Does the CD Player matter if you use an external DAC?

[admin_exported]

Hi everyone,

Does the CD player matter if you are using an external DAC? In my understanding CD player just reads and transfers 1s and 0s to DAC if you use the digital outputs of the cd player, then DAC handles the rest. Am I right?

Regards,

Burak

 

[professorhat]

There are other aspects to a CD player than just the DAC e.g. the transport which all have a bearing on the sound.

However, if we're going down the "it's just 1s and 0s" line, then people will probably say I'm wrong, it's all in my head, the matrix is just a control system to prevent us realising we're all duracells etc. in which case, go with whatever you think is best.

 

[jaxwired]

Yes, you are correct. However, the CD player has to synchronize clocks with the DAC for data transfer. Thus some CD players introduce lots of "jitter" and others introduce very little. Jitter causes distortion. Most DACs will attempt to correct for jitter. However, in my personal experience using various CD players with my DAC, they did sound different in a subtle way. Also, the digital cable you connect to the DAC with can impact jitter and sound.

My advice would be not to use a super cheap $50 DVD player from best buy as your CD player feeding your DAC, but a budget hifi CD player like a NAD or Cambridge would give excellent results.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the very good reply. My current set-up is a cyrus 8 amplifier with nautilus 805 speakers. I also have a limited edition harman kardon kd970 cd player. I feel that my cd player is the weak link in my setup. To be honest I use a lot of the time my mac mini as source but I switch to cd player when I listen to quality music. I am planning to buy a musical fidelity dac or a cyrus cd player (quite cheap upgrades if I get them second hand). I am a bit reluctant on what to do because if I get the dac, I can still hold the cd player and use it as a transport. Do you think I would get a good result or would I rather switch to cyrus cd players?

 

[Sorreltiger]

If you already use your MacMini, I'd invest in the DAC first and then see what effect it has when also used with your existing CD player.

 

[jaxwired]

Get the DAC first. Try it with the HK CDP. I would expect the HK to give good results. You can always upgrade the to a better CDP off the used market later if you're not happy.

 

[Anonymous]

One thing you wrote strikes me. Why does the digital cable matter? It is just digital data being transfered... Compression wise speaking if one of the 1s and 0s is lost then the sound cannot be processed because the compression is broken, thus the cable should be able to transfer everything.

 

[Anonymous]

one of the most important characteristics for a digital interconnect is its resistance of 75 ohms as well as its capacitance - which should be as low as possible. like any audio cable it should also be well shielded so it doesnt introduce anything into the audio signal.

i may be wrong but when people on here refer to digital signals as "just 1's and 0's" i get the feeling that they are over simplifying the matter. yes the signal is made up of 1's and 0's, however i dont think some people(including me probably) understand quite how many 1's and 0's are involved here. I mean if you take a reasonable quality mp3 with a bit rate of 192kbps then you are looking at 192,000 1's and 0's per second.
now thats a lot of data to transfer and a lot of things to get wrong each second, and thats just just an mp3!

 

[Anonymous]

I'm going to test this out with a wav file, but I'm assuming if I flip a few bits here and there it won't make a whole lot of difference to the processing. To the sound, maybe, depending on your sensitivity. I'm making this up at this point, but if you think about it, the zeros and 1s are converted to some sort of a wave pattern, and I'm sure you can code it up so that you can ignore outliers.

 

[Craig M.]

ifitsoundsgoodlistentoit:one of the most important characteristics for a digital interconnect is its resistance of 75 ohms as well as its capacitance - which should be as low as possible. like any audio cable it should also be well shielded so it doesnt introduce anything into the audio signal.

i may be wrong but when people on here refer to digital signals as "just 1's and 0's" i get the feeling that they are over simplifying the matter. yes the signal is made up of 1's and 0's, however i dont think some people(including me probably) understand quite how many 1's and 0's are involved here. I mean if you take a reasonable quality mp3 with a bit rate of 192kbps then you are looking at 192,000 1's and 0's per second.
now thats a lot of data to transfer and a lot of things to get wrong each second, and thats just just an mp3!

i think you can pass a 24 bit 192 khz signal along a digital coax cable, so i would guess there is room to spare even with most high res downloads. i personally haven't heard a difference from optical leads, and the only dac i have heard differences between transports on, was a cyrus dac-xp - which sounded best with the cyrus transport and unpleasant with my mac. into my chord dac, my mac mini sounds the same as my macbook, which sounds the same as every cdp i've tried, which sounds the same as my bluray player - all using optical.

no difference between my macbook and a cambridge audio cdp, into my cousins avi adm9.1t's either, also using optical.

 

[jockey.wilson]

Compare a CD player to a record deck; the ability of both the CD player and the deck to read the info off the CD/record is dependent on the stability of the motor/transport as well as the integrity of the CD mechanism/arm-cartridge combo. The better both the CD player and the record deck, the more info both can retrieve off their respective media.

So yes, emphatically, the quality of the CD player does make a difference to the signal being sent to an external DAC. As mentioned, errors occur as jitter. The ability of a DAC to reject jitter is a completely different question, but generally, garbage in-garbage out!!

 

[datay]

As I may take this upgrade route myself (see kit list below), I'm curious if you auditioned the CD8SE as a transport against the XTSE? Or any other players? Perhaps one you previously owned?

My old Marantz CD6002 is currently at my girlfriend's, I am going to fetch it back at some point to test it as a tranport into the Qx against the CD6SE - will be interesting to hear the results (the Marantz also has coax output which Cyrus withhold from 6SE, part of their upgrade carrot/stick...), and I may post here. Though I agree with you in principle (quality of transport matters), I think practice may prove different.

 

[Anonymous]

I am currently using a fairly cheap oldish Cambridge D100 with optical output through a Beresford dac, sounds good, what sounded better was my elderly Rotel I plugged in to just check it was working still after being in a shed for 6 months [ wrong I know but you need sounds in the garden ] using the coax, tell you what the Rotel was loads better, ..

Now of course we enter the realms of coax v's optical to an extent but the sound was if not better, it was vastly different.

I think it does matter which player you use, though probably with optical no difference with the cables, bound to be with coax though.

 

[jaxwired]

I'm one of the first people to cry foul when it comes to magical hifi equipment, but I've done quite a bit of experimenting with digital coax and optical cables. I've also tried several different transports feed my DAC. In my opinion the coax and optical cables do sound different. I have no idea why. And I agree it does seem counter to common sense. And I hate to violate common sense, but, like we say over here, it is what it is. My advice is to buy an affordable cable from a good hifi cable company. There are lots of good quality choices for very reasonable prices so why take the chance with a cheapo cable?

 

[dexxas]

I have a Temple audio Bantam Amp With Tannoy f3 loudspeakers van dam pro speaker cable and cambridge dac i was using the Rotel RCD9658x with a digital lead. I found all the music to irratingly smooth. Made some changes I Then Reposition my speakers 9 inches from the rear wall. plugged in a pioneer 509 cd writer instead of the Rotel , changed the connectors from an atlas equator cable to the qed quinnex between the dac and amp and the diffrence, wow: was amazing the sound filled the room all our toes tapped. This little Bantam excells not at how loud it plays but how wonderful it sounds at low volume late at night, both channels you can hear plainly with no bias towards the left or right at low volumes. your very aware of the bass and soundstaging spot on the amp half the size of the cambridge measures 5x5 Definatly the Cd player made a diffrence here

If your not familiar with the amp http://tinyurl.com/c3bjrjv