This is an excellent CD player and among the very best you can buy. Without spending £500 or so, you have a machine containing high end audiophile components and bombproof build quality. Not only do Yamaha make some of the best hifi I have ever heard, they also make professional musical equipment as used by some of the world's biggest name recording artists and that level of expertise in sound engineering can be heard in all their CD players.
Partnered to my Yamaha RX-V1067 reciever, the atmosphere given to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon has to be heard to be believed - and listening to rock music like Queensryche's Silent Lucidity revealed new levels of power, drama and scale. This Yamaha made it feel like listening to them for the very first time.
Every CD player has it's own "feel" and the Yamaha is just on the warm side of neutral, which to my ears is just fine, and when used in "pure direct" mode, bypasses every unessential piece of electronics, even turning off the display screen, in order to provide a pure and untainted reproduction of exactly what was recorded. Front facing USB slots mean you can drop an MP3 file to a memory stick or plug in your iPod and are treated to a special mode to enhance compressed music.
As a music journalist and home cinema enthusiast, this CD player is given a very hard life and like Yamaha products before it, remains faultless and effortless in it's ability to constantly surprise me in the way you are drawn in to the music. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. BUY IT !