Buying into the CD revival? This £250 Tascam player and transport is an audiophile's dream

The hi-fi world has always had its giant-killers. Think of Dual with its classic range of CS-505 turntables that proved you didn’t need to spend silly money back in the 80s to get your vinyl thrills. And Nad, whose simple little 3020 amplifier could humble mega-watt black boxes at several times its lowly cost.

There have been some notable modern-day hi-fi slayers too. Among them is Audiolab’s fantastic 6000CDT CD transport - a £399 silver disc-spinning solution that fed into even a modest DAC can take on, and better, integrated CD players up to £1,500 or so.

Those competition-crushing abilities I became very familiar with after purchasing a 6000CDT a couple of years back. Hooked up with a decent (£250 Nordost Blue Heaven) digital coax cable and feeding my Moon 230HAD headphone amp/DAC (£1,900) I assumed there was little more could be done to extract every last one and zero, bit perfectly from a compact disc. Until, that is, I upgraded said 6000CDT to the same British brand’s 9000CDT transport.

The Tascam CD-200 CD player/transport sitting above Audiolab's 9000CDT in the author's system. Picture: Scott Reid

For its £999 asking price there was just that bit more finesse, a little more bottom end with noticeably greater control, plus sturdier casework, a drawer instead of a slot to load discs (I find the former far preferable) and one damn sexy animated display.

Trouble is, I have a slight obsession with the CD, which is undergoing a surprising but most welcome renaissance. Then again, given the soaring cost of vinyl records, that revival is maybe not such a big surprise. If you value physical media but don’t have deep pockets, there are about a billion cheap-as-chips CDs awaiting you in secondhand record shops, charity stores and car boot sales.

Besides the aforementioned 9000CDT, I have an ageing Moon 230D CD player, a Denon DCD-1700NE that also plays super audio CDs, rather brilliantly, a Yamaha five-disc CD changer (that I’ve already written about), a TEAC combined CD player/cassette deck (which you can also read about) and a Sony universal disc player that handles CDs in a reasonably adept manner.

Zero need, therefore, to add yet another player. Yet, that's precisely what I've gone and done. Well, I did have a spare digital input on my pre-amp screaming for attention.

The Tascam has a useful display that shows CD text information such as the artist's name. Picture by Scott Reid

At around £250, the Tascam CD-200 is a pretty conventional looking machine - available in any colour you like as long as it's black. It comes from the professional audio division of TEAC, so the chief markets for it will be broadcasters, recording studios and within commercial premises. As such it comes out of its box sporting a pair of rack-mounting brackets, which are easily removed for domestic hi-fi duties.

I understand that Tascam no longer distributes this model in North America, but you can get the very similar CD-200BT unit, with Bluetooth, that's also available in the UK.

The front panel offers exactly what you'd expect on a basic CD player and all the buttons have a reasonably pleasing action to them. There's also a couple of additions that give away its true target market - a switchable pitch control with a generous 12.5 per cent range either way (handy where perfect pitch and timing is a priority, such as in dance studios) and a button to activate an intro check feature. This plays the first few seconds of each track, which could be useful on a disc with a lot of tracks where you're not certain of the running order.

Round the back you will find a pair of analogue RCA outputs alongside the digital connections - optical and coax. The power cable is fixed so no upgrade path there for tweakers. The front panel also boasts a handy headphone output with level control.

A comparison of the Audiolab 9000CDT remote control, left, and the Tascam CD-200 unit, right. Picture by Scott Reid

It comes with a basic remote control that’s a tad lightweight but covers all of the main functions as well as a numeric keypad for direct selection of tracks and programming.

Under the bonnet there's a TEAC-derived, drawer-loading transport mechanism. A CD-5020A, to be specific. Which is no bad thing as it's a very quiet, efficient and tried-and-tested affair that's been used in a number of much more expensive machines, including a Primare player at almost £3,000.

Buffer

There's a ten-second anti-shock memory providing a read-ahead buffer against vibration and the odd jolt. This should also aid in the reading of older scratched and abused discs while the front panel display provides scrolling CD text info (album/artist/track) - very much a rarity these days, though not all discs are encoded with this useful data. The CD-200 will also handle CDs with mp3 or WAV files burned onto them and display any associated track info.

I may have bought this player on a whim, and without the blessing of any mainstream hi-fi publications or reviewers, yet it now takes pride of place among the many much more expensive boxes that make up my system.

It offers a combination of features, interaction and crucially fidelity that marks it out as a genuine bargain. As a budget CD playing option it has few peers - there's really only a couple of things from Pro-Ject and Denon around this price level - and I'm pretty sure it will hold its own against slightly pricier alternatives such as Marantz's highly-regarded CD6007 via its analogue outputs.

But it's as a CD transport fed to a decent DAC from its digital coax connection that this thing really shines, and earns its giant-killing accolade.

Repeated back-to-back comparisons between the lowly Tascam and my Audiolab 9000CDT were ear-opening. Ultimately, the latter won the day with its added refinement and bottom end that was just that little more extended and a little more controlled. On bass-heavy tracks it was a tad easier to discern the beginning and end of each note. On the other hand, now and then the CD-200 actually nudged it with a more exciting, edgy presentation. The Audiolab’s forensic insight is also very unforgiving of poor recordings.

Blessed

I'm blessed with having both players and it's likely that the Audiolab will retain front-line duties as it's a slightly slicker thing to use, with a far more tactile handset, but the Tascam at roughly a quarter of its cost comes very close sound wise.

In isolation it performs way better than it has any right to at the price and as such it could be all the CD transport that most people will ever need. Given how well it measured against the 9000CDT I don't doubt it will give the cheaper 6000CDT a very hard run for its money. The choice here may come down to operational ease, with some of those additional features swinging it in Tascam's favour.

Those who loathe slot-loading players, like the more affordable of the two Audiolabs, ought to seek out the CD-200. It may have been around for a while now and flown below the radar in hi-fi circles but I doubt anybody adding one to their set-up will be disappointed.

- I obtained my Tascam CD-200 from CPC Premier Farnell for £223.99 including VAT and next-day shipping charge in September 2025.

Rest of system details: Moon 230HAD DAC, Moon 350P pre-amp/Moon W5.3RS power amp, ProAc DT8 loudspeakers, Nordost and Studio Connections cabling.

CDs used for auditioning:

Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker 25th anniversary edition

Bruce Springsteen, Twilight Hours

Eagles, Live From The Forum MMXVIII

David Gilmour, Live At Pompeii

Scott Reid is a business journalist at The Scotsman and previously worked in the hi-fi industry from 1982 to 1997

The Edinburgh Hi-AV Show takes place on November 8 and 9, 2025 at the DoubleTree By Hilton Hotel at Edinburgh Airport. Further details can be found at: www.chestergroup.org/edinburgh-hi-av-show-2025/25/tickets/