How much does the cd player matter?

[muljao]

It is my intention to beef up my music system over the next while. I had an ok (very good to me as teenager into young twenties) setup 20 odd years ago. I used to get what hifi back then, good to see its still around.

From the new stuff I am just learning getting back into the tech side, a mediocre cd player with a digital output fed to a very good DAC, or indeed a laptop with lossless digital file fed to a good DAC should be better than a very good cd player that the DAC is less quality than say the seperate unit.If so a 100 pound blu ray player with a 400 pound DAC may beat a 500 pound cd player, or my windows media player 12 FLAC files may also.

Am I correct here or is the info going in to the brain wrong?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

I can't remember the last proper CDP I bought.
The last CD transport I bought was a Cyrus CD-XT paired with a Cyrus DAC-X.
Nowadays I rip all my CDs to FLAC as soon as I get them on my PC, then put the CDs away for safety and posterity.
If / when I get a "proper stereo"again, I very much doubt I will bother with a CDP or a separate DAC, using a preamp with a network connection to my FLAC library, or just a portable 2.5 inch USB hard disc instead.
If your CDP is okay and relatively jitter free, a good modern DAC will probably extend its useful life until either the smoke escapes from it (Google "electricity and smoke") or you go off to the Great Hi-fi Shoppe in the Sky...

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

PS modest CDP, not mediocre. A piece of junk from the charity shoppe or Argos isn't going to do you any favours.
And yes, your DVD or BDP will work just as well, if not better than, a mediocre CDP. Just use its digital audio output (fibre optic or coaxial, it really doesn't matter) to feed your "proper stereo" DAC.

 

[steve_1979]

If your CDP is okay and relatively jitter free, a good modern DAC will probably extend its useful life until either the smoke escapes from it (Google "electricity and smoke")

I recognise that style of writing. That must be Thompsons work surely?

Clicky

 

[record_spot]

I went back to an old CD player I had some years ago when I found a good model on eBay the other week. The Kenwood DP7090. it's now the preferred player. It's a dedicated redbook only player from 1997/8 and is just that but better than my Cambridge 752BD. Eight top of the line (as was at the time) Burr Brown PCM1702 DACs. Why eight I have no idea, but it's a fantastic machine and flew right under the radar at the time.

 

[davedotco]

It is my intention to beef up my music system over the next while. I had an ok (very good to me as teenager into young twenties) setup 20 odd years ago. I used to get what hifi back then, good to see its still around.

From the new stuff I am just learning getting back into the tech side, a mediocre cd player with a digital output fed to a very good DAC, or indeed a laptop with lossless digital file fed to a good DAC should be better than a very good cd player that the DAC is less quality than say the seperate unit.If so a 100 pound blu ray player with a 400 pound DAC may beat a 500 pound cd player, or my windows media player 12 FLAC files may also.

Am I correct here or is the info going in to the brain wrong?

This is all about functionality.

Modern dacs do a very good job handling the data stream, whatever the source, but I feel it is a good idea to get it straight in your mind as to how you want your setup to work.

For example, a disc player for CD is largely if not totally redundant if you plan to rip your CDs to a computer/hard disc of some sort. However if you are going to want to play movies, then a disc player probably will be needed.

If you are going down that route then the Oppo players offer excellent performance with outstanding functionality and flexibility. Though not cheap the BDP 103 can be found under £500, and to keep things simple, could be used to drive a pair of active speakers direct though obviously you could use a more conventional amp/speaker combo if that is your thing.

Using the Active option a really top class playback system can be had for about £1k and would be easily expandable. As a minimalist, the idea of just the player and a pair of speakers, all controlled from a tablet would suit me down to the ground. You may of course have different views.

 

[muljao]

PS modest CDP, not mediocre. A piece of junk from the charity shoppe or Argos isn't going to do you any favours. And yes, your DVD or BDP will work just as well, if not better than, a mediocre CDP. Just use its digital audio output (fibre optic or coaxial, it really doesn't matter) to feed your "proper stereo" DAC.

Yes modest is a better word.

I bought a bdp so seems like I am set. I also bought a cheap DAC, may go better on that purchase at some stage.

Thanks all for the replies

 

[NSA_watch_my_toilet]

I now heard hundreds of cd players in my hifi part of life. And I must say that they don't matter that much. You are finding excellently sounding cd players for a couple of hundred bucks. Used, a good cdp will cost your nearly nothing.

On my accuphase set, I have a simple denon dcd running that I found on ebay for 200$. I liked his classy face and get for it. I miss nothing, even with high resolving gear and good prepared room. Had some Accuphasee, Audia, Rega, Luxman and other Wadia running in the same conditions before of that.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

It is my intention to beef up my music system over the next while. I had an ok (very good to me as teenager into young twenties) setup 20 odd years ago. I used to get what hifi back then, good to see its still around.

