dvd player and dac combination, opinions please...

[admin_exported]

hello, first of all im new to the forum and was wondering if i could pick your brains.

Over the past few years i have been building up some hifi equipment, its not the best. It consists of a cambridge audio A5 amplifier, its a bit of a strange speaker arrangment but due to room size its my only logical option and they are Mordaunt short alumni 2 speakers and a mordaunt short alumni 9 subwoofer. Arguably these are suited to the "AV land" but im am happy with the sound i get from it. source wise was mainly from an ipod using a cambridge audio dock. Speaker cable and interconnects are QED. More recently i have been listening to cd's through the system using my pioneer dv-350, wich is a few years old but sounds far better than the ipod. Now i have been reading into dacs and am pondering on the idea of adding one to the pioneer, the one i have in mind is the musical fidelity V-dac it averages around £150. i would use a coaxial cable to join it to the pioneer. My only prblem is im unsure if the pioneer will give out a dolby digital surround signal instead of just a two channel audio one wich is what im after, when using the digital output. I think i've rammbled on a fair bit but any one who could clear this up would be great!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andy_L:
hello, first of all im new to the forum and was wondering if i could pick your brains.

Over the past few years i have been building up some hifi equipment, its not the best. It consists of a cambridge audio A5 amplifier, its a bit of a strange speaker arrangment but due to room size its my only logical option and they are Mordaunt short alumni 2 speakers and a mordaunt short alumni 9 subwoofer. Arguably these are suited to the "AV land" but im am happy with the sound i get from it. source wise was mainly from an ipod using a cambridge audio dock. Speaker cable and interconnects are QED. More recently i have been listening to cd's through the system using my pioneer dv-350, wich is a few years old but sounds far better than the ipod. Now i have been reading into dacs and am pondering on the idea of adding one to the pioneer, the one i have in mind is the musical fidelity V-dac it averages around £150. i would use a coaxial cable to join it to the pioneer. My only prblem is im unsure if the pioneer will give out a dolby digital surround signal instead of just a two channel audio one wich is what im after, when using the digital output. I think i've rammbled on a fair bit but any one who could clear this up would be great!

Your Pioneer won't be able to turn a cd sound into Dolby Digital. It will work fine. However, how much better it will sound through your budget amp, I'm not so sure. Personally, I wouldn't spend £150 extra on your source unless you are going to upgrade your amp and speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for clearing that up gerrardasnails, as you can see my limited knowledge is showing through. I will be looking to upgrade in the futre certainly the amp but due to our room size and configuration i would really struggle to get a pair of stand mounts on stands or floorstanders for that matter in (our room measure 10ft wide by 14 ft, they don't give you much room in new houses!) . Do you think the dac would be a waste of time / money then?

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andy_L:
Thanks for clearing that up gerrardasnails, as you can see my limited knowledge is showing through. I will be looking to upgrade in the futre certainly the amp but due to our room size and configuration i would really struggle to get a pair of stand mounts on stands or floorstanders for that matter in (our room measure 10ft wide by 14 ft, they don't give you much room in new houses!) . Do you think the dac would be a waste of time / money then?

Personally, yes I do. But at least you won't be wasting your money.