DAC Improvements

[ghines]

My HiFi system has been static for a long, long time. I have an Arcam Alpha 8 CD player, Arcam Alpha 9 amp and Castle Harlech speakers, and I don't really have a problem with any of that for listening to CDs. However, I am now increasingly listening to other digital sources like Spotify and other PC-based sources. Conscious of the poor quality of PC/tablet sound cards, I am thinking of getting a standalone DAC to improve the quality of those digital sources.

At the same time, I guess DAC technology has moved on a lot since I bought my Arcam CD player and I'd interested to know whether using it with an external DAC would make a big difference to the quality (on the assumption that I don't change any of the other components, which I may do later). If so, I'd look for a DAC that I could use with both the Arcam CD player and digital sources.

Although it's probably fair to say I have a reasonable ear for quality, I wouldn't admit to being able to pick up small differences in sound quality and so I'm looking for fairly big improvements to make it worthwhile spending the money (which will probably be about £500 or so).

 

[hybridauth_facebook_1348403044]

All depends. That many DAC's around do many things to your music. So i suppose what type of listening experience your after to which one you pick. Myself i got the Musical Fidelity v90 DAC. And that's quite smooth

 

[Overdose]

Spending £500 on a DAC is probably not the best use of funds. An AV receiver would do the job just as well and something like the Marantz NR1504 would be perfect, it could also be used in an AV role.

 

[ghines]

Thanks - that's not an option I'd thought of.