Majority has announced the Fitzwilliam CD AMP, an amplifier with a CD tray in the front, for 229.95 pounds. That is an odd thing to launch in 2026, so I went and counted what we actually hold.
Stereo amplifiers with a CD drive, and what happened after 2023
Of the 294 stereo amplifiers in our database, five have a CD player. That is 1.7 percent. And the newest of those five came out in 2023.
Quick facts
- 5 of 294 stereo amplifiers we list have a built-in CD drive. 288 do not.
- 0 of the 113 released since 2023 have one.
- But 15 of those 113 have a radio tuner, so this is not simply old features dying out.
- The five run from 650 to 5,699 dollars, and the dearest was replaced by the same amplifier without the drive.
- Majority's new Fitzwilliam CD AMP is 229.95 pounds, and is Europe only.
The five that are left
Here they are, cheapest first.
Two of them, the Marantz and the Denon, publish no 8 ohm power figure in our data at all, so there is no honest dollars-per-watt table to build here. This one has to stay on price and features.
| FEATURE and SPECS COMPARISON | |  |  |  |  |  |
| Model | Marantz M-CR612 | Denon CEOL RCD-N12 | Technics SA-C600 | Audiolab Omnia | Naim Uniti Star |
| Type | Stereo Receiver | Stereo Receiver | Stereo Receiver | Integrated Amplifier | Integrated Amplifier |
| Amplifier Class | Class D | Class D | Class D | Class A/B | Class A/B |
| Power into 8 ohms | - | - | 60 watts | 50 watts | 70 watts |
| Power into 6 ohms | 50 watts | - | - | - | - |
| Power into 4 ohms | - | 65 watts | - | 75 watts | - |
| Minimum Impedance | - | - | 4 ohms | 4 ohms | 4 ohms |
| THD | - | - | - | 0.003% | - |
| Signal to Noise Ratio | - | - | - | 76 | - |
| Frequency Bandwidth | - | - | - | 20 Hz-20 kHz | 20 Hz-20 kHz |
| Built-in DAC | | | | | |
| DAC | - | - | - | ES9038Q2M Sabre 32-bit | Burr Brown |
| Max Bit Depth | 24 | - | - | 32 | 32 |
| Max Sample Rate | 192kHz | - | - | 768 | 384 |
| Analog Inputs | - | - | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Phono Input | - | | | | |
| Phono Type | - | - | MM | MM | - |
| Optical Digital Inputs | 2 | 1 | Yes | 2 | 2 |
| Coaxial Digital Inputs | - | - | Yes | 2 | 2 |
| USB Input | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HDMI Input | No | No | No | - | Yes |
| HDMI ARC | - | - | - | - | ARC |
| XLR Input | - | - | No | - | - |
| Preamp Outputs | Stereo RCA | Stereo RCA | - | Stereo RCA | Stereo RCA |
| Headphone Output | - | - | Yes | 1/4 | 3.5mm |
| Bluetooth | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Wi-Fi | Yes | Yes | Yes | 802.11ac | 802.11ac |
| AirPlay 2 | | | | | |
| Chromecast built-in | - | - | | | |
| Roon | - | - | - | Tested | Ready |
| BluOS | - | - | - | | |
| HEOS | | | - | | |
| Handheld Remote | - | - | | | |
| Height | 112.8mm | 108.0mm | 94.1mm | 116.0mm | 96.0mm |
| Width | 280.9mm | 280.9mm | 340.1mm | 442.0mm | 434.0mm |
| Depth | 331.7mm | 320.8mm | 341.3mm | 358.0mm | 316.0mm |
| Weight | 3.30kg | 3.40kg | 4.81kg | 9.14kg | 12.02kg |
| MSRP | 650 USD | 699 USD | 1300 USD | 2300 USD | 5699 USD |
| Check Current Price | Amazon, B&H Photo | Amazon, B&H Photo | Amazon, B&H Photo | Amazon, B&H Photo | Amazon, B&H Photo |
What the table does show is that the survivors are not a category. They are five unrelated products that happen to share one part. A 650 dollar Marantz all-in-one and a 5,699 dollar Naim have nothing else in common.
The tuner survived. The drive did not
This is the part that surprised me, and it is why the easy explanation is wrong.
The easy explanation is that old features are being stripped out of hi-fi because everybody streams now. If that were true, the radio tuner would have gone the same way as the disc drive. It has not. Fifteen of the 113 amplifiers released since 2023 have a tuner in them, from a 699 dollar Eversolo up to a 13,800 dollar Hegel.
So it is not that manufacturers have stopped putting legacy features in amplifiers. They have stopped putting in this one.
A radio tuner is a chip. A CD drive is a mechanism with a motor, a laser and a tray, made by a shrinking number of suppliers. That difference, not fashion, is the best explanation for the split.
