Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A typical CD player in this price range rarely meets high expectations. However, this TEAC CD-P650 manages to impress with a clean design, quality components, and excellent performance for its class. Frankly, if CDs were not declining in popularity I wouldn't be surprised to see this player go for twice the price. But the market has swung towards MP3 for obvious reasons and this TEAC provide a great bridge platform for those who still have CD collections but also want to take advantage of playing files directly from their MP3 players or USB storage. Add in the headphone jack with separate volume control and you have a unit that works just as well on its own as it does connected to your main audio system. I purchased my first and only CD player back in 1986. It's a TEAC single CD player that has been in my audio system to this very day and it has worked perfectly for 28 years (!). After recently rebuilding the subwoofer in my audio system to replace worn speakers, I started to do some research on the state-of-the-art in CD players. Overall, the technology has become more affordable, the CD mechanisms are less complex, and the D/A converters have been significantly refined. At this point, CD players have reached their pinnacle and mass-market manufacturers are certainly not investing any more in the technology. Even the high end of the market ($1000+ players) can only differentiate themselves by using higher quality power supplies and D/A sections designed to make the most of the brilliantly-conceived CD format. For most of us, a good quality basic player will do everything just as well. What attracted me to the TEAC CD-P650 was its high-quality appearance, its Burr-Brown D/A, and its ability to play a variety of digital files directly from an MP3 player or USB storage. Since more and more of our family's music is being purchased as MP3 from the start, I felt it was time to add MP3 capability (via iPod or USB stick) to my main audio system --something I had put off for a long time. When the CD-P650 arrived, I was immediately impressed with its quality construction and appearance. There is nothing cheap looking or feeling about it. The CD drawer moves solidly and no mechanical noise emanates from the unit when a CD is playing. Since I always take apart my stuff to see what's inside, I was pleasantly surprised to see a very thoughtfully laid out interior --among the cleanest of any consumer product I own. There's a separate power supply board, a large transformer, the D/A board, and only a few, neatly routed cables (several are shielded) between them. I was expecting less attention to detail in this low-cost unit but I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. The CD transport itself is very solid and the laser/spindle portion is nicely isolated from shock and vibration. There are gold-plated RCA output jacks, an optical output, and connections for a TEAC remote control system. The player comes with it's own remote control for accessing all functions (many of which can only be accessed with the remote as the front panel buttons are kept to a minimum). See my photos of the interior and you'll see what I mean about quality components. Fortunately, this CD-P650 operates and plays CDs and MP3s brilliantly. The two row, front panel display is easy to read and provides a scrolling display of the MP3 file/folder name currently playing. If a CD is playing, only the track number and time is visible. Upon playing my first few CDs it was clear that this TEAC is a refined design and easily exceeds the audio performance of my old player. My old TEAC player had a 2X oversampling D/A and a fifth order analog filter. This was good for its time 28 years ago, but modern D/As provide 8X oversampling and a cleaner output signal. I confirmed that the CD-P650 indeed uses the Burr-Brown PCM1791 D/A Converter among other high quality parts. Overall, I'm glad I found this player and am very happy with the upgrade to my system. The performance and quality has exceeded my expectations and provides a perfect bridge for playing my CDs and MP3s through my main audio system. This was a great purchase!