(3.325h, 17 or 19w, 11.53d, 10 lbs, Available in Black or Silver)

I’m a huge CD fan. It’s still my favorite way to listen to music. You put the CD in the tray, hit play, and listen to music. It’s simple. It sounds great. No clicks and pops. There’s no time wasted with maintenance. I play albums all the way through.

I’m fine with vinyl if the music is only available that way. But I gotta tell ya, I’m not interested in the OCD that it takes to clean records properly. And the truth is, they only sound their best if you’re on board for all that, and I’m NOT.

Further, I’m not willing to pretend the noise from vinyl doesn’t exist. It DOES- and it spoils the great piano music that dominates my musical interest. For decades we had no option but to listen to Chopin through clicks, pops and fuzzy distortion artifacts. You can pretend it’s not there. But it is, and I’m done with it.

There is music available on CD that isn’t available via streaming. A perfect example is the great Hyperion label of classical music. As a die hard piano fan I love their roster of pianists. Marc Andre Hamelin, Angela Hewitt, Stephen Hough and company are as good as the piano gets. The fidelity of these recordings is second to none. How great is it to hit play and enjoy the entire album with no muss, no fuss?!

Streaming can be fine. But you can’t stream Hyperion- among other fine recordings. Yet streaming has hiccups especially for classical music. Many services think Beethoven is a performer.

Metadata is often a mess. Streaming works well for pop music.

With this in mind, let me recommend BCD-3. BCD-3 is Bryston’s solidly built Red Book CD player. As a dedicated CD player (that doesn’t play video discs) it does the best job of playing MUSIC on CD. Bryston runs a Dual Balanced DAC system. It has a precise master clock. BCD-3 implements Bryston’s own line stage, which is comprised of discrete op amps. Musically the BCD-3 sounds clean and operates solidly. It is a great TRACKER and a joy to use.

This… is a great way to listen to music. You don’t have to fight with a computer, server, streamer or records. Literally just hit play and enjoy music with outstanding sound quality.