with nice features and great sound. Kind of bass heavy. But at $2,000 used that's too much to spend. Bought used for $2,100.

Shanling ET-3 - very nice top loading disc mechanism. Nice option of outputs. Pretty good sounding. A lot of features that I'm not using. Bought new for $760.

I'm sticking, for now, with the Shanling. The main two reasons are the top loading disc mechanism and the I2S output. Oh, and it's not anything but an oddity but the Shanling plays MQA discs. I have one, and it does sound nice.

If buying one today, I'd probably go with the CXC or an Audiolab 6000CDT assuming you want to spend around $300-$350. If your budget is under a $1000 I'd look for a used Audiolab 9000CDT.


Edits: 05/06/24 05/06/24 05/06/24
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