Denon DCD-600NE CD Player with AL32

Excellent compact disc sound The Denon DCD-600NE is designed to do one thing well: make your compact discs sound great. It features a high-performance 32-bit/192kHz digital-to-analog converter and proprietary AL32 processing that ensures smooth, detailed playback. Its metal chassis and internal construction reduce unwanted vibration. There's a Toslink optical digital output on the back panel, plus a gold-plated analog stereo RCA output. My hands-on experience with the DCD-600NE There's something inherently satisfying about the sleek simplicity of the Denon DCD-600NE CD player. Its solid construction, brushed metal faceplate, and functional button layout suit my needs perfectly. I got a chance to play around with this disc player in our training room at Crutchfield HQ, where it was matched with the Denon PMA-600NE integrated amplifier and a very nice pair of KEF LS50 speakers. I used this excellent setup to demo tracks from a very familiar album - Peter Gabriel's landmark 1986 release So . The album was released in the boom years of CD production, when I was a music-loving teen, so I wanted to revisit it with the benefit of 30-plus years of technological advancement. Familiar anthems like "Sledgehammer," "Big Time" and "Red Rain" were as big and bouncy as I remembered, but I was eager to listen to some of the disc's more quiet, restrained numbers for a true test. When Gabriel's voice blended with that of Kate Bush on "Don't Give Up," each artist's unique vocal timbre shone through with pristine clarity. In that tune, and the slow, mournful "We Do What We're Told," the spare arrangements can reveal surface noise when I listen to my vinyl copy of this album. The noise floor on this digital recording, with the help of the DCD-600NE, was pretty much nil, which preserved the reflective quality the artist likely intended. Which is exactly what I want from a CD player.