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@Airhead and @withered_preacher so a couple of weeks later and my dad is super impressed with the Marantz cd5005. It has really changed the sound of the system. He was using my old NAD player... That always sounded a little brittle and confused. The Marantz is both smooth, yet clear and and to render the details. He's using the inbuilt DAC and connected to amp via RCA. Very happy.
TRA-
Good news. I am pretty happy with mine too, I didn't expect it to be as big an improvement as it turned out to be.
I had reason to open mine up to replace a piece of trim that was broken during delivery (cost £32 delivered new from Marantz, which is great value too). The components have the look of stuff you would specify if you were building something like this from scratch instead of the usual penny pinching look a lot of domestic hifi has, especially capacitors.
Airhead
Was gonna say, Marantz seems to be a leader in the nice price audio game these days.