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Thanks, wasabijim. I just went and bought an optical cable, hooked the Blu-ray to the amp and sampled a few CDs. Sounds significantly better than analogue out of the Blu-ray. Ripping the CDs isn't an option - I have way too many.. I'm very happy with the sound out of the Blu-ray for now, and will think about the CDP choices for a while. The problem is you pay a lot extra for convenience and features, e.g., the Marantz CD5005 is about $580 now. The 6006 is about $1000, but you get a USB input which supports lossy file formats + iPad/iPhone. The 6007 is $1290 and supports FLAC etc as well as lo

I'm a newbie, so patience if necessary, please ... I have old speakers, turntable and cassette deck I'm happy with, and have just purchased a Marantz PM-6007 stereo amplifier, which has the AKM AK4490 DAC. I will probably buy a dedicated CD player eventually. My question is, purely from an audio perspective, do I gain a lot by buying (say) a matching Marantz CD player, or will I get similar results by playing CDs on my Blu-ray (Panasonic DMP-BD65) with an optical cable out? (I say "purely from an audio perspective" because I want to be able to program CD playback to exclude tracks

Many thanks.

Hi Folks, An old mate suggested Stereonet to me earlier today. I have been collecting records and CDs for more than 50 years and have an extensive collection of both - and quite a few cassettes as well. My taste is broad - rock, jazz, blues, folk, world, some classical. More recently I've been into the broad Americana genre, and I oscillate between that kind of music (Jason Isbell, Gillian Welch, Eilen Jewell, Molly Tuttle, Justin Townes Earle etc) and post-bebop jazz (Bill Evans, Miles David, Keith Jarrett, etc). I haven't updated my hi-fi components for many years,