I never saw jazz greats Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and Louis Armstrong play live, and I missed Frank Zappa and the Beatles. But when I play their CDs on the Nagra Compact Disk Concept player I feel a little closer to their music. The emotional connections are that much stronger—the life force of their music comes through as never before.

The Nagra CDC is a front-loading design, but unlike more conventional players the Nagra’s laser and motor drive are mounted within its CD drawer. When the beautifully machined and finished drawer opens, it produces a mechanical swish as gratifying as the sounds produced by the exotic weaponry in a James Bond flick. Nagra engineers insisted on this "works-in-the-drawer" approach for its mechanical stability advantages, and probably because audiophiles like the hands-on routine of placing the CD directly on the motor spindle (the CD is held in place with a small metal clamp.) It’s certainly easy enough to do and not so different from putting a LP on a turntable. Nine red LEDs illuminate the drawer’s loading spindle, so even in a darkened room you can see what you’re doing. A large backlit LCD indicator mounted on the front of the drawer displays transport functions such as play and stop, along with track elapsed times.

Teensy toggle switches open and close the disc drawer, activate the headphone jack, adjust the brightness, and trigger track skip functions. Take a gander at the round "modulometer," a nod to the recording level meters found on Nagra’s tape recorders long used by the film industry. Here, the meter is mostly decorative, but does provide visual conformation of a CD’s dynamic range, or its lack of same. Sadly, many contemporary pop and rock recordings are dynamically squashed, mixed that way to sound their best over car speakers, but the sonic effect is a lot less flattering over any decent hi-fi. Your ears will probably notice first, but when the meter’s two needles, for the left and right channels, remain pinned over to right, the music’s dynamics seem as flat as Kansas. Once the music’s compressed, even the Nagra can’t restore its lost dynamic kicks.

The CDC’s brushed aluminum chassis is just a little over 12 inches wide and 10 deep; a much smaller aluminum box houses the player’s power supply. The main unit’s connectivity includes RCA and XLR stereo outputs plus three digital outputs (coaxial, optical, and AES/EBU). The CDC matches the trim dimensions of Nagra’s $11,495 PL-P and $8,495 PL-L stereo preamplifiers, and its front-loading mechanism allows the units to stack together. Alternatively, you can omit the preamplifier and have your installer hookup the CDC directly to a stereo power amplifier (the player has its own volume and left/right balance controls.)

The CDC doesn’t really look like a CD player. A rotary dial on the right handles transport functions such as play and stop. I find this takes a little getting used to. Most of the time I use the CDC’s remote control, which boasts the same construction quality as the player itself. It is designed for use with all Nagra high-end audio components, and I find the layout of the CD player controls rather awkward. It would have been nice if Nagra had designed a dedicated remote for use with the CD player.

Nagra manufactures all of its professional and consumer products in Switzerland, and in 2006 it built a new high-tech factory in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne. Nagra is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Kudelski Group, a technology company focusing on a wide range of applications including secure access control and rights management for digital television, broadband Internet, video on demand, etc. The notion of obsolescence is foreign to Nagra: The company claims that the majority of the products it has built since 1951 are still in use.Simon & Garfunkel’s Live From New York City, 1967 (which came out on CD in 2002) takes my breath away when I play it over the Nagra. I saw S & G about 20 years ago, but they were fronting a large band. I find the closeness of this 1967 show at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall more satisfying. The blend of the two voices, upfront and remarkably clear, makes me think of the Everly Brothers at their best, but I relate better to Simon’s lyrics. The CDC lets me feel like I am listening to the original event, pure as can be. Rock music comes across with more drive than most players deliver—the Nagra CDC’s stellar bass, so deep and rhythmic, keeps me engaged. One disc inevitably leads to the next. Life is good.

To those who question the validity of investing in a state-of-the-art CD player this late in the game, I say no one can predict the fate of any format, but the CD looks like it will stick around for a while. And I have to admit that even if the CDC didn’t sound great, its style and craftsmanship would win me over. The CDC tops off Nagra’s all-new three-model range of CD players. The $13,495 CDP is similar but lacks the CDC’s volume control and that nifty-looking meter; and the $12,495 CDT is a transport designed for use with an external digital-to-analog converter.

The CDC is certainly the most versatile of the three Nagra CD players. More important, it tugs at my heartstrings, and I have to say it’s the best CD player I have ever had the pleasure of listening to at home. It is so good it makes me feel a little guilty for slamming digital for so many years.

PRICE: $14,995
CONTACT: 615.726.5191, nagraaudio.com