Audiolab 6000CDT Dedicated CD Transport with Remote - Black

I got this CDT sometime ago when it was still selling at full price (the current $100 discount is because it has recently been discontinued, leaving the 7000CDT and 9000CDT still in production. I initially used it with an OK DAC, and the sound was just OK, nothing special. Based on the reviews, this was supposed to make even el-cheapo DACs sound great. Turns out my DAC had a cracked circuit board and was faulty. That took me a couple years to figure out. Scroll foward to a couple weeks ago. The faulty DAC was replaced by the lauded Gustard R26. The 6000CDT/R26 combo is staggeringly good, at ANY price, and especially for the $2300 that pairing would cost. Everything I have heard about the CDT and Gustard have been fullfilled. Immense deep soundstage, near perfect separation of intruments, miniscule details are revealed and the bass is both deep and tuneful with absolutely no sense of overhang or loss of control. The best sound I have had for maybe a dozen years. So is the sound I am getting because of the 6000CDT or the Gustard? It has got to be both. But what I CAN say is that the 6000CDT into the Gustard sounds maybe 10% better than the identical material (ripped lossless by me) streamed through the Gustard. I then pulled out my old reference CD player...a mammoth 2 box combination that weighs close to 50 lbs and cost me around $20,000 back in the day. Now I could compare this to the 6000CDT/Gustard. And guess what....this extremely expensive player was easily beaten by the system containing the 6000CDT. Vocals were clearer and more carved in space, top end had greater clarity and the bass was much firmer than my reference CD player. Bear in mind, that I have compared this player to many other high ranking CD players in the past, and it always was better. Until now. If you are into tweaky stuff, replacing the fuse in this CDT with something like the HiFi Tuning one (which is what I did) gives incremental increases in clarity, even though this is just a digital transport. What else can I say about the 6000CDT apart from how extraordinary well it works in my system? Well, it never rejects a disk or has any skipping. It always reads the tracks and table of contents flawlessly. It is fairly silent in operation. And although it is a slot loading transport, it has never scratched any of my disks, and I keep them in mint condition-so I would know. Others have commented that this player had scratched their disks, but this has never been an issue with me. The supplied remote is on the cheap side, but does pretty much all you can ask. The black finish I have make the push knobs on the fascia a bit difficult to see and read, so the remote can come in handy. The quality of replay from this unit makes me seriously consider the 9000CDT, at 3x the price (currently around $1500). But I would have to hear it first in my system.

I've been looking for reasonably priced/quality transport, I was even contemplating purchasing a used and proven model. I am so glad I went this direction as the player worked well right out of the box. There will probably be some "break-in" for the electrical insides to an even increased performance, we shall will see. If not, the playback is faultless and the sound connected to my amp is incredible. The only qualm I have (had) was the slot loading mechanism, as this is my first slot loader for a player/transport. All my previous players were either top loading or front tray loading and I have had a few: Rega Apollo 35th Anniversary, Creek Destiny, Primare CD32, et et-al. This unit has an ability to sound as good as your DAC, and I might say it's sound compares to my best I have ever owned and I am completely satisfied with the performance. The casework build, the controls, and details are solid, and shows exceptional quality control with simple function and beauty. I might add that there are many unused buttons on the remote, assuming you dont use the matching combo like the 6000 Amp/DAC etc, but that’s not really an issue for me, just a mention. You won't make a better choice than this for just a basic solid transport that does all the little things right. Cheers

Over the past couple of years, I've bought several Audiolab 6000CDT's for use in different rooms. I paired them all with Audiolab 6000A integrated amps but varied the speaker arrangements. All of the CDT's arrived in perfect condition and all of them have performed flawlessly, as have the Audiolab amplifiers. My most recent Audiolab6000CDT purchase was used to replace an old Teac CD player that was paired with a Yamaha A-S501BL amp that I'd bought years ago for my office. I was curious as to whether the CDT would improve the sound quality on its own, so I replaced it without replacing the amplifier and was happy to discover that I could instantly hear the difference. The improvement was massive and that system now sounds quite good even though the amp and speakers are not at the same level as my other systems. Therefore, I'm recommending the Audiolab6000CDT based upon multiple copies and years of use in a variety of configurations without a single glitch. Be warned, however... Because I'd had such good experiences with these devices, I also bought multiple copies of the Audiolab6000N streamers, which, unfortunately, proved to be a huge, expensive, mistake. The streamers look similar, seem well constructed and sound good but the incompetently designed computer interface has rendered them so unreliable I do not even use them. So, I got seriously burned by my careless assumption that the company's products would all manifest the same level of quality. Not so...