From the new stuff I am just learning getting back into the tech side, a mediocre cd player with a digital output fed to a very good DAC, or indeed a laptop with lossless digital file fed to a good DAC should be better than a very good cd player that the DAC is less quality than say the seperate unit.If so a 100 pound blu ray player with a 400 pound DAC may beat a 500 pound cd player, or my windows media player 12 FLAC files may also.

Am I correct here or is the info going in to the brain wrong?

This is all about functionality.

Modern dacs do a very good job handling the data stream, whatever the source, but I feel it is a good idea to get it straight in your mind as to how you want your setup to work.

For example, a disc player for CD is largely if not totally redundant if you plan to rip your CDs to a computer/hard disc of some sort. However if you are going to want to play movies, then a disc player probably will be needed.

If you are going down that route then the Oppo players offer excellent performance with outstanding functionality and flexibility. Though not cheap the BDP 103 can be found under £500, and to keep things simple, could be used to drive a pair of active speakers direct though obviously you could use a more conventional amp/speaker combo if that is your thing.

Using the Active option a really top class playback system can be had for about £1k and would be easily expandable. As a minimalist, the idea of just the player and a pair of speakers, all controlled from a tablet would suit me down to the ground. You may of course have different views.

I'm halfway through ripping all my DVDs and Blu-Rays to mkv files using anyDVD and makemkv software, so soon all of my current flat spinning things will be redundant. Until, that is, I get into UHD Blu-Rays...

 

[record_spot]

I had good intentions of ripping my CDs but it never happened. I now use a Kenwood DP7090 (Google it) as my main player. The Cambridge 752 BD is still excellent and better than the AVI Lab Series I also have, but the Kenwood is the best player overall.

I hook mine up directly to my actives via a passive preamp and it sounds incredible. Simple and very effective.

 

[Gazzip]

I now heard hundreds of cd players in my hifi part of life. And I must say that they don't matter that much. You are finding excellently sounding cd players for a couple of hundred bucks. Used, a good cdp will cost your nearly nothing.

On my accuphase set, I have a simple denon dcd running that I found on ebay for 200$. I liked his classy face and get for it. I miss nothing, even with high resolving gear and good prepared room. Had some Accuphasee, Audia, Rega, Luxman and other Wadia running in the same conditions before of that.

I have a completely opposing point of view to this. I use my CDP as a transport only in to a DAC. Having recently switched from a Bel Canto CD2 with outboard power supply (Phillips Pro 2 transport mechanism), to an Esoteric X-03SE (VRDS-NEO transport mechanism) the differences are night and day. My research leads me to the conclusion that clocking anomolies are responsible for this.

Check out the link below for the science bit explaining how jitter not dealt with in the transport stage can effect SQ.

http://www.whathifi.com/hi-fi/esoteric-sacd-player?page=1

 

[thewinelake.]

Fancy trying that link again? Doesn't work for me.

Would love to experience the difference sometime, as one has to be pretty skeptical!

 

[TrevC]

the differences are night and day.

LOL.

 

[TrevC]

PS modest CDP, not mediocre. A piece of junk from the charity shoppe or Argos isn't going to do you any favours. And yes, your DVD or BDP will work just as well, if not better than, a mediocre CDP. Just use its digital audio output (fibre optic or coaxial, it really doesn't matter) to feed your "proper stereo" DAC.

The olde charity shoppe might have some vintage bargains for only a florin.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

PS modest CDP, not mediocre. A piece of junk from the charity shoppe or Argos isn't going to do you any favours. And yes, your DVD or BDP will work just as well, if not better than, a mediocre CDP. Just use its digital audio output (fibre optic or coaxial, it really doesn't matter) to feed your "proper stereo" DAC.

The olde charity shoppe might have some vintage bargains for only a florin.

Yeah. Right next to the priceless Ming vase for half a crown and the real Rolex for a shilling.

From what I know, most decent stuff that goes into charity shoppes tends to go out the back door long before the punters see it...

 

[MajorFubar]

If you intend to rip & stream instead of using some kind of device that plays the discs (be it CD player or BD player), be prepared to devote quite some time to it. I had 630-odd to rip and it took me just shy of three months. I ripped them in batches of about ten, though for various reasons including maintaining my sanity I didn't religeously rip a batch every day. Classical CDs are the hardest if like me you have OCD about tagging everything correctly, I have about twenty of those, mostly VA collections, and they easily took as long to rip and tag correctly as any hundred of the rest. Also probably my fault for owning obscure CDs but I ended up scanning the cover of about 50 CDs because I couldn't find any artwork online.

The good news is once you've ripped all your collection, ripping new ones isn't so much of a chore. But MAKE SURE YOU KEEP AT LEAST ONE BACKUP ON ANOTHER DRIVE! Sorry to shout but when you've gone through the soul-destroying process of ripping them once, you don't want to ever do it again.

