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A reason to love CD As Richard Black discovers, Audiolab's new CD player ups the ante with a host of technological innovations Well, it’s a funny old world. Here we are with CD allegedly dead in the water and one of the most keenly-awaited products in a while is a – wait for it – CD player! The experienced audiophile won’t be too surprised at that, given the history of LP replay since the 1980s. And, as for the brand that’s making the splash, Audiolab has been on and off the radar a bit over the years, including the spell as TAG McLaren Audio and is now very keen to ensure a lively future by launching eye-catching products. So just what’s so eye-catching about a CD player? Basically two things: funky new design and internal technology.

Clearaudio Concept £1,100 (inc. arm and cartridge) Budget-priced deck with an almost plug-and-play versatility offers stiff competition to its higher-priced peers One of the undeniable advantages of CD players over turntables is that you can take them out of the box, plug them in and use them, with no fancy setting up required. The Concept turntable, however, very nearly equalises on that score, with arm and cartridge factory-set and user set-up limited to putting the platter in place (pretty hard to get wrong, really). One big no-no that has traditionally stood in the way of this is transporting an arm with the counterweight in place, which is usually a good way of busting the bearings, but the Concept’s arm has a unique magnetic bearing which can’t be damaged in this way.

Pro-Ject 6 Perspex £1,280 (inc. arm) Stylish-looking and fitted with a dust cover, the 6 Perspex promises a great deal with its performance Joy of joys – a turntable with a lid, which even if it doesn’t quite enclose the whole machine, will certainly reduce the dust problem considerably. Beneath it resides a suspended turntable with some interesting ideas built in. The Perspex of the name is hardly a surprise these days, but the subchassis is made of Corian, a material which Pro-Ject claims has ‘no resonances at all’.

SRM Arezzo Kinetic £1,248 At home with most types of music from classical to rock, here is a turntable with a wide appeal SRM first came to our attention in 2009 (HFC 325). In fact, its basic Arezzo model won our coveted award for Best sub-£1,000 turntable (HFC 326). The full range includes the aforementioned Arezzo; the Arezzo Reference; Ultra and the Kinetic. All are supplied with similar features, but the Kinetic adds just one more, albeit a significant one: a flywheel which is interposed between the motor and the platter.