The Yamaha CDS300BL not only plays your shop purchased CD's, but also your home-burned MP3 mix discs, for further flexibility, there is also a front panel USB (Universal Serial Bus) port for plugging in your iPod, to take advantage of the built in Digital to Analogue converter (DAC), the DAC is a Burr Brown 192k Hz/24bit DAC, renowned for their ultimate clarity & precision gives the Yamaha CDS300 one of the most incisive sound qualities in its class, giving you the best sound from your portable digital music player & compact disc. There is a selection of ways to connect the CDS300BL to your amplifier too, you can use digital optical, co-axial or analogue phono sockets which are gold plated. If you want to bypass the internal DAC then push the pure direct button on the front of the CD player, this will give the audio the shortest signal path possible thus reducing electrical interference. This is a great looking CD player at a great price.