My understanding is that the Core uses a TEAC and they are the world’s largest producers of CD mechanisms .
Your dealer should know
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Of course Sod’s law will no doubt prevail and the very last thing to fail will be the laser mech 
Yep, obviously component choice might change, but this image is from the Naim website UnitiCore page.
Edit: The CD SN-250 is still a current model on the Teac website.
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Looks like a generic CD ROM transport too. I would hope that it could be replaced easily even with another manufacturers if required. I wonder if they did anything special,for Naim or whether it’s off the shelf? I am yet to be convinced that ripped CDs sound any better than streaming however so I’m not going to bother, at least for this year.
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CD555: Replaced once. Still going strong.
Krell kps25sc: New upgraded caps on DAC, Volume and analogue I/O boards. Oh… also a new laser.
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yesno. Good ripping software needs to know the read offset of the drive which is generally measured and stored. That offset is almost certainly part of the Core’s firmware. So while another drive might work, the same model would be needed to perform as designed.
Naim probably have the freedom to choose a new drive as units come and go in production from TEAC but they can also do firmware updates to include additional drives as necessary.
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Taken me straight back to the late eighties.
I believe a Druid prays over it at the Winter Solstice at Stonehenge.
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Audiolab should pay a tax to the Naim Forum 
. Dozens of audiolabs owners here.
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Hi there,
First post… I’ve been experimenting and am using my original Arcam 7SE through Chord Qutest. Really enjoying the sound.
However…. Space is limited and the CD player needs to sit on either my NAC 202 or NAP 200. I know, neither is advised, but if I had to, which is least worst?
Note: Still experimenting with cables and isolation pucks will be fitted to CD Player.
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I also own an Audiolab 9000CDT transport and have been very pleased with it. In terms of SQ, I don’t hear a huge difference between CD transports. I mainly went with the 9000CDT rather than the 6000CDT because it is a tray loader and overall build seems more robust. However the 6000CDT is not far off. The other nice thing about Audiolab transports is that the black ones fit quit well visually into the Naim system. Personally, I would rather have had a Naim transport or player but it seems to me that Naim is likely to get out of the CD game fairly soon and I don’t want to spend a lot of money on the CD player that can’t be serviced/repaired after a few years of service.
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Did you consider the 7000CDT?
I love mine… the 9000 cdt works beautifully with the NDX2 and XPS DR.
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I can’t because all I know is that it’s stuck (since a very long time) in between Germany and Salisbury hopefully being fixed again
Meridian G08 providing great service for 15 years - new mechanism (and updated power supply) last year installed by independent ex Meridian engineers.
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FWIW…
We did blind-testing with comparable and jolly good kit. If the CD and a HR version of the same CD are compared, none of us could consistently pick, which strongly supports your view.
If you pick the wrong version to stream from the many available, the stream can be much worse. Mind you, that’s true for CDs and LPs too.
Whether to stream at all may depend on how confident you are that you pretty much all the music you want to hear…
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