Re: Do I need a new CD player?
Why I would shop around for a CD-only player:
* in my experience dvd players don't last nearly as long as any major-brand CD player and so I don't like using them any more than I have to --> dvd players, average maybe 3-8 years tops; for CD players, 10 to 20(!) years is very common.
* dvd players almost
always place basic functions -
if they even include such functions anymore - like random, back/forward scanning, track programming, etc in some difficult-to-access menu that only appears on your TV screen, a major hassle. My own Technics SL-PG4 single disc player (2003 model year) has all of these on the front panel and even more on the remote.
* many dvd players under $100 have nearly worthless front-panel displays e.g. many only include the track number for CD playback........and that's it.
* on a lot of dvd players I've played with, some major-brands included, for some reason their loading and track access times for CDs is excruciatingly slow. And a couple have actually locked up(!) while trying to play barely scratched CDs & I had to power them off to "reset" them.
* not a big deal, but many more CD players seem to include CD-TEXT capability than dvd players do.* It may surprise some people to know that CDs
also have the capability (since @1993) to include track, artist and album name just like MP3 files can. This info usually appears right on the front panel display. Yamaha's and Sony's players usually include this feature (including their better dvd players). Unfortunately, for some reason most music labels except Sony's of course (Columbia, Epic etc), don't include this very convenient feature on their CDs.
As far as sound quality, a CD player's "sonic personality" can vary just like any other electronic component's: some sound brighter/sharper, some "warmer" and some just don't sound very good period. Many people who own older players from the 80s say theirs sounds better than newer ones & that's not always just a placebo effect. That's because until around 1990, those players' digital-to-analog convertors ("DAC") used a different and generally better - but more expensive - system to convert the 1s and 0s to analog form. Around 1990 is when so-called bitstream convertors appeared, much cheaper to build but not always as good.
* digital is not
always the best way to transmit a signal. In this situation your future new receiver's internal DAC
may sound better than your Kenwood's but the only way to be sure is to listen to both. OR (yes audio can get really hairy!!) the receiver's DAC is actually of higher quality but the *analog* output section it's connected to may be of inferior quality to the Kenwood's and the end result is the Kenwood could still sound better anyway.
FYI: the analog portion of
any audio component - a CD player, dvd player, cassette deck, an MP3 player via its headphone or line-out jack, receiver, cable box, PS3, XBox, whatever - can have a very significant effect on the sound you finally hear.
And if a receiver is used for all DAC duties i.e. only its digital inputs are used and its DAC's analog circuitry sucks, EVERYTHING sent to it will sound that way.
Sony still sells
CD-only players under $200.
Pioneer sells a changer for exactly $200 MSRP. And
Yamaha's changer goes for $299. And Sony and Pioneer both still sell "mega" changers.
As someone who uses his A/V surround system more for music than movies, yes, I do tend to get more into the details of the audio portion than many here do.
*
a lot of automotive CD players include this too, but for whatever reason, don't place the official CD-TEXT logo on the front panel
