Atoll CD50 CD Player, $1650

Atoll’s magnificent CD50 is a Red Book CD player.

It has been designed SPECIFICALLY to play CDs.

It doesn’t play SACDs, Blu-rays, DVDs or BetaMax tapes. It was built specifically to play CDs and incorporates many choices that make it IDEAL for that task.

I want to put CD50 on your radar because you’re probably hearing a lot of nonsense that the CD format is extinct. I’m here to tell you that not only is your CD collection vital, you probably have not heard how good it can sound.

Just as your vinyl collection is revitalized by upgrading to a great moving coil cartridge like an Ortofon Quintet S, the same is true with a fabulous CD player like Atoll CD50. Oh, and by the way, the options for buying great CD box collections continues to be a treasure trove of music.

Playing CDs is the easiest way to get GREAT sound, playing the full program as the artist intended, without having to be a computer geek or a slave to record cleaning.

Yep, some of us actually listen to entire albums. We may be dinosaurs but… we’re still kicking. If you’re around any young person these days, as they stream they can’t complete a song before skipping to the next one. Youth… is wasted on the young. Take a breath. Drink in quality. CD is the best way to do this.

What The Other Guys Are Excited About

I was reading in British hi-fi News recently about the steps the writer was going to in attempts to stream music and save his CDs to a hard drive. In the May 2024 issue, p68, the writer starts getting whipped up about the Eversolo DMP8 streamer/DAC/preamp for about $2000.

Now, I play music for FUN. I refuse to spend time, much less hours, cleaning albums or diddling with the mechanics of record playing. Nor… do I want to have to be a techie just to play my music. Fortunately, it isn’t necessary if you just buy an Atoll CD player and spin your discs.

Here… is what the TechFools are doing to play music. But I’ll start by saying, going through gyrations to save your CDs to a hard drive, are a waste of time. If you just PLAY YOUR CDs through an Atoll CD50, it will sound better than wasting your time with the following foolishness. For guys that insist on embarking down this path of pain and torture… no wonder your family thinks you’re crazy.

First of all, this Eversolo machine that you don’t need for $2k, is made in China by Zidoo. Who is Zidoo? It’s a company in Shenzhen, China, home of 13 million people just N of Hong Kong. Zidoo makes a boatload of Media Players with loads of storage and video capability. They’re computers stuffed with chips and run by SMPS supplies. They have multiple HDMI connections, DolbyVision, headphone amps and a partridge in a pear tree. I’m sure you get the picture. Companies like this are making products more like cable boxes, not components for music lovers.

They tell you it works better with Android than Apple. You can use Apple but it’s more cumbersome. Oh boy, great start. It will play Apple Music after you battle with the screen- and of course you have to remember to enable the hi-res playback setting in the Apple software section. By the way, Apple hi-res still doesn’t sound as good as Tidal or Qobuz. Um, we’re just warming up here. Sound like fun yet?!

If you don’t “shoehorn the whole thing into a mobile app” you have to keep running over to the hardware every time you want to tweak something. To beat this particular problem you can go into a Cast option that mirrors the front screen on the streamer’s face. Good heavens. Suppose you want to install Apple Music Classical. You have to select your choice of music in that service in the device screen, and enable Cast. They say you need a tablet display because it’s fiddly even on a sizable smartphone screen. While there’s a spinning top icon that provides a shortcut to the music that’s playing, there is a second hidden menu on the left which is revealed by swiping.

The writer says it sounded harsh in default mode, so he went into the menu and finally found a way to reduce the gain by 5dB. That helped because the default setting was overloading. And hey, this thing has EQ and DSP functions. Despite the fact that it also has a DAC on board, he preferred running USB out to his old integrated amp. He preferred the sound to its DAC. His old integrated sounded more spacious and had higher definition than the fancy new DAC section of this electronic octopus.

I, almost wanna throw up when I read this stuff. I’m angry with myself for wasting 20 minutes reading about this, much less wasting HOURS trying to make a “fancy” friggin cable TV box stream or save music.

Music will sound better if you just get off your tail and put a silver disc in an Atoll and hit play. If you want to stream, just run an Atoll MS120. You don’t have to ruin your life with another frustrating computer wrestling match.

Drive

Atoll CD players use Teac transports. They’re solid, track well and are quickly responsive to your commands. I admit that I love putting a disc in, hitting play, and it just plays. With most CD players, the transports were designed for video laden discs. They’re slow to load, slow to respond to your commands, and you can hear “revving” from within the player itself. If you’re playing quiet music… that can be annoying. Atolls are mechanically quiet.

DAC

Atoll runs Burr Brown DACs without a feedback loop. Most competitors brag up that they are using the market’s most recent high processing chipset. Simply put, newer chips have more computer processing power. You don’t need that to play CDs. Further, all this processing makes the music more hard sounding.

Yep, the very feature they’re trying to sell you on makes the sound less mellow and compelling. To try to solve this they add extra electronic stages- feedback loops, in attempts to tame the sizzle. Further, we’re seeing some of the more aware companies that choose to use these chips-only use a PORTION of the chip’s capability. That’s because they know all this processing hurts the sound. But they also know bragging up using the latest chipset… will help them sell it.

Atoll doesn’t just buy components for its gear to help sell by reputation. They listen arduously to determine if a change in design will actually help the sound. Atoll has found that they can get a smoother musical result by running BB DACs without feedback. More processing hurts the sound, so they don’t employ it.

DAC Input!

Atoll provides a SECRET WEAPON with most of its CD players. You have the ability to run your streamer or other digital source into the DAC of CD50! This, is such a wise option. While CD50’s main task in life will be to make your CDs sound their best, you can run your Bluesound (or other) streaming into CD50 and now your streaming will take on Atoll’s burnished musical flavor, instead of the thinner/harder sounding of the streamer itself.

CD 50 Electronics

CD50 uses multiple linear (not switching!) power supplies. This is necessary to achieve a robust, warm sound. It uses a 30VA transformer for the audio stages. It runs a second 4.6VA transformer dedicated to digital operation. It runs a third 1.6VA transformer to isolate operational functions. Filter caps are just under 17,000uF, which is what you would expect to find in a 50w power amp! Atoll uses this stiff power supply as the core of CD50’s performance. CD50 uses Atoll’s current-voltage conversion stages base on bipolar transistors.

Have a look inside CD50 and you’ll see a work of art. The boards are exquisitely clean and built in house. Your CDs have more musical treasure than you’ve heard.

This Doesn’t Have To Be Hard

Please consider moving up to an Atoll CD50. You’ll drop a disc in and hit play. You won’t have to sweat the vinyl dance or fight with your computer. You’ll hear warmth and space you didn’t know your discs harbored.