Looking for opinions based on experience. Would a $750 Cd palyer only be well out performed by a CD palyer and a modern DAC in the $2K range. Is the difference worth it? Enquiring minds want to know!!!
Printable View
Looking for opinions based on experience. Would a $750 Cd palyer only be well out performed by a CD palyer and a modern DAC in the $2K range. Is the difference worth it? Enquiring minds want to know!!!
IME it is a fair chance that a such an upgrade would be worth it. You will have to concider all the other factors like speakers, electronics and digital media, since if the difference is for real you need supporting equipment that can exploit the benefits. And the race is on...
Another advantage with outboard dac is that you can use other signal sources, like e.g. private music server and a decent(-ish) media player, which would be my preferred solution.
It's my opinion that it would depend on the quality of the components and the execution of the design of the $750 CD player and also of the CD player and modern DAC. It's going to be hard to find anybody with experience since we don't know what any of the actual components are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Audiobeer
I've owned five different players since 85 when I bought my first one, from Meridian, Nakamichi, Yamaha, Denon, and now Oppo. I can't say that I've heard any real difference when making any of those changes, and I just can't believe that spending an extra thousand would make any significant difference either.
I would agree with this portion of your post. I too have owned a number of sub $1500 CD players and while they all sounded slightly different, none were obviously superior.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don C
I currently use a Bryston DAC and it does sound noticeably superior. I also had the opportunity to live with a $15K Mark Levinson CD/SACD player a while back and it was significantly better than any other CD player or my DAC.
I think most of the time we are comparing these more affordable devices which are all based on the same DAC chip sets and op-amps. You have to spend a significant amount of money to get away from these designs. That said, since more and more people are drifting away from spinning discs there are quite a few second hand high end CD players being sold off at deep discounts compared to when they were new. That said, you probably need to look at players that originally cost several thousand dollars to find players that will definitely sound dramatically better... and even that is no guarantee. Then there is the fact that even the world's best CD player from the early years of digital won't be as good as a newer player.
Widget
To me, and as noted below, the main advantage of an outboard DAC is the ability to use several sources. Although some CD players can accept other sources, a dedicated DAC is likely to be a better choice.
By far, the biggest improvement comes from using a computer as a music server. Just as an example, a $600 Mac Mini, running iTunes through a music program such as Audirvana+ or Amarra, feeding USB to a decent outboard DAC, will hands down outperform all but the most expensive CD players. That is assuming you rip your CDs uncompressed. Plus, you then have access to a growing body of higher resolution files available on line.
Just my opinion (and experience) -- not trying to start a war!