I’ve had this transport for a while now. It still works and sounds great! Very nice transport for the money.

Some Hi Fi audiophile components cost $100,000.00 and up. The first thing I ask anyone that will listen after buying one. Can you hear the difference? Most look back at me in amazement on how much money that I just wasted, and just shake their head no. Lets face it we're an odd group us audiophiles, and a bit pedantic to say the least. Can't you hear this! The imaging! The inner detail, I exclaim! The sound is definitely one percent better, right? Money well spent? The 6000CDT is not one of the one per-centers. Is their a difference in sound? Yes it's better, but who cares? Let me explain. I have an audiophile CD that's actually worth more than many peoples entire CD collection, and guess what? It now plays horribly, even on the best CD players. The CD actually deteriorated with time. I have no idea how, or why. It skips, chatters, clicks you name it, yet the disc has no physical damage, at least that you can see with the physical human eye. So what did I do when I first set up this player? I played some well recorded acoustic Jazz. Check, everything seems to be working perfectly. No big surprise. Then I got out my unplayable CD fore mentioned. I was a bit nervous. This will never make it. To my surprise it played perfectly! What!?! Please note, this is an unplayable CD, and now it plays to perfection! This a difference anyone could hear, so you can only imagine the other improvements this player is making. So what should you do? Buy this! Highly recommended.

Great sounding, well made transport. From that perspective I made the right decision. Unfortunately, it is totally 100% unacceptable that this player scratches my brand new CDs. Any CD, really, at any given time. I played 2 new CDs in a row and closely inspected them before and after 1 play. Both had 2 scratches in exactly the same place. Went back and looked more closely at a handful of CDs I've played recently and although they were new too, all of them had some kind of scratches. You can hear it when you put the CD in the slot that it is "grinding" to grab the CD - I think it happens then, not when playing or ejecting. I am as mad, disappointed,frustrated and depressed as I can be. I could have bought the new Denon for the same price. May have not sounded quite as good, but would not destroy my valuable CD collection. Being an overseas brand, not much hope in getting this addressed, but believe me, I will try. If leaving bad reviews all over the place works, I'll update my post here. I would NOT suggest buying this thing and be skeptical buying any Audiolab product.

I've been listening to this for a couple of months now, and I'm quite happy with it. It replaced a pretty-good-quality audiophile CD player (Emotiva ERC-3) whose shortfall was a noisy transport (my listening space has me 6 feet or so from the equipment rack). The 6000CDT is silent--there's almost no sound when it's seeking a track, and nothing audible while playing. The controls are simple and logical, and I like the fact that it doesn't automatically start playing when a disk is loaded. I was a little leery of the slot feed (v. slide-out tray), but it's been reliable so far. The remote could be a little better--it's a little fussy about how long buttons are held down, especially for disc ejection--but overall it spins CDs and ships the bit stream out the signal outputs, which is all one needs. (Obviously, since it's only a transport it's dependent on the outboard DAC it feeds to--I'm reviewing it only as a transport.)

