CA Dac Magic to improve 2 channel from blu ray?

[Pistol Pete1]

Recently been looking into the idea of creating more space in the AV rack, and replacing my Sony blu ray player and Marantz cd player with an 'all in one solution'.

Been looking at the Denon DBP-1610, and especially the 2010.

After reading the Nov 2008 issue again, I came across the Cambridge Audio Dac Magic.

Instead of a new blu ray player (Denon's are meant to be pretty good with cd's), would be an idea to dump the Marantz cd player, and add this Dac Magic to my Sony blu ray player? (A cheaper idea compared with buying a new blu ray player!!)

Anyone done this? Is it a good idea, or are Dacs not used like this?

Are they best using digital in/outputs, or digital in and analogue out?

Any info would be much appreciated........

 

[professorhat]

You could indeed do this, but I'm not sure it would deliver the same performance as the Marantz - that Marantz is an excellent CD player and more than likely has a better transport mechanism than the Sony Blu-Ray player and this will have an effect on aspects of the sound quality.

For any DAC, you need digital in and analogue out (remember it stands for Digital to Analogue Converter

).

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Thanks prof,

It does have 'digital out' on it too.......thats why i asked which was best.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Oh, just read another post from Andrew stating you HAVE to use the analogue output to be using the DAC properly.

http://community.whathifi.com/forums/t/287668.aspx

Would this DAC produce a sound similar to the Marantz?

I see only Richer Sounds stock these items-they do a home trial period?

 

[professorhat]

Pistol Pete1:Oh, just read another post from Andrew stating you HAVE to use the analogue output to be using the DAC properly.

Indeed, the subtle point I was trying to make is that the entire purpose of a Digital to Analogue Converter is to convert digital signals to analogue signals - it's in the name you see

The digital output is to allow you to still connect into a digital recording medium like MiniDisc, CD recorder etc.

Pistol Pete1:Would this DAC produce a sound similar to the Marantz?

I see only Richer Sounds stock these items-they do a home trial period?

Not sure, I do own both a DacMagic and the Marantz CD-63mkII KI CD player, plus a Sony BDP-S550 (not quite the 350 I know, but not far off) so I could give this a trial for you and see what I think. Trouble is this will need quite a bit of moving around of kit to try and I'm off to a wedding today, so earliest I'll probably be able to try it out will be Monday evening.

You could give your nearest Richer Sounds a call and see if they'll let you do a home trial.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Nearest Richer sounds is over an hour away from me...

But if you had the time (and can be bothered), I would love to hear what you had to say about the DAC and Sony after trying that experiment out.......

It would be must appreciated on this side........

Enjoy the wedding!!!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Pistol Pete1:
Nearest Richer sounds is over an hour away from me...

But if you had the time (and can be bothered), I would love to hear what you had to say about the DAC and Sony after trying that experiment out.......

It would be must appreciated on this side........

Enjoy the wedding!!!

I can help out a bit - I don't own a Marantz but have the same combo as the Prof (S550 and DacMagic). I don't use cds anymore as I always use lossless files to my DM but I have tried the BD player and you will not be disappointed. In fact, originally, I bought the BD player (and got rid of dvd and cd player) for the same reason as you are thinking. THEN, I discovered the lossless set up I have and that was it.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Thanks for your reply Gerrardasnails,

What cd player did you have before using the DM and your Sony 550?

Was the DM /Sony combo better than it, or equal to it?

Thanks.....

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Just been told that the Sony would have to be set to PCM for the DAC to work, as it can't understand bitstream.......

But I use bitstream for movies for two reasons:

1) Sounds better having the receiver decode.

2) The Sony can't decode HD Master Audio.

Therefore for this to work I would have to change settings when using cd's and the DAC....which is simply a 'no go'.

Looks like I'm back to my original idea of buying a more expensive blu ray player (Like the Denon DBP 2010, Denon DVD 2500bt or the Sony BDP S760) to use as an all in one solution....or leaving it as it is for now?