The clearest evidence for that is a product we wrote about last week. Naim replaced the Uniti Star with the Uniti Star Lite, which is the same amplifier with the CD slot filled in, and the reason Naim gave was that the optical drive they were buying is no longer made. They kept the remaining stock back to repair existing players rather than build new ones.
That is a supply decision, not a marketing one. And it means the most expensive CD amplifier we hold was killed by a parts shortage while it was still selling.
The Naim Uniti Star at 5,699 dollars, the dearest of the five, and now replaced by a version without the drive
And then a new one turns up at a tenth of the price
The Majority Fitzwilliam CD, the separate player that sits alongside the new CD AMP
Which is what makes the Majority announcement worth a paragraph rather than a shrug.
The Fitzwilliam CD AMP is 229.95 pounds, or 269 euros. It has a tray-loading CD player reading CD, CD-R and CD-RW, Spotify Connect with Spotify Lossless, DAB/DAB+ and FM with RDS, RCA, optical and coaxial inputs, a pre-out, a headphone socket and speaker terminals. It is 43.5cm wide, so it is a full-size component rather than a desktop box. It is available now.
Majority also sell the parts separately: the Fitzwilliam CD at 179.95 pounds and the Fitzwilliam AMP at 199.95 pounds. Buy both and you spend 379.90 pounds, so the combined unit saves you 149.95 pounds, about 39 percent. That is a real argument for an all-in-one, and it is the argument the expensive end of this list stopped being able to make.
For scale: the cheapest CD amplifier we currently hold is the 650 dollar Marantz. At today's rate the Majority is roughly 310 dollars, which is less than half of it.
The Audiolab Omnia at 2,300 dollars, the only one of the five with no radio tuner at all
The number I do not believe
Now the part that should slow you down.
Majority's press material describes the amplifier as a "200W two-channel Class-D Texas Instruments amplifier". That is the entire power specification. There is no impedance. There is no distortion figure. There is no bandwidth. Several outlets have reported it as 100 watts per channel, which is simply 200 divided by two, and that division is not something Majority actually stated.
Compare that with the Naim at the other end of the list, which publishes 70 watts per channel into 8 ohms, Class AB. Seventy honest watts and two hundred unspecified ones are not numbers you can put side by side, and a 230 pound box is not delivering 100 clean watts a channel into 8 ohms.
That is not an accusation of dishonesty. Budget audio has quoted power this way for decades. But it is why the Majority is not in our database tonight: we would have nowhere to put that figure. Our amplifier rows record power into 8, 6 and 4 ohms as separate fields, and "200W" fits none of them.
Two more things worth knowing before you get excited
It is Europe only. Majority publishes prices in pounds and euros and no US price at all. The 310 dollar figure above is my arithmetic at a rate of 1.353 dollars to the pound, not a price anyone is charging. If you are reading this in North America, this product does not exist for you, exactly like the Naim Uniti Star Lite.
And nobody has reviewed it. It was announced on 27 August 2026 and is shipping. There are no measurements, no listening impressions and no reliability record. A cheap CD mechanism is precisely the part most likely to fail, and it is the part the expensive makers are walking away from.
Questions answered
Which amplifiers with a CD player can I still buy new?
From our data, five: the Marantz M-CR612 at 650 dollars, the Denon CEOL RCD-N12 at 699, the Technics SA-C600 at 1,300, the Audiolab Omnia at 2,300 and the Naim Uniti Star at 5,699. Availability of the Naim is the one to check, since its replacement drops the drive.
Why did the CD drive disappear but not the radio tuner?
The most likely reason is that they are different kinds of part. A tuner is a chip on a board. A CD transport is a moving mechanism with a laser, and it is bought in from a small number of suppliers. When one of those suppliers stops, the feature disappears from products that were selling perfectly well. Naim said exactly that when it removed the drive from the Uniti Star.
Is the Majority Fitzwilliam CD AMP really 100 watts per channel?
Majority says "200W two-channel", with no impedance, no distortion figure and no bandwidth. The 100 watts per channel you will see quoted is that number halved by journalists, not a manufacturer specification. Treat it as a marketing figure until somebody measures the amplifier.
Is it in your database?
No. We hold no Majority products at all. The blocker is not the brand, it is the specification: our rows record amplifier power into 8, 6 and 4 ohms separately, and a bare "200W" with no load stated cannot be entered into any of them without inventing information. If Majority publishes a full spec sheet, it goes in.
Can I not just buy a CD player and an amplifier separately?
Yes, and for most people that is the better answer. It is also what Majority itself sells: the Fitzwilliam CD at 179.95 pounds plus the Fitzwilliam AMP at 199.95 pounds. Separates cost more in this case, 379.90 pounds against 229.95, but a failed CD mechanism then costs you a CD player rather than the whole system.
If you still own discs, would you buy an amplifier with the drive built in, knowing the mechanism is the part most likely to fail and the hardest to replace?