Are all CD players really equal?

[ToppingSMSL]

You wouldn't be interested.

Oh I would. Whether the explanation is satisfactory would be another matter.

 

[Dave_]

That's not quite true. It also depends on the decoding. Over 10 years ago, for whatever reason, ALAC sounded worst of the losslessly compressed formats. And I stick to that, although I haven't heard the hires files that some sell.

WMAL sounded most natural to me. But uncompressed WAV still sounded the best, along with AIFF - Apple's version of WAV but with tagging ability.

It's absolutely true, and you're just spouting an opinion as if it's fact

 

[ToppingSMSL]

That's not quite true. It also depends on the decoding. Over 10 years ago, for whatever reason, ALAC sounded worst of the losslessly compressed formats. And I stick to that, although I haven't heard the hires files that some sell.

WMAL sounded most natural to me. But uncompressed WAV still sounded the best, along with AIFF - Apple's version of WAV but with tagging ability.

If you're not doing blind listening tests we have to take these claims with a pinch of salt.

 

[ToppingSMSL]

It's absolutely true, and you're just spouting an opinion as if it's fact

Exactly. Too many people do this with their subjective listening.

 

[abacus]

Well, I heard it - did you? Nothing was faulty, and thanks for telling me what I'm supposed to think.

And black is white !

You wouldn't be interested.

As I was an engineer before I retired, I would be interested.

Bill

 

[abacus]

That's not quite true. It also depends on the decoding. Over 10 years ago, for whatever reason, ALAC sounded worst of the losslessly compressed formats. And I stick to that, although I haven't heard the hires files that some sell.

WMAL sounded most natural to me. But uncompressed WAV still sounded the best, along with AIFF - Apple's version of WAV but with tagging ability.

I agree there, in the early days encoders/decoders could theoretically make a small difference, but that hasn't been the case for years. (WMAL came very late to the party, which is why hardly anybody used it, as FLAC was well established)

Bill

 

[davidf]

Exactly. Too many people do this with their subjective listening.

Agreed. Too many just do it full stop.

 

[davidf]

As I was an engineer before I retired, I would be interested.

Bill

The middle quote isn't mine.

I don't care who you worked for or what as, you cannot tell me what I have experienced, even if you condescendingly try to.

 

[Al ears]

The middle quite isn't mine.

I don't care who you worked for or what as, you cannot tell me what I have experienced, even if you condescendingly try to.

Which is why people have to stop relying to antagonistic questions such as this.
It's a sort of click bait rather than real information seeking.....

 

[Entrigo]

Oh absolutely, I have one of those too!
Have you listened to SACD's on the SA8005?
It fills in the 1s and 0s the CD's can't reach, hitting the spot like a silk cold draught of creamy Guinness.

I think they've been discontinued, I don't mean the Guinness(!) but you can still find 2nd hand on eBay.

There was a noticeable improvement in sound quality over the old Denon DVD/SACD 2900. Though, I'm sure someone from the echelon of HiFi correctness, will tell me my brain is malfunctioning or I've succumbed to placebo, but I've had the SA8005 a long time now, so you can cross off the placebo as with the other, my brain interprets what my ears receive and if it is doing right each time I play the CD, then I can't ask for more. Hmmm maybe some cream on top, no syrup.
I mean, enjoy your poison!🙂

Anyone looking for CDP but also an excellent SACD player, the Marantz SA8005 is a gem of a player and you can play DSD via the USB rear connection.

Haha yes indeed. As soon as I got it I bought a Pink Floyd DSOTM SACD and did a bit of a side by side between the SACD, I believe a 96/24 stream and the original first pressing on vinyl. Much to my chagrin, the SACD was the best of the three. 1s and 0s beat sonic waves beautifully carved in wax...

Though I have since upgraded to better cartridge and phono stage (alas not yet the turntable itself), so it would be interesting to repeat the experiment... And again once I do get a new deck.