 

[mattjax05]

Pistol Pete1:

Just been told that the Sony would have to be set to PCM for the DAC to work, as it can't understand bitstream.......

But I use bitstream for movies for two reasons:

1) Sounds better having the receiver decode.

2) The Sony can't decode HD Master Audio.

Therefore for this to work I would have to change settings when using cd's and the DAC....which is simply a 'no go'.

Looks like I'm back to my original idea of buying a more expensive blu ray player (Like the Denon DBP 2010, Denon DVD 2500bt or the Sony BDP S760) to use as an all in one solution....or leaving it as it is for now?

But I thought (and according to the Red Book format) that the transfer to compact disc is PCM audio anyway? Therefore no matter what you set the Sony to no 'decoding' will take place when playing a CD.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

I think more research is needed on this then.......maybe it is still a possibility.

Will study the manual and do some experimenting with settings and outputs on the Sony....

 

[mattjax05]

Whoever told you that the Sony needs to be set to PCM is probably referring to playing blu-rays. I presume however that for blu-rays you will have a HDMI cable from player to receiver and for CDs you will have an alternative digital feed (say optical cable) from player to the CA DAC?

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Thats exactly what I am wanting to do......then analogue lead from DAC to receiver.

It's a bit hard to know how good this is without hearing it though. Althought professorhat has offered to set it up with his system and let me know how is sounds.....

 

[mattjax05]

That's how I would set it up if I was going down that route, and there should be no playing issues as mentioned above.

Hopefully Professorhat can give you the thumbs up!

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Great, thanks Matt.......you have been very reassuring.

It's just a shame CA only use Richer Sounds to sell their products.....And if it can't keep up with the Marantz KI cd player, I may not bother changing.

 

[professorhat]

No worries, I'll try it out for you when I get back.

 

[Anonymous]

Pistol Pete1:

Just been told that the Sony would have to be set to PCM for the DAC to work, as it can't understand bitstream.......

But I use bitstream for movies for two reasons:

1) Sounds better having the receiver decode.

2) The Sony can't decode HD Master Audio.

Therefore for this to work I would have to change settings when using cd's and the DAC....which is simply a 'no go'.

Pete,

I have the S350 as well. You obviously have Audio Output Priority set to HDMI if you're bitstreaming to your AV Receiver. In this case your other digital outs (coax/optical) are set to output 2-Channel PCM, so you wouldn't need to change anything when you want to listen to CDs.

Brian.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Thanks, Brian.

Just looking forward to seeing how the prof gets on when he is back on his wedding travels to see if it's worth the change.

 

[professorhat]

Okay, finished work a bit early today so moved the DacMagic into the living room (almost breaking the PSU in the process, but that's in another thread!) and connected the Sony BDP-S550 into it via a spare Vivanco digital coaxial cable. The DacMagic then connected into the Onkyo via a pair of old Straight Wire Chorus interconnects and the Marantz was already hooked directly into the Onkyo via a pair of Chord Crimsons.

I started with Airbag by Radiohead, played first through the Sony / DM and my initial impression was very good. However, after a play on the Marantz and switching back to the Sony / DM, it became clear that a few things were lacking - the Sony / DM had a narrower soundstage and details that sprung out on the Marantz seemed to be lost through the Sony / DM - over all, I felt the Marantz just made the song sound more engaging.

I then tried New Born from Muse and again, I was initially impressed by the Sony / DM, but a bit more switching between the two showed up the issues again - as was to be expected in many ways, timing wasn't as good as the Marantz where the notes were "crisper" and the excellent bass guitar riff just seemed a bit muddied on the Sony / DM, lost a little amongst the plethora of other instruments playing at the time. The main word that kept coming to me was some instruments just sounded a bit "fuzzy" compared to the Marantz - make of that what you will!

