- Musical Fidelity launches the B1xcd compact disc player
- Offers audiophile-level audio and some handy features
- It's not cheap, but it costs less than certain alternatives
Physical media is officially back; just look to the fact that we're covering new turntables, cassette players and CD players every week. And sometimes there are options that marry all three, then allow you to put it all vertically on your wall. OK, most of the new propositions are affordable and often portable, but high-end SACD-spinning kit is coming back too.
Just look to the new Musical Fidelity B1xcd as further proof; it's been unveiled ahead of a release "from October 2026" (so any time now, then). It's a standing CD player designed to be used as part of a hi-fi set-up in your home, not carried around for music on the go.
Musical Fidelity is pitching this as an affordable option with "an incredibly attractive price". You might raise your eyebrows to learn that its MSRP is €599 (about $670, £500, AU$1,000), but that's actually affordable compared to many similar picks on the market right now. And for reference elsewhere, the recently-launched Oppo A7 Pro Max smartphone carries the same asking fee, and that is very much billed as a budget handset. Kind of puts things into perspective, no?
Last year we tested a Rotel Michi option which costs ten times the Musical Fidelity B1xcd's price, and last week we covered a new SACD player which goes for a hundred times the cost, so you can see how this might still be considered affordable in the CD-spinning space. Saying that, FiiO launched an option in September which is much cheaper and can also rip your discs.
But do you get that (Musical) Fidelity?
So what do you get for your money? The Musical Fidelity B1xcd is a large-body device with a metal chassis, LCD screen for track information, and aluminum control icons. The unit weighs 5.8kg, so it's not light.
The machine has a built-in ESS DAC designed for audio CDs, with Red Book CDs supported by the device. Red Book is the original CD format specification, created in 1980, so clearly the B1xcd is designed for the old-school discs you find in thrift stores. It also remains the go-to standard for audio discs.
The player has both analogue and digital outputs, so you can connect it to the rest of your hi-fi set-up; there's an RCA, coax and optical output.
Many of the new CD players we've seen so far are portable CD players like this Shanling option. But if you'd rather something to use at home, then the Musical Fidelity release is an interesting, and comparatively affordable, option.