If you play discs, the 6000CDT is a perfect companion with its high-end disc mechanism and warm, natural sound. For many people, this combo, along with some of the speakers I’ve mentioned, could easily be their endgame system.

No two ways about it, the Audiolab 6000CDT is a CD transport bargain – a true quality item at a price that often doesn’t buy you very much of anything. Everything from its look and feel to the way it plays compact discs is worthy of respect.

The Audiolab 6000CDT CD transport retails for $549.99, but from the fit and finish of the case to the feel of the controls to the bright OLED display -- and just like the 6000A integrated-DAC -- it looks and feels like a component that costs twice, maybe even thrice the price. With the exception of its sleek and quiet trayless CD drive, there’s not much to say about features -- the 6000CDT does exactly what you want and expect a CD transport to do. Listening to it, I had nothing to complain about: It had no unique sound of its own, and proved sonically indistinguishable from the FLAC files I’d ripped from those very same CDs and played from my NAS with my Roon-Bluesound Node.

If you want to play your CD collection with a transport/DAC combination that will not only scare the living bejeebers out of dedicated integrated CD players of five times the price but also threatens to reduce every integrated CD player under £2,500-£3,000 (maybe higher – I just don’t know yet) into aluminium-flavoured jelly, then grab one of these transports and hook it up to your favourite DAC. In fact buy two and keep the other as a backup, just in case.