Burmester Offers $12,000 CD Player

If you love your music, Germany's Burmester thinks maybe you need one of its 061 CD Players. It's got 96 and 192 KHz up-conversion, lots of outputs...and a $12,000 price tag.

For the vast majority of the music-listening population, a CD player is a CD player is a CD player: sure, some of them might have better controls than others, and lots of folks like elaborate CD changer systems, but let’s face it: most people can’t hear the difference between a CD and a 128Kbps MP3 file, so the subleties of D/A conversion, sampling rates, jitter, and detail aren’t terribly important.

Then there’s high-end audio gear, and if you’re looking for a top-quality CD player, Germany’s Burmester is offering its new 061 CD Player, part of the company’s Classic Line of audio components. The 061 features a Philips CD 2 Pro direct drive with a modified servo mechanism (apparently Philips’ wasn’t quite good enough for Burmester, who also converts the CD 2 Pro to a belt drive unit in its top-flight CD Player 001) and advanced D/A converters which can up-sample standard CD audio to either 96 or 192 KHz for advanced processing further down the signal chain. The 061 sports a milled aluminum chassis with a top-loading 10mm thick tray which moves like "butter on Teflon rails"—not the first image that comes to mind to describe a CD loader, but you have to admit it’s memorable.

The 061s D/A converters are mounted as a replaceable module in the event users want to upgrade or retrofit the unit with other technology in the future; the unit also features a multimedia slot which will enable Burmester to hook the 061 into future digital technologies. The unit sports RCA and Toslink input and output, along with unbalanced and XLR outputs. The 061 can optionally support Burmester’s BurLink control interface with RS-232 and USB 2.0 ports. And it comes with its very own remote control.

What would you expect to pay for such magnificence? Burmester is asking $11,995. The 061 CD Player will be on display at the CEDIA Expo in Denver early next month.