 

[plastic penguin]

I can only only speak on my own experience.

As many of you know, I was a long-term owner of a £400 Arcam CD73T. After many years, it began to play up (trouble reading some CDs, ejecting itself with the remote the other side of the living room blah blah blah....).

Based on recommendations, I took the plunge and purchased an ex-dem Electrocompaniet PC-1, which normally retailed at around £1100, I purchased mine as ex-dem for £600 from a fairly well-known online dealer. I was so disappointed with SQ, it was warm and dreary sounding. I seriously wanted it to sound great for the money, but it refused to cut the mustard.

After a good few weeks, I boxed it back up and stored it in the attic for several months. So persevered with the CD73, as it sounded far more pleasant. Eventually it died and purchased the Exposure, which cost me £250 from a private buyer on an auction site.

The Exposure has all the qualities I was expecting from the Electrocompaniet: Dynamic, taut LFs and nicely detailed. This was the Spring 2020. Five years on and it hasn't missed a beat either mechanically or sonically.

It was never night and day different but certainly noticeable.

 

[Jasonovich]

Is it still in the attic?
I'm sure you'll find an eager buyer for the Electrocompaniet Dynamic on eBay.

 

[plastic penguin]

Is it still in the attic?
I'm sure you'll find an eager buyer for the Electrocompaniet Dynamic on eBay.

No, sold ages ago.

 

[plastic penguin]

Is it still in the attic?
I'm sure you'll find an eager buyer for the Electrocompaniet Dynamic on eBay.

The CD73 was a fantastic CDP for the money. I would still recommend it despite it's age.

Early to mid naughties was a golden time for Arcam amps and CDPs. Everything they touched was a cracker, not so much for the FMJ ranges but the affordable DIVA range.

 

[ianshreeve27@]

Glad we have a consensus then!!

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

And this thread has definitely crossed the 'getting personal line.' No more please.

 

[abacus]

The middle quote isn't mine.

I don't care who you worked for or what as, you cannot tell me what I have experienced, even if you condescen

The middle quote isn't mine.

I don't care who you worked for or what as, you cannot tell me what I have experienced, even if you condescendingly try to.

You were the one that mentioned the mechanical drive makes a difference.

Bill

 

[abacus]

Haha yes indeed. As soon as I got it I bought a Pink Floyd DSOTM SACD and did a bit of a side by side between the SACD, I believe a 96/24 stream and the original first pressing on vinyl. Much to my chagrin, the SACD was the best of the three. 1s and 0s beat sonic waves beautifully carved in wax...

Though I have since upgraded to better cartridge and phono stage (alas not yet the turntable itself), so it would be interesting to repeat the experiment... And again once I do get a new deck.

The DSOTM SACD is in surround sound as well.

Bill

 

[abacus]

I can only only speak on my own experience.

As many of you know, I was a long-term owner of a £400 Arcam CD73T. After many years, it began to play up (trouble reading some CDs, ejecting itself with the remote the other side of the living room blah blah blah....).

Based on recommendations, I took the plunge and purchased an ex-dem Electrocompaniet PC-1, which normally retailed at around £1100, I purchased mine as ex-dem for £600 from a fairly well-known online dealer. I was so disappointed with SQ, it was warm and dreary sounding. I seriously wanted it to sound great for the money, but it refused to cut the mustard.

After a good few weeks, I boxed it back up and stored it in the attic for several months. So persevered with the CD73, as it sounded far more pleasant. Eventually it died and purchased the Exposure, which cost me £250 from a private buyer on an auction site.

The Exposure has all the qualities I was expecting from the Electrocompaniet: Dynamic, taut LFs and nicely detailed. This was the Spring 2020. Five years on and it hasn't missed a beat either mechanically or sonically.

It was never night and day different but certainly noticeable.

It was a common problem with the CD73, mine did exactly the same, but yes, it was a great player for sound quality.

