Beresford TC-7520 DAC vs Arcam CD73

[Anonymous]

storsvante:
hi fi newbie:As mentioned this exercise of connecting the cd player to the dac is fairly pointless. If you are not going to be using the dac for lossless files, then I would just stick with the cd player.

No, it is not pointless. When you're using an external DAC with a CD player your are effectively swapping DAC (bypassing the internal one). If your external DAC is of higher quality than the one built into the CD player you will get better results.

Also, I see people sometimes talk in general terms about 'lossless files', not considering where they originally came from. If ripped from a CD using the computer built-in CD player, stored on hard drive (in a lossless format) and then streamed to a DAC, vs streaming from a CD player to DAC directly, the comparison is between the computer's CD drive and the ripping software against the the stand-alone CD player's transport. There is a lot of CD-ripping software out there which will give rubbish results. There is also software that applies clever tricks to try and read the CD with minimum error, for example re-reading the same sectors several times and compare for differences. So I suspect that by coupling a decent CD drive with good software, the data reproduction will be comparable if not better than the best stand-alone CD transports out there, so to that note I agree with you.

Not to mention higher quality audio files which wouldn't physically be possible to represent on a CD, of course (higher bit rates, higher sampling frequencies)...

Lossless is Lossless and incidentally for those that think Foobar rips better than others, well if you look into what Foobar say (I believe this is on the help section) they even repeat the same notion, that lossless is lossless is lossless

. There is no such thing as a poor piece of software, it's taking a duplicate of what is on the cd.

 

[Don Guess]

Of course lossless is lossless. It's not the codec that's in question. The issue is whether the rip (extraction from the CD) is secure or 100% accurate. Here software does play a part...

 

[Anonymous]

Just to clarify with the above this is what i meant
Does foobar2000 sound better than other players?

No. Most of "sound quality differences" people "hear" are placebo
effect (at least with real music), as actual differences in produced
sound data are below their noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit
samples). foobar2000 has sound processing features such as software
resampling or 24bit output on new high-end soundcards, but most of the
other mainstream players are capable of doing the same by now.

 

[Don Guess]

You're right. As far as i know there should be no difference between software players, providing no dsp or plugins are used. I think your quote is from Peter Pawlowski, author of Foobar.

However, I think the point is that the physical ripping method can therotecially make a difference but I've never been able to pick up any errors from insecure or burst method rips other than when the CD is scratched to hell.. and it that case usually no ripper will do the job anyway.

 

[Alec]

I think i can hear differneces between some MP3 rips (same bit rate of course) depending, for example, on whether LAME is used. Now, i cant say ive heard such diferences with lossless files, but cant there be similar concerns?

I also thinki can hear differneces in playback software sometimes, tho im less cerain, i admit. Couldnt, for example, the default EQ make a difference?

By the by, on the couple of occasions EAC told me there may be errors (and took an age to rip the disk), i heard none.

Just some ramblings...

 

[stephennic]

Hi,

The dacmagic should be better than the arcam cd73t, certaintly the old dacmagic is better as I have compared both on my system. The arcam cd73t is a good budget cd player, the creek evo, rega apollo, consonance cd-120 linear, is better though - I suspect the new nad is though. The new dacmagic has been compared to the cambridge 740/840c which is certaintly better than arcam cd73t.

One of the hifi choice magazines actually said the dacmagic was the winner out of the dacs tested - one which was the bereford dac (which got a recommendation too).

Cheers,

Steve.

 

[chebby]

stephennic:One of the hifi choice magazines actually said the dacmagic was the winner out of the dacs tested - one which was the bereford dac (which got a recommendation too)

Wrong Beresford.

That would have been the original TC-7510.

This is about the TC-7520 which is a whole different model (and a different design) to the TC-7510 and an upgrade from the original.

 

[ESP2009]

chebby:

stephennic:One of the hifi choice magazines actually said the dacmagic was the winner out of the dacs tested - one which was the bereford dac (which got a recommendation too)

Wrong Beresford.

That would have been the original TC-7510.

This is about the TC-7520 which is a whole different model (and a different design) to the TC-7510 and an upgrade from the original.
So, when do we get to see a 'head-to-head' between the latest Cambridge Audio and Beresford DAC offerings? I would love to see some 'official' comparisons done on a sensible range of kit.

 

[Anonymous]

Don Guess:Of course lossless is lossless. It's not the codec that's in question. The issue is whether the rip (extraction from the CD) is secure or 100% accurate. Here software does play a part...

Indeed! The problem is that the CD audio format (designed >25 years ago) was intended to be a real-time, streaming format and it has none of the checksum (CRC) mechanisms that are used on data CDs (or hard drives for that matter). When a data CD is written, checksum codes are written along with the data. When the data is read back, the reader software re-calculates the checksum of the data with the original checksum that was written to disk -- if they differ, the CD can be re-read many times until the checksums match and the correct data is obtained. This cannot be done easily with an audio CD -- what you get is what you get -- which means (at least theoretically) that you can get different results reading the same CD with different readers.

None of this should be confused with lossless vs lossy compression of data.

