buy amp with dac,cd player redundant?

[tosh]

yes or no

 

[matthewpiano]

Not while I've got thousands of CDs I can't be bothered ripping to FLAC and a CD player I enjoy listening to.

 

[tosh]

what i meant was, does a bog standard dvd player do the same job with the amp doing the dac duties.

 

[matthewpiano]

Ah, well therein lies a big area of debate and I think you'll struggle to get a definitive answer. I can see sense in the argument that a digital transport is only sending on and off pulses to the DAC and therefore all transports should sound the same, but then there is also great sense in the idea that how effectively those pulses are read and communicated depends on a range of variables including vibration damping, servo etc.

It also depends on how different the DAC in the amp is to the one in the CD player and which one you prefer the sound of.

To be honest, I'm really not sure!!

 

[SteveR750]

There are perhaps two fundamental elements to consider: how well the data source reads the digital data and how accurately it is presented to the DAC, and secondly how the DAC handles the conversion. One is about bit accuracy, the other time accuracy. It seems that the latter is the most complex and therefore challenging to get right.