Bill

 

[skinnypuppy71]

The CD73 was a fantastic CDP for the money. I would still recommend it despite it's age.

Early to mid naughties was a golden time for Arcam amps and CDPs. Everything they touched was a cracker, not so much for the FMJ ranges but the affordable DIVA range.

I used to own the A85 and cd72t from the time, I remember getting the upgrade path for the cd player from cd72t to the cd82, both were fantastic players as was the amp, to this day, I think it's the longest time I've held on to a product, around 13 years I had them and now they reside with a friend and are still going strong.

 

[davidf]

You were the one that mentioned the mechanical drive makes a difference.

Bill

I didn't mention "mechanical drive", I said a CD transport is also a mechanical device.

 

[Stuart83]

It's a road I went down (again) not long ago whilst upgrading which I posted on at the time going through quite a few.

I'm not one for graphs and measurements other than for the obvious things like THD and the signal to noise ratio as seldom do they indicate anything useful unless you literally graphed your exact preferences and looked to match them then what are they indicating in layman's terms I'm not sure.
To answer your question in short, given that the CDP is decent as obviously quality parts mean everything then the differences are there but are much, much more subtle than say changing speakers.

To stay away from repeating what's already posted about error correction etc or taking the usual technical stance I will just mention what Ive found with my ears, after all that's what it's all about.
Over the yrs since my first Philips 604 I've had many CDP and ventured the separate dac and transports route but always kept ending up back with a Marantz CD 52MK2se in-between which coincidentally has a Phillips mechanism (so did quite a few others) whilst swapping things around it's the one that sonically and mechanically never put a foot wrong and at 33yrs old I never found anything I could absolutely say was better sounding despite my head telling me there must be better especially with it's age and technology advances factoring in.

Not long ago the edject cog disintegrated which I posted about and the following saga, another casualty of its common fault which despite hastily repairing it it set off a quest to better it with something new.
Setting a budget of 1000 in came all the favourites going ,a few I demoed at Richer Sounds and a few home demoed to find hardly any sonic differences within that budget at all and even upping the budget and demoing more obscure brands at Hifi Sounds to find again little difference.
I'm very, sometimes overly analytical so if it's not there I can't fool myself into hearing it but I'm certainly not a negative critic always acknowledging and looking for improvement however small yet I couldn't hear anything that would justify the 2000 price tag.

I then thought about why I kept going back to the Marantz quickly realising the obviousness of it all I demoed the then new 6007 that had won critical acclaim and although I liked it irrespective I couldn't hear much difference going a/b from that and the CD52 MK2 hence deciding to go up the food chain to the CD 60 and then finally, I could hear an although subtle but unmistakable improvement was there and alot of that will be the DAC difference.
Originally at 749 £ all that time it had been under my nose along with the modern touches like a usb port for multi format playback etc missing on its much older predecessor.
Using it as a Transport between a Hegal H-190's much better own SynchroDAC technology with it's own master clock to keep jitter and error with the DAC conversion even more minimal yet the difference is again very subtle and it's a hard push whilst flicking immediately from the Marantz native DAC to the Hegal's to hear the difference without really listening for it.

In short I've found there is differences obviously parts quality being a big factor but after a certain good quality is reached the sonic differences become very subtle but are indeed there.
The difference is that small to some a whole divide in opinion has formed around it.

 

[abacus]

I didn't mention "mechanical drive", I said a CD transport is also a mechanical device.

My apologies, I assumed you meant that you new how the drive affected the performance, hence my interest.

Bill

 

[Entrigo]

The DSOTM SACD is in surround sound as well.

Bill

Good to know. I have no surround speakers anymore but I will try if I ever get some again (which I'd love to)

 

[Freddy58]

How long have CDP’s been with us now, 40+ years? One would have thought that given the claims by manufacturers of year on year improvements (or with each new model) that nirvana would have been reached years ago (maybe it has already been reached😉). My goodness, those early CDP’s must have been rubbish…