Onkyo's new high-spec CD player proves shiny discs are far from dead

Onkyo goes back to basics with a sleek, fuss-free CD player – the Icon C-30

Onkyo C-30 CD player on a wooden table or sideboard in a fairly dark room
(Image credit: Onkyo)
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Onkyo has unveiled a new member of its Icon audio components series – the Icon C-30.

In typical Onkyo fashion, the focus is on sound quality rather than a huge feature list, although it also looks the part as a sleek, stealthy CD player.

Earlier this year, Onkyo returned to the Hi-Fi business in impressive style with its Icon series of seperates. This included a pre-amp, a power amp and a streaming amp. Now there's a fourth component, and this one's a CD player.

In a world of compressed music being streamed online, it's refreshing to see a new player for uncompressed audio.

As we've come to expect from Onkyo, the Icon C-30 isn't packed with bells and whistles, and it isn't trying to be a do-everything player neither. It doesn't play SACD, it doesn't have DSD or MQA decoding, and you can't use its DAC with anything other than its CD drive.

Instead, the spinner is focused on the essentials and priced affordably. Where the other icon products have four-figure price tags, the C-30 is much less expensive.

Front and rear views of the Onkyo Icon C-30 CD player on a white background

(Image credit: Onkyo)

Onkyo Icon C-30: key features and pricing

The Icon C-30 comes with Onkyo's Vector Linear Shaping Circuitry, VLSC for short, which is designed to eliminate digital pulse noise, and it has a 24-bit/192kHz DAC. Onkyo says that it produces clean, distortion-free output with a low signal to noise ratio (107dB). The C-30 also has a high-precision clock for accurate imaging and timing.

Onkyo has kept the outside straightforward. Round the back there are the obligatory RCA connectors, plus optical and co-axial outputs. The front sports tactile transport controls, a small LCD display and a headphone output with volume control.

The front panel is aluminium and according to Onkyo, it reduces resonance and delivers cleaner playback.

UK and European pricing is yet to be announced, but the US price is just $349 – roughly £262 / €305 / AU$405 before tax. That means it's very competitive with the likes of the Marantz CD6007.

The Icon C-30 will be available from October 2025.

Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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