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Editors' Choice Award 2024 – The Absolute Sound Magazine
"Pulls Its Weight in the Middle of the Most Sophisticated Digital Set-Ups"
The new Rotel CD14MKII compact disc player delivers accurate reproduction of CDs with stunning clarity, resolving even the finest details. The Texas Instruments 32-bit DAC is supported by independent power supplies isolating motor controls from sensitive audio circuits reducing noise and distortion. Bring your CD collection and let the CD14MKII deliver performance at its best.
If you want to hear music from shiny plastic discs, why would you want or need a CD player in these days of universal Blu-ray machines? Because universal disc players are designed to do a little bit of everything and do most of them pretty well. But pretty well isn't good enough for an audiophile. And a dedicated CD player like the CD14MKII is engineered to provide superb and superior performance.
Award-Winning Performance
The Absolute Sound magazine honored the CD14MKII with an Editors' Choice Award for 2024.
"The CD14 CD player doesn’t try to be anything but a CD player. It uses a highly regarded Wolfson DAC chip, which is capable of sampling rates up to 192kHz; of course, as the sampling rate of CDs is 44.1kHz, the DAC’s capability is overkill. The CD14 will also play MP3 files, but you’d need to burn those onto CDs first (there’s no USB input that would allow you to play them off a USB flash drive)."
The Most Detailed, Nuanced Sound
Simply stated, the Rotel CD14MKII is designed to do one thing: deliver the most detailed, nuanced sound from every disc. The unit will faithfully reproduce all that is recorded on the disc.
While the CD14MKII was under development, the design team went far beyond the usual measurable technical performance characteristics. Listening panels spent hundreds of hours fine tuning the audio performance, choosing the components that produced the best sound, that would release the emotion in the music. Whatever the artist and recording engineers put on the disc, the unit will deliver.
"Value for the Money in Tune with the Latest Digital Technology"
"This Mk. II revision has a familiar set of improvements – I’m finding that so much digital is being improved through mechanical solutions for isolating noise and vibrations, especially when it comes to printed circuit boards. The Rotel CD14MKII also features a better power supply than its immediate predecessor, another common approach in digital –especially with products that contain a DAC," notes Mark Phillips, parttimeaudiophile.com, January 14, 2022.
"The MKII CD players have upgraded CD drive mechanisms, new CD controller chipsets, and tuned critical acoustic components alongside the new DAC," reports Joe Svetlik, What Hi-Fi?, January 14, 2022. "In terms of connections, the CD14MKII and RCD-1572MKII offer RCA outputs and single coaxial digital outputs so they can operate as CD transports supporting off-board digital-to-analogue processing."
"The Rotel will pull its weight in the middle of the most sophisticated digital set-ups as a transport and a disc player. It’s an RCD for now, with similar value for the money but more in tune with the latest technology," concludes Mark Phillips in his parttimeaudiophile.com review. "A good, affordable CD player can still be essential to a modern digital system, and the Rotel is absolute proof of this.
Purpose Designed CD Transport Mechanism and New 32/384 DAC
The CD14MKII elevates performance by utilizing a purpose designed and built CD transport mechanism along with other circuit refinements. True to its design as a "classic" CD player, it uses a smooth, tray-loading CD mechanism that is a pleasure to operate.
One of the CD14MKII's most important features is its premium new Texas Instruments 32-bit/384kHz digital-to-analog converter. This DAC was originally developed for high resolution sources. While word lengths and sampling speed may seem excessive for CDs delivering data at far lower rates, this high speed facility adds reserve capability to ensure proper reproduction under all circumstances. As the most crucial link between a CD's digital data and the analog world in which we listen, this converter boasts significant attributes in addition to its superb high resolution capabilities.
"It Brought Back the Amazement"
"I bought my first decent CD player in 1987, and ever since, I hadn’t given the lack of noise from the format much thought. But hearing Rotel’s CD14MKII CD player brought back the amazement I felt back then for the first time in decades… Rotel has done a marvelous job with the CD14MKII," observes Thom Moon, soundstageaccess.com, August 1, 2022.
"In these days when lots of manufacturers are talking about building their 'last CD player, the CD14 is a fine performer at a modest price. Sounding good as a stand-alone unit, it showed even more promise as a CD transport," reports Vade Forrester in The Absolute Sound magazine.
"At this price range you are delivered one of the best sounding performances. Every time, with no fuss or muss. A guy can get used to that! That level of dependability with a great price-performance ratio is a hard thing to come by these days," reports Dwayne Carter at enjoythemusic.com.
The Highest Level of Audio Performance
All this, combined with Rotel’s Balanced Design, ensures the unit will deliver the highest level of audio performance. When used in a high-quality audio system, your Rotel CD player will provide years of enjoyment.
The CD14MKII gives you a choice of two different kinds of output connections — an analog output signal from the built-in D/A converter for use with conventional analog audio components and a coax digital output which provides an unprocessed digital data signal for use with outboard D/A converters or digital processors.
A wireless remote control is included as standard.
A History of Exceptional CD Players
In 1989, Rotel confirmed its digital audio expertise with the launch of the RCD-855 CD player. The press was overwhelming in its praise, one critic going so far as to call it “The steal of the century”, and since then Rotel has never looked back.
