SoundGuys spent time with a couple of the small desk sized CD players doing the rounds, the FiiO and the Fosi, and the conclusion was the one I keep arriving at myself: nice objects, but they cannot take over from the optical drive you already have. They play a disc and that is the whole job.
That gap bothers me more than it probably should. The reason people are buying discs again is not nostalgia for the tray mechanism, it is that streaming catalogues keep losing titles and nobody wants to rebuild a library every time a licence lapses. If ownership is the point, then getting the music off the disc and into something you control is half of the point, and none of these boxes will do it. A fifteen year old laptop drive and free ripping software will, for the cost of nothing.
Where they do earn a spot is the part nobody writes specs about. No computer needed, no fan noise, no waking a machine up to hear an album, and a physical ritual that stops you skipping tracks after ninety seconds. The transport quality arguments I am much less moved by, because any half decent asynchronous DAC has been reclocking the incoming stream for over a decade now and it is not 2003.
So which is it for you: do you own a disc player because you want the disc, or because you want the shelf?
That gap bothers me more than it probably should. The reason people are buying discs again is not nostalgia for the tray mechanism, it is that streaming catalogues keep losing titles and nobody wants to rebuild a library every time a licence lapses. If ownership is the point, then getting the music off the disc and into something you control is half of the point, and none of these boxes will do it. A fifteen year old laptop drive and free ripping software will, for the cost of nothing.
Where they do earn a spot is the part nobody writes specs about. No computer needed, no fan noise, no waking a machine up to hear an album, and a physical ritual that stops you skipping tracks after ninety seconds. The transport quality arguments I am much less moved by, because any half decent asynchronous DAC has been reclocking the incoming stream for over a decade now and it is not 2003.
So which is it for you: do you own a disc player because you want the disc, or because you want the shelf?
