Atoll MD100 CD Player, $900
{3 1/4h, 12 5/8w, 8 1/8d, Black or Silver}
I’m an unabashed proponent of the CD format. I’m happy to tell you that you can get a warm sounding player, a true cut above the masses, for under $1k.
I like having a CD in my hand. The sound of CD is more tactile and intimate than streaming the same music. I like playing the program all the way through as was intended. I even like reading the notes that come with every disc.
I’m happy to buy discs and let great musicians make a fair buck for their craft. Streaming… is a criminal enterprise against artists.
I’m fine with streaming for keeping me company while doing other things. Yet it surprises me
how often my Spectrum internet service is out, or hiccups. I don’t like rebooting cheap boxes and wrestling with wi-fi. Just let me drop the disc in the tray already! It works every time.
Collecting LPs has been fun. But vinyl only pays off when you’re meticulous about record and stylus cleaning. Even then, many LPs sound like someone has ice skated across them. I’m done pretending that the noise isn’t there.
I love that I can play CDs a million times and they incur no wear. We can’t say the same for LPs. How great is it that we can run LVB’s 9th Symphony all the way through without flipping a black disc?
The quality of CD sound has gotten progressively better over the years. As a piano hound first and foremost, I have many recordings of Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall in the 60s and 70s. These performances on CD sound vivacous. They did a great job remastering. With no clicks or pops, listening to Horowitz while he still played at a high level… puts you IN Carnegie Hall on a Sunday afternoon at 3:30. We’re so spoiled.
If you play Decca piano CDs by Ben Grosvenor, all of which have been done in the past decade, even the most die hard vinyl guys are blown away. Virtually any disc from the Hyperion or Harmonia Mundi label is superb. Kissin’s entire career on Sony is high wire virtuosity with no impediments. These discs are breath taking with great dynamics and no noise in the road. Oh, and by the way, Berkshire Record Outlet, a fine source of music, today has 23,063 CDs in stock, and 11 LPs.
Records have been fun. I still recommend having some and enjoying the format for what it is. But please don’t go NO DIGITAL on me. I’m sure you know that almost every LP you have came from a digital file. Even music that was recorded in the analog era, pre 1980, has been saved to digital- and then gets pressed to CD and vinyl. And yep, every major studio since the 1980s has recorded the masters themselves in digital.
Atoll MD100
At last I’m getting to the first CD player I’m thrilled to recommend. Atoll is made in France with a three year warranty. Literally everything else in this price range is an assembly of small circuit boards, punched out at stations, tied together with dental floss sized wire.
MD100 is an elegantly built device with no rat’s nest of wires and ribbons. It has a large transformer and exquisitely constructed PCBs. Like all Atoll CD players, MD100 uses a Teac transport. It is fast acting- very responsive. It is made for CD and loads quickly. Most CD transports were made for DVD. They load slowly and can be somewhat noisy as they spin. Not so for MD100.
MD100 has a strong, brushed aluminum front panel and is built on a steel chassis. The sturdy mechanical platform of the player is vital to achieving its sound quality. It has filter capacitors of over 10,000uF. That’s what you would expect from a nice 50 w/ch amp.
Atoll runs Burr Brown DACs with no negative feedback. This produces a smooth sound. They don’t use the latest greatest, highly processed DAC chips from the chip company of the month. Those chips sound more sterile because of their uber processing. More electronic upsampling doesn’t necessarily create better sound.
Atoll doesn’t just buy chips and away ya go. They take pride in VOICING each model, which is why they’ve stuck with the BB DACs. Atoll’s CD performance delivers a burnished, rather than grating, sonic flavor.
MD100 is built on a “mini” chassis. Remember, these are made in France, not China. People don’t have living rooms like yours in France and Europe. Space is always at a premium. Atoll does build full sized players too. But to accommodate the Euro market in particular, MD100 was created to be a high end player in a small package. Regardless of its size, if you want the best sounding CD player you can buy for about a grand, it’s MD100.
There’s another smart detail about MD100. The readout is large. You can read it from your listening chair.
MD100 has robust bass and the sonic smoothness that runs throughout Atoll’s family of CD players. If you play any of the skimpy Chinese players you’ll hear a more thin/strident sound. To achieve what Atoll has accomplished, you simply MUST have a great tracking transport with low vibration, a big power supply (transformer/caps) and fastidiously laid out electronic architecture.
