When Janine Elliot of Hifi Pig first heard in 1991 that CEC was spinning CDs with a belt, she pictured the speed wobble of an old turntable and wondered if it was an advertising ploy. Years later, a CEC TL5 made her stop writing her review to listen to a big band record. The TL5 is a transport, a player that spins the disc and hands the data to a separate converter. Most CD players turn the disc with a strong motor right underneath it, and that motor's vibration and electrical noise reach the disc. CEC moves a gentler motor off to the side and turns the disc with a belt, and a heavy puck rests on top to keep it spinning evenly. Roy Gregory of The Audio Beat heard the TL 3N bring "added depth, weight, solidity and musical purpose" over the Wadia S7i's own transport, and Wojciech Pacuła of High Fidelity found "an incredible saturation of the lower midrange" in the TL0 3.0. CEC suits CD collectors with a good DAC who value flow and density.

The TL5 is the way in, with a sliding lid and no DAC inside, and Elliot liked that owners can replace the belt themselves. Gregory, who had used a TL 3N for years, found the TL5 separated instruments better, and he preferred its coaxial output, hearing it as "lighter and livelier." Marc Phillips of pt.AUDIO tried CEC's larger stabilizer, which covers the whole disc, and heard more weight in the bass and sharper focus. The step up is the TL 2N, which adds Superlink, CEC's own connection that carries the timing signals on separate cables so they don't have to be rebuilt at the DAC. It needs a matching CEC DAC. If you'd rather have one box, the CD 5 puts transport and DAC together, and Hans Beekhuyzen found its DAC more refined than his Mytek reference, with very deep, controlled bass. These are top-loaders, so Gregory notes they need a top-shelf spot.

CEC was founded in Tokyo in 1954 by Takada-san, and Jörg Dames of fairaudio describes it as a specialist in turntable drives and one of the biggest makers of record players by the end of the 1980s. Julien Stegner of CEC Europe says it was the first company in Japan to produce turntables, and its turntables and CD players were sold under names including Grundig, Marantz, Teac and Sony. Its first CD player came in 1983. In 1991 it launched the TL1, which Dames says was the first belt-drive CD transport. Stegner says the engineers reasoned that a CD's speed changes so slowly it can be treated as constant over a short stretch, the same problem a turntable solves. Paul Candy of Positive Feedback passed on a nickname for the later TL51X, "the LP12 of digital disc spinners," after Linn's turntable. Elliot rates CEC's pedigree in CD as highly as Stax's in electrostatic headphones. The flagship TL0 3.0 floats its drive on springs and rubber like a turntable, and is made in Japan.