Hi all, My old cd player (alpha 7) has bitten the dust and I am planning on replacing it via ebay. Was wondering if anyone out has listened to both the arcam aplpha 7se and its more recent modern equivalents like the Azur640c and Nad c541i/C542? I plan on partnering it with a Mission Cyrus 2 (gutsy, dynamic, exciting - if a little bright)and a pair of MS20i pearls. When bucks allow, I'm considering the Quad12l or MA BR2 speakers. Any comments welcome, ta, Greg

There are so many good CD players, so little time.

If you are looking to a Cyrus 2 amp, I'd steer clear of brighter sounding CD players like Marantz and Rotel models, and possibly the Azur 640c too. It will sound too much, arguably.

All of which makes the Arcam and NAD models seem like a good idea. But I've no direct experience of one against the other... maybe some others could shed some light on this.

The MS20i pearl look like the weak link in that chain. Thery're at a point in the market where you can make enormous step changes by upgrading. I had some at one time (these are quite old speakers - from the 80's I would have thought) and moving from there to a pair of EPOS ES11 was an enormous increase in quality.

The only benefit of the MS20i is that they should be very cheap indeed. modern Quads would murder them for quality whereas the difference between CD players is comparatively slight.