CD Player, DVD + DAC all in one?

[Cinnabar]

Hello all,

I'm looking for something which will do all of the above (CD Player, DVD and DAC) decently at around the £400-500 mark - any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[John Duncan]

Depends what you mean by the 'DAC' bit? I can think of a couple of solutions that would allow you to play CDs and DVDs to a very good standard and also have USB or network capabilities if your content's on disk, but less so if you're thinking of taking an optical out from eg a Sky Box or similar.

 

[krazy_olie]

Wild card option but a ps3 with an external £2-300 DAC would probably be in budget and work quite well!

Edit: realise you want an "all in one" apparently Onkyo's dvd players are more audio oriented than others

 

[Cinnabar]

Hey, thanks for the reply. Sorry, should have been a bit more specific about what I want to do. Were tight on space which is the reason why I want to bundle everything together. Ideally, I would like to hook it up to an optical out, probably from an Airport Extreme Base Station (linked to my Mac via Airplay or Airfoil) or from a Sonos Connect (or similar). I'd mostly be streaming content direct from Spotify where possible (or Spotify offline playlists). Can you think of anything that would fit the bill?

 

[Cinnabar]

Wild card option but a ps3 with an external £2-300 DAC would probably be in budget and work quite well!

Edit: realise you want an "all in one" apparently Onkyo's dvd players are more audio oriented than others

Yep, trying to cut down on wife-rage-inducing equipment bloat, so have to give the PS3 a miss! I'll check out the Onkyos - any particular suggestions?

 

[John Duncan]

In which case my suggestions (higher-end Blurays from Cambridge or Oppo) miss out on the optical thingie. However; are you saying this needs to have the amp built in as well, or do you have one already (or aim to buy one)?

NB - Airport Extreme is only a router, it doesn't have any sort of audio out at all; for that you need airport express.

 

[John Duncan]

OK, got an idea. NAD Viso Two (DVD only) - about 500 quid. Sadly the Marantz ME-R803 (which does bluray) doesn't have an optical in (rolls eyes).

There will be quite a few all-in-ones from Samsung, Panasonic and Sony that do it, though probably to a somewhat less good standard; they might also be tricky to get without 5.1 speaker packages thrown in.

 

[Cinnabar]

OK, got an idea. NAD Viso Two (DVD only) - about 500 quid. Sadly the Marantz ME-R803 (which does bluray) doesn't have an optical in (rolls eyes).

There will be quite a few all-in-ones from Samsung, Panasonic and Sony that do it, though probably to a somewhat less good standard; they might also be tricky to get without 5.1 speaker packages thrown in.

Thanks for this, the NAD looks like a capable product, but I don't really need the amplification. I've got a NAD C326BEE running some Monitor Audio Silver RX1s at the moment, and have actually been using a NAD CD/DVD combination player as the primary source (when I'm not indulging my addiction to Spotify). And its when I'm indulging that addiction that things get a bit sketchy, as the sound is pretty awful streaming direct to the amp from my Mac. I know that I need to invest in a DAC, but it struck me that it would be a more elegant solution to do it all in one (and I'm low on space besides). It would also make sense for me to upgrade to Bluray whilst I'm at it I suppose.

Still, doesn't look like there's anything out there beyond the all-in-ones that will do this, which is a shame, because it sounds like something that could be popular if it could be done well.

Oh, and yes, I meant that Apirport Express. Doh, not my day today *slps forehead*

 

[John Duncan]

OK cool, if there's no amp required let me keep considering. There are quite a few options CD-wise but none OTTOMH that include movie replay...

 

[Cinnabar]

Yep, that's what I've found. Only CD players seem to offer the option. All help much appreciated, let me know if you come up with anything.