 

[Gazzip]

the differences are night and day.

LOL.

Trev! They let you out again! Now mind you take your medicine like a good boy.

 

[thewinelake.]

But let's be honest - your claim is pretty outrageous (albeit vague!). I would be fascinated to see what you mean by "Night and Day" as that implies that anyone would easily be able to tell. If that's true, then it's extraordinary (to my mind, anyway!).

 

[Gazzip]

But let's be honest - your claim is pretty outrageous (albeit vague!). I would be fascinated to see what you mean by "Night and Day" as that implies that anyone would easily be able to tell. If that's true, then it's extraordinary (to my mind, anyway!).

The difference is "night and day" means it is obvious, and yes, anybody with functional would be able to tell the difference.

 

[steve_1979]

If you intend to rip & stream instead of using some kind of device that plays the discs (be it CD player or BD player), be prepared to devote quite some time to it. I had 630-odd to rip and it took me just shy of three months. I ripped them in batches of about ten, though for various reasons including maintaining my sanity I didn't religeously rip a batch every day. Classical CDs are the hardest if like me you have OCD about tagging everything correctly, I have about twenty of those, mostly VA collections, and they easily took as long to rip and tag correctly as any hundred of the rest. Also probably my fault for owning obscure CDs but I ended up scanning the cover of about 50 CDs because I couldn't find any artwork online.

Classical albums are the worst. It took me over two hours to rip five CDs yesterday because of the awkward tagging. With regular albums it only takes about ten minutes per CD (ripped, tagged, artwork added and backed up)

The good news is once you've ripped all your collection, ripping new ones isn't so much of a chore. But MAKE SURE YOU KEEP AT LEAST ONE BACKUP ON ANOTHER DRIVE! Sorry to shout but when you've gone through the soul-destroying process of ripping them once, you don't want to ever do it again.

No!

Make sure you have at least THREE separate copies with one of them stored off site. Anything less and it's not safe.

Also check that they actually work too. There's nothing worse than needing a back up then finding out that it doesn't work at the crucial moment.

 

[muljao]

I was not so sure about a fortnight ago how exactly I intended to sort out the collection and listen. I had originally intended on adding a good cd player to my surround sound system which consists of a Jamo 5.1 set of speakers and an Onkyo TX-SR307. I did however change the front 2 speakers of the surround sound witha set of JPW ML510s that I have from back in the day.

I originally (about 5 years ago) ripped all cds to mp3 at 128kbs. I did not really know what I was doing to get the best quality, and my previous set up (Marantz cd63, Pioneer A300 and Kef coda 7s) were long gone at this stage, so I ended up copying everything to my PS3 and listening through the surround sound. I was never really happy with this set up.

Having read a little about lossless ripping and DACs etc I am now enroute to ripping to FLAC on windows media player 12, its painless, if not a little time consuming, and I now probably have 1300+ cds, thoughfrom experience I do have ones which I am not listening to and they wont be ripped. I still love the physical cd and they can be often picked up very cheaply now. I bought a Sony BDP to cover this. I also picked up a cheap ( 50 pound on amazon SMSL M3 DAC) and the sound quality from a feed off my laptop is vastly improved.

There are weaknesses in the system. The DAC is probably not cutting edge, the surround sound receiver is entry level and probably not really meant for music in the first place, but its a good start again

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Use dbPoweramp - $39 for a single use copy (which you can actually install on several machines so long as you don't try using them all at once.

Easy to use and one of the nice things it does for you is find cover art on line and / or from a library the developers have built up, so you don't have to go looking for it on line yourself (most of the time - there's always going to be the odd obscure album out there). It also cross checks your rips against reference standard rips they have from numerous users. That means you automatically know if you've got an accurate rip or one full of errors.

dbpweramp will also let you rip in FLAC format and mp3 simultaneously and / or let you batch convert all of your FLAC files to mp3s.

In fact, short of loading and unloading the CDs yourself and a few mouse clicks it pretty much takes care of everything.

Not sure if the latest Windows media player has FLAC codecs or not, but they're easy to add if it doesn't. Otherwise your disc spinner, pre-amp or DAC has to be capable of decoding FLACs. Sounds obvious but most cheap ones can only handle mp3s and itunes, so check carefully, even if you're buying it at the charity shoppe (with the cash left over from the priceless Ming vase and the long-lost van Gogh you got for 50p each).

 

[BigH]

I now heard hundreds of cd players in my hifi part of life. And I must say that they don't matter that much. You are finding excellently sounding cd players for a couple of hundred bucks. Used, a good cdp will cost your nearly nothing.

On my accuphase set, I have a simple denon dcd running that I found on ebay for 200$. I