Conventional wisdom tells us that CD players can only have gotten better, and that any 1994 player will 'blow away' any from, say, 1989. Maybe this is true in so far as the transport sections are concerned. You might even use this to argue the case for D/A converters. And yet there are two 'vintage' players in my experience which are as musically satisfying as anything on the market today. And both of them hail from the 1980s, not the 1990s.

Additional Resources
• Read more source component reviews from HomeTheaterReview.com.
• Find a receiver to pair with this source.
• See more about the audiophile world at AudiophileReview.com.
• Discuss all kinds of gear at HomeTheaterSpot.com.

California Audio Lab's Tempest IISE has long been a fave of mine despite it employing one of the nastiest transports Philips ever unleashed. Those who recall that it's a valve player, meaning that its analogue section is tube-laden, will argue (correctly) that its appeal lay in the euphonic coloration provided by its tube section and that I'm 'wrong' to like it. Mazel tov, but then we all reserve the right to partiality based on personal taste, hence the allegiance by sectors of the hi-fi community to single-ended triode ampifiers, electrostatic or ribbon speakers, Linn electronics and other 'individualist' approaches. But the second player which still holds its own despite the passing of whole generations is the non-valve Marantz CD-12, the company's first two-box, flagship player.

It's no coincidence that the two 'survivors' are the two I named; Marantz' Ken Ishiwata told me 'way back when' that the analogue euphony of the Tempest IISE was his benchmark for the solid-state CD-12. And it's Ken again who has turned to the past to provide us with something luscious for the present. This time, though, he only had to look into the Marantz archives, back to his own creation. The new CD-16 is, in effect, a user-friendly, affordable, 1990s version of the CD-12 by way of the current flagship model, the CD-15 -- the latter a £4500 beast. (It's interesting to note that, were the '12 to go back into production, inflation would see to it that it sold for around £7000 at today's prices.) The CD-16's externals give away nothing as far is this illustrious heritage is concerned, though the £1200 price tag tells you that it's not a replacement for the CD52.

A single box player featuring the clean family styling that is Marantz in the mid-'90s, the CD-16 is truly an 'economy CD-15', lacking for example the latter's solid-aluminium construction. But its innards are completely copper-clad like the dearer sibling, all wiring is oxygen-free and both machines are DAC7-based. Instead of the CD-15's toroidal transformer, the CD-16 uses an E-core type and it is denied the CD-15's balanced outputs. Both players use the same DACs, but the CD-16 has 'regular' rather than computer-matched pairs. One other difference is that the nearly-four-times-costlier CD-15 wears a bit more shielding.

That's the physical side of it. But Ken goes on to say that Marantz has recognised the need for a sort of sonic tailoring, which reminds me of a similar dichotomy in the philosophy of another manufacturer. So allow me to digress for a moment into loudspeaker design, just to help you to understand why the CD-16's sound doesn't resemble that of the CD-15 on which it is modelled.

When Sonus Faber introduced the Guarneri Homage, listeners noted that it was quite unlike the similarly priced Extrema. The Guarneri is all finesse and neutrality and delicacy, while the Extrema is power, energy and precision. When asked about this, designer Franco Serblin said that one represents the heart and the other the mind. Or, if my limited Italian is up to the task, one represents art and the other technology. Either way, I was satisfied by the description, seeing in it not an irreconcilable conflict but an ideal resolution to a problem which has caused a major schism in audio. Tubes v. transistors, LP v. CD -- they're all heart/brain issues, the stuff which keeps us all insane.

Ken Ishiwata pretty much said the same things as Franco Serblin, Marantz acknowledging a need to address both approaches to digital playback. And the CD-16 most assuredly leans toward the heart, toward art and toward analogue traditions which digital purists would have us abandon. (The assholes...) Ishiwata attributes the sonic differences between players which share so much in common to the type of power supply and its application, to the mechanical construction and how the unit is tuned and to the configuration of the output stage. "The DAC doesn't determine the sound. The execution does," he told me when the player was delivered for review. "Analogue skills determine the sound. Digital engineering can never do this." It's definitive, confident statements like this which explain why Ken's mug appears in Marantz's European advertising.

Minimalism defines the CD-16's front panel. A bulge across the top contains the orifice for the CD tray, the comprehensive display providing time and track information and the play/pause/stop buttons. Below this, in the flat lower portion, are the on/off, previous/next, repeat and open/close buttons, as well as a button to partially or completely shut off the display. All functions bar power on and open/close are duplicated on the hand-held remote controller, along with a numeric keypad and all subsidiary function keys such as index facility, FTS track programming and A-B repeat mode.

Audiophilic schizophrenia characterises the back panel, and I can only imagine the conversation among the designers and the bean-counters as they chose between necessary and optional facilities, cost-related or otherwise: "Well, TOS-link isn't exactly worshipped among high-enders, so why don't we ditch it?" "AT&T optical will push up the price." "Maybe we should incorporate balanced outputs." At some point, someone decided to opt for the same minimalism which determined the frontal terrain, probably realising that -- no matter wha you might include -- you'll never be condemned by anal audio purists for leaving something out. And so all you find at the back are phono outputs for the analogue signal and a brace of RCA-type coaxial digital outputs.