Unfortunately digital transmission of audio through coax or optical cables suffers the same problem. You can stream 10 times the data rate of a CD through a cheap computer network (ethernet) cable (£5) and a cheap network card at each end (£10) and guarantee 100% error free transmission every time. Again, because the protocols have error-detection and error-correction built in. At the same time there is a boyant market for Very Expensive digital audio data transmission cables -- again, because the data is only ever sent once and what you get is what you get.

I'm not sure about HDMI but my guess is it's the same.

Oh well.

 

[chebby]

ESP2009:So, when do we get to see a 'head-to-head' between the latest Cambridge Audio and Beresford DAC offerings? I would love to see some 'official' comparisons done on a sensible range of kit.

I have heard both, but not 'head-to-head'.

I have heard a DacMagic in a friend's Primare i30 - iMac 20" (iTunes) + Focal JM 716 system for many, many hours since around Christmas-time when he first got it.

In his system the DacMagic has a huge amount of upper bass dominance and is very, very warm. (Compared to his old Rega Apollo CDP, now sold). Luckily this is exactly to his taste hence the Rega Apollo sale.

I have different tastes and prefer a more even, open, and detailed sound with a more 3D image and I play a lot of acoustic & jazz, ska, two-tone, pop, sacred and chamber classical and speech. (Whereas he plays lots of heavy metal and rock very loud with some - very - occasional symphonic classical like Beethoven).

I would say if you need to add warmth (a lot of it) and bass (again a lot) and play mostly rock then the DacMagic will suit.

I doubt if we will ever swap DACs - or any other components - as we are both happy with our systems as they are. The only exception was long before he had a DAC at all when I took my old USB DAC to his place to demonstrate the principle. We spent the whole day listening to Radio Paradise (192kbps AAC) after playing a couple of lossless CD rips to iTunes, and he was sold on the idea. I was the one that suggested the DacMagic to him and showed him the magazine reviews of it. It was also attractive to him because the DacMagic and his Primare i30 are connected with balanced XLR.

I don't think a 'head-to-head' comparison would prove anything other than people like different things.

 

[ESP2009]

A fair and reasoned point.

I guess that when I can find some time, I will end up requesting a demo of both from some kind and patient supplier. But that's for later in the year.

Even so, WHF might like to take up the comparison challenge.

 

[Craig M.]

chebby:
ESP2009:So, when do we get to see a 'head-to-head' between the latest Cambridge Audio and Beresford DAC offerings? I would love to see some 'official' comparisons done on a sensible range of kit.

In his system the DacMagic has a huge amount of upper bass dominance and is very, very warm. (Compared to his old Rega Apollo CDP, now sold). Luckily this is exactly to his taste hence the Rega Apollo sale.

I have different tastes and prefer a more even, open, and detailed sound with a more 3D image and I play a lot of acoustic & jazz, ska, two-tone, pop, sacred and chamber classical and speech. (Whereas he plays lots of heavy metal and rock very loud with some - very - occasional symphonic classical like Beethoven).

I would say if you need to add warmth (a lot of it) and bass (again a lot) and play mostly rock then the DacMagic will suit.

I don't think a 'head-to-head' comparison would prove anything other than people like different things.

absolutely spot on chebby.

 

[Anonymous]

storsvante:
Don Guess:Of course lossless is lossless. It's not the codec that's in question. The issue is whether the rip (extraction from the CD) is secure or 100% accurate. Here software does play a part...

Indeed! The problem is that the CD audio format (designed >25 years ago) was intended to be a real-time, streaming format and it has none of the checksum (CRC) mechanisms that are used on data CDs (or hard drives for that matter). When a data CD is written, checksum codes are written along with the data. When the data is read back, the reader software re-calculates the checksum of the data with the original checksum that was written to disk -- if they differ, the CD can be re-read many times until the checksums match and the correct data is obtained. This cannot be done easily with an audio CD -- what you get is what you get -- which means (at least theoretically) that you can get different results reading the same CD with different readers.

None of this should be confused with lossless vs lossy compression of data.

You are right that it is about the transfer of data from the audio CD.

However all audio cds use the Red Book mastering standard from Phillips. This actually defines an error handling protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-interleaved_Reed-Solomon_coding which can handle scratches etc.

So it is not quite as straight forward. Hence Cyrus spending a small fortune (?) writing their own CD handling software to make best use of this limited error correction facility. The problem with CD players versus computers remains though, an Audio CD must be a real time play back device, whereas a computer can do it out of real time.

That said, I'm very happy with my lossless audio files, but still buy CDs so that I can have a backup and encode losslessly.

 

[Alec]

zzgavin:You are right that it is about the transfer of data from the audio CD.

However all audio cds use the Red Book mastering standard from Phillips.

They should, but they dont. Indeed, It was reported that Phillips were considering suing to stop such disks sporting the official CD logo.

Also, it seems to me that how acurate anything further down the chain is doenst matter if the initial read is innacurate, regardless of what source is used...*

*I may be miss-interpreting an earlier post. My apologies if that is the case.