Finally I put on some music I know intimately, Remember by BT (I must have bought the ESCM album over 12 years ago now). This time I immediately noticed the narrow soundstage on the Sony / DM and after a few more listens through both systems, all the same issues were on show.

However, please don't take this wrong - the Sony / DM combination was still extremely good. As was proved on the first two test songs, I was initially very impressed - the vocals sounding particularly sweet on Remember and it was only after directly comparing with the Marantz that I was able to really identify the shortcomings. On quite a few occasions when listening to the Sony / DM I was completely drawn into the music, forgetting I was supposed to be concentrating, and this is no bad thing! To put it in summary, if I had to make room and could only have one box on the AV shelf, I could certainly be happy with the Sony / DM combination. However, if I had any ability to keep the Marantz, I would keep it without question - the extra benefits would make it worth it to me.

Since I had a bit of time, I also decided to quickly test out my AE unit connected into the DacMagic against the Marantz - well, if anything this absolutely confirmed my suspicion that the Sony was the weak link in the chain above - I really was hard pressed to tell the difference and a lot more listening is needed! For you, it also means that should you go down this path, a future Blu-Ray player upgrade could take this into consideration and look for one which could help sort any issues the Sony transport is clearly putting into the system.

Hope this helps, let me know if you've got any questions on the above.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Prof,

I am eternally grateful to you for your hard work and dedication to 'my cause'....(glad the PS3 survived too!)

I hope it made for any interesting test, as the results are very interesting/useful to me. It sounds like the Sony/DAC idea is an ok one, but would it be enough? Can I ask what AE unit you are referring to in the write up?

Clearly by your own admission, the Sony is the weak link, which makes me think there are three ways to go now:

1) Keep the Marantz and Sony Blu ray as it stands, and just enjoy them till blu ray players improve into good cd players too.

2) (Two stages to this idea

i) Stage 1: Keep the Marantz and look into a better blu ray player (Oppo BDP-831 is popular at the moment!), although I'm running out of shelf space, which would mean I'm limited to what size a machine I can add.

ii) Stage 2: Add the DAC at a later stage, and then discard the Marantz.

3) Save up for a new blu ray and DAC at the same time (ouch) to replace both Sony and Marantz. Of course, I don't really know which blu ray player (And how much?) would make a good enough transport to compete with the Marantz?

Again, thanks to you, Prof, for the time and effort you have given this afternoon experimenting on my behalf.......

 

[professorhat]

No worries at all - the AE unit is an Airport Express which streams music from my Mac in my office over the wireless network. It was an interesting test for me and it also gave me the chance to finally compare the Airport Express and DacMagic with my CD player (something I've been meaning to do for a while) and I can also now do a comparison running the Airport Express through the DacMagic and through my Onkyo amp's internal DAC to see if it's worth me thinking about getting another DacMagic for the main room (again, something I've been meaning to do for a while).

Not too sure which of the options I would go for to be honest - if you can't get the DacMagic on loan, maybe it's worth looking to taking your Marantz CD player and amp to a few dealers with some of the Blu-Ray players which might be able to perform against it and do a musical comparison within the dealership? It won't give you a completely accurate picture of what it'll be like in your home, but it might help you get an idea at least which players are in contention.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

I was thinking of doing that, as my local shop (got my receiver from them) stocks Denon and Q Acoustics, and I popped in on Saturday to see if I could sort out a demo, but they have sold out of my amp, and are having a refit for a month, starting this Thursday, so there will be no access to the demo room...

They stock both the Denon 2500bt and the new DBP-2010, and it was suggested that the 2500bt is better with cd's (keen to get rid of old stock?)

The upgrade adventure continues....but thanks again for your efforts today, as I now have good feedback about what i could expect from the DAC, from a reliable source!!!

 

[Anonymous]

Pistol Pete1:would be an idea to dump the Marantz cd player

Could you 'dump' it round at my house Pete?

 

[Pistol Pete1]

For a price?

 

[Anonymous]

Pistol Pete1:For a price?

Ha ha.... it was worth a try