Revised 10/8/21: Listened to through a mid-high end Denon tuner, a pair of Definitive Technologies BP9060s set Large-Flat, and Polk DSW Pro 660wi 12" 50hz sub (120hz LFE). After disappointments with the similarly priced, highly rated, new Denon DCD-800NE and Marantz CD6007 CD players, the 6000CDT has the soundstage, detail, wide high end response and subtle dimension missing from the other units. A significant step up in audio quality from the Denon and Marantz who seem to be going for what they imagine is a "vinyl sound" by attenuating some mids and rolling off much of the high end response. Pros: Affordable audiophile sound. Solid build. I can listen at lower volumes and it's all still there. Output sounds about +6db up on the Marantz and Denon units - and tuner doesn't have to work too hard for nice deflection. Cons: Remote: Remote's black on black buttons are not backlit and are unreadable in lower light. Color: Advertised as black. It's not black. It's a dark matte finish slate grey that reminds me of, to paraphrase Pacino in Michael Mann's, "Heat", Dead Tech Modern. The color mismatched with my black components and furniture. I found a place to hide it out of the A/V rack's sightlines. Impressive. A must buy. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

UPDATE, MAR 2025. This player continues to astound me with its sound and its reliability. I used it every day with no issues! Behind It’s elegant understated looks there a lot of tech in this unit. Yes there’s a newer one but the price on this unit “still being manufactured” has come down. If you don’t need a fancy icon on the front this units still an exceptional buy. The two are only different in the loading mechanism and I’ve had zero issues with mine. The Audiolab 6000 CDT transport is not for everyone. It’s not a fancy CD player that these days have tons of bells and whistles. Plug ins for USB Sticks, play every cd under the sun and have a high end DAC in them with upsampling. (So they say) Ive tried out two CD players under the thousand dollar mark. I had a friend bring over his one thousand and two hundred player and I have an old one bit SONY ES player that had balanced outputs as well as single ended. And digital. We did a blind listening test between the two of us (yes it was as good as we could get with a blanket in front and one of us changes the inputs then adjust the volume with a decibel measurement while the other one listening after adjustments. Note: no beer was harmed during this experiment! ) serious the beer came afterwards. We listened to cd players that had analogue out, picked the best one and then compared all of them with digital out to the audiolab using digital out. The Sony ES performed the best in analogue out. Not surprisingly as it’s an incredible device which I will still keep. Then we did digital out with all devices into a Musician Draco. The winner was the Audiolab. It’s not hard to understand. Audiolab by eliminating all the other components spent the money specifically in reducing jitter. For those of you who don’t know or aren’t clear on jitter I advise you to read up on it, really In my opinion is it’s the most underrated specification on a good transport. Many don’t even list it on source Devices. In my opinion I believe you will hear a difference in lower jitter vs high jitter. Bottom line, this unit is a no brainer if you have a decent DAC. My Sony ES was good, but both its analogue and digital couldn't beat digital out of the Audiolab. There’s been some statements that it’s using a car CD loader, I opened my unit and carefully looked at the loader. It’s definitely not a car CD loader, you can see it’s very well built and by the size there’s no way it would fit in a cars DIN mount.

Es el segundo transporte que compro de esta marca. Ofrece un sonido neutro y confiable, no presenta problemas de lectura hasta el momento. Me gusta el tamaño del display, grande y brillo adecuado. Sin duda, una ganga para los que tenemos una amplia colección de CDs.

This is a terrific value product and produces fantastic music for my system. It produces a beautifully clear sound, a fabulous soundstage and separation and is three-dimensional. Some time ago I had an intermittent fault with the disk loading mechanism. I have been blown away by the service I have received from Erikson Consumer Luxury Audio. I live in Costa Rica. I got the CD Transport delivered by a friend to Montreal. It has been repaired and serviced and sent to BC at no charge. This is the best customer service I have ever received. I'm in my late 70s. Just incredible. A huge thank you to Bruno who made this happen. I unreservedly recommend this wonderful piece of HiFi equipment. Buy one!!

I did have reservations spending this much on a CD player (a CD Transport to be more exact). After playing a good number of my favorite CD's with it, I can say there is very noticeable improvement in the sound quality. I am hearing lyrics clearer, instrument sounds and nuances that I was not hearing before. I have it connected to a Denon AVS S750H home theatre receiver paired with Soliloquy speakers and two 10-inch Velodyne subwoofers. This is one of my best music purchases, allowing me to enjoy my CD collection at a new level. Also consider the price reasonable when compared to other higher priced CD players.

This is the best CD player I've ever owned. No fancy bells and whistles. Strict transport. Thats it, thats all.