 

[Anonymous]

Just to completely geek out, here is the relevant section pasted from wikipedia on audio cd data structure, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc#Data_structure

"Data structure

The smallest entity in a CD is called a frame, which consists of 33 bytes and contains six complete 16-bit stereo samples (two bytes ž two channels ž six samples: equals 24 bytes). The other nine bytes consist of eight CIRC error-correction bytes and one subcode byte, used for control and display. Each byte is translated into a 14-bit word using eight-to-fourteen modulation, which alternates with three-bit merging words. In total there are 33 ž (14 + 3) = 561 bits. A 27-bit unique synchronization word is added, so that the number of bits in a frame totals 588 (of which only 192 bits are music).

These 588-bit frames are in turn grouped into sectors. Each sector contains 98 frames, totaling 98 ž 24 = 2352 bytes of music. The CD is played at a speed of 75 sectors per second, which results in 176,400 bytes per second. Divided by two channels and two bytes per sample, this results in a sample rate of 44,100 samples per second.

For CD-ROM data discs, the physical frame and sector sizes are the same. Since error concealment cannot be applied to non-audio data in case the CIRC error correction fails to recover the user data, a third layer of error correction is defined, reducing the payload to 2048 bytes per sector for the Mode-1 CD-ROM format. To increase the data-rate forVideo CD, Mode-2 CD-ROM, the third layer has been omitted, increasing the payload to 2336 user-available bytes per sector, only 16 bytes (for synchronization and header data) less than available in Red-Book audio."

 

[Anonymous]

al7478:zzgavin:You are right that it is about the transfer of data from the audio CD.
However all audio cds use the Red Book mastering standard from Phillips.

They should, but they dont. Indeed, It was reported that Phillips were considering suing to stop such disks sporting the official CD logo.

Also, it seems to me that how acurate anything further down the chain is doenst matter if the initial read is innacurate, regardless of what source is used...*

*I may be miss-interpreting an earlier post. My apologies if that is the case.

It was disks which used copy protection and violated the red book standard which Philips were worried about, not normal audio CDs. An audio CD is a red book CD. the Data CD came later.

However to get back on topic,yes if the initial read is poor then the resulting rip will be poor, hence products like EAC

 

[Gerrardasnails]

zzgavin:
Just to completely geek out, here is the relevant section pasted from wikipedia on audio cd data structure, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc#Data_structure

"Data structure

The smallest entity in a CD is called a frame, which consists of 33 bytes and contains six complete 16-bit stereo samples (two bytes ž two channels ž six samples: equals 24 bytes). The other nine bytes consist of eight CIRC error-correction bytes and one subcode byte, used for control and display. Each byte is translated into a 14-bit word using eight-to-fourteen modulation, which alternates with three-bit merging words. In total there are 33 ž (14 + 3) = 561 bits. A 27-bit unique synchronization word is added, so that the number of bits in a frame totals 588 (of which only 192 bits are music).

These 588-bit frames are in turn grouped into sectors. Each sector contains 98 frames, totaling 98 ž 24 = 2352 bytes of music. The CD is played at a speed of 75 sectors per second, which results in 176,400 bytes per second. Divided by two channels and two bytes per sample, this results in a sample rate of 44,100 samples per second.

For CD-ROM data discs, the physical frame and sector sizes are the same. Since error concealment cannot be applied to non-audio data in case the CIRC error correction fails to recover the user data, a third layer of error correction is defined, reducing the payload to 2048 bytes per sector for the Mode-1 CD-ROM format. To increase the data-rate forVideo CD, Mode-2 CD-ROM, the third layer has been omitted, increasing the payload to 2336 user-available bytes per sector, only 16 bytes (for synchronization and header data) less than available in Red-Book audio."

We now know what the zz in your name stands for Gav!!

 

[Alec]

zzgavin:al7478:zzgavin:You are right that it is about the transfer of data from the audio CD.

However all audio cds use the Red Book mastering standard from Phillips.

They should, but they dont. Indeed, It was reported that Phillips were considering suing to stop such disks sporting the official CD logo.

Also, it seems to me that how acurate anything further down the chain is doenst matter if the initial read is innacurate, regardless of what source is used...*

*I may be miss-interpreting an earlier post. My apologies if that is the case.

It was disks which used copy protection and violated the red book standard which Philips were worried about, not normal audio CDs. An audio CD is a red book CD. the Data CD came later.

However to get back on topic,yes if the initial read is poor then the resulting rip will be poor, hence products like EAC

I stand corrected.

 

[Anonymous]

Gerrardasnails:zzgavin:
Just to completely geek out, here is the relevant section pasted from wikipedia on audio cd data structure, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc#Data_structure

We now know what the zz in your name stands for Gav!!

fair point =)

 

[Anonymous]

al7478:
I stand corrected.

I used to do multimedia cd-rom development hence the ability to geek out about CD formats.

cheers

 

[Alec]

zzgavin:al7478:

I stand corrected.

I used to do multimedia cd-rom development hence the ability to geek out about CD formats.

cheers

Yes OK, theres no need to milk it...

and you forgot things such as Dualdisk, which includes a DVD layer and a different thickness to the CD lqayer than is standard...

 

[Don Guess]

Ignore 'em zzgavin. I found it very interesting.

but I'm a boring old ****

lol