 

[tino]

I think you might be better off looking for a smart blue-ray player that is able to stream Spotify (I think there are some recent models that do this :? ) and have something like a Musical Fidelity DAC that you can hide away so the wife doesn't see it 😉

 

[richardw42]

A bit of a strange suggestion this. What about the Denon Cara all in one Blu Ray. You could sell current amp ? It has digital inputs and RCA if needed. It's 5 x 75 w, but this can be used in stereo at 150 wpc. This was a 2 grand item, I see there's a manufacturer refurb on bay for £600. I'd definitely research it.
. Model is S5-BD.

 

[Anonymous]

Is there any Cambridge Audio mid-range option?

 

[John Duncan]

No, but you've given me an idea around virtual soundcards and DLNA-capable blurays...let me think it through and see if i can get my Mac and 751BD to play nice.

 

[John Duncan]

Right, have just been able to get Jamcast to transmit to my Cambridge Blu Ray player, so we might be on to something here. I'm not all the way there yet as I haven't proved I can do it with a Mac yet (the only Mac I have running Windows doesn't have admin rights on the Windows VM to install Jamcast :wall🙂. I will get there, just need to clear out some space on my iMac to install Windows...:-D

So we might be able to have an all-in-one solution, but note that this would come at some cost:

- 50 quid for a copy of VMWare Fusion

- 50 quid for a copy of Windows

- 30 dollars for a copy of Jamcast

- oh and however much you want to spend on a UPnP-capable Bluray player...

Unless anybody has any ideas about Mac UPnP servers that will act as a virtual soundcard (or knows how to get eg Airfoil to do the same)...

 

[nads]

ok been reading through this and it seems that the ony problem you have is the playback of Spotify?

and the wife!

Every thing else is sorted and you are ok with it?

SWMBO does not really want another big ugly box.

I would sugest that you have a look at the Logitec touch. You do not need the PC on it will do Spotify it will play your tunes from NAS/PC/flash drive and it is not a big ugly box. the DACs in it as as good as the DAC Magic to my ears and my system.

In fact it has replaced my CDP totally.

 

[Cinnabar]

Right, have just been able to get Jamcast to transmit to my Cambridge Blu Ray player, so we might be on to something here. I'm not all the way there yet as I haven't proved I can do it with a Mac yet (the only Mac I have running Windows doesn't have admin rights on the Windows VM to install Jamcast :wall🙂. I will get there, just need to clear out some space on my iMac to install Windows...:-D

So we might be able to have an all-in-one solution, but note that this would come at some cost:

- 50 quid for a copy of VMWare Fusion

- 50 quid for a copy of Windows

- 30 dollars for a copy of Jamcast

- oh and however much you want to spend on a UPnP-capable Bluray player...

Unless anybody has any ideas about Mac UPnP servers that will act as a virtual soundcard (or knows how to get eg Airfoil to do the same)...

Sorry for slow response, got sidetracked. Thanks for checking this out so comprehensively, I owe you a pint! I like the sound of this, did you get it to work through the Mac? It would be good to find an alternative to sreaming through Airfoil anyway because of the 2-3 second delay on audio you get as a consequence of them using the Apple API (which makes it impossible, for example, to watch iPlayer on your Mac and listen to it on the stereo at the same time - it's all horribly out of sync). BTW, if anybody knows an OS X workaround for this, then let me know. Jamcast sounds like it could do the trick when running through VMWare Fusion or Parallels - could it eliminate the delay?

Assuming I shell out on all the other requirements, what would be the best player to get? The CA 751BD looks good to me - how do you find it?

 

[John Duncan]

Apologies, cinnabar, I haven't. Though I can confidently state that it's not going to resolve your latency issue with video/audio combined; there was a clear delay from Jamcast on my windows machine to replay on the BD.

I still plan to get it working though so will report back when I do.

As an aside, Airfoil will actually do live audio capture from video to an airplay enabled device; I think you need to use the 'video player' instead of bog-standard airfoil.

And the 751BD is great - is a really good audio player and the picture is what you'd expect from an 800 quid BD player. Full impressions to follow, have written some of it (mostly about the packaging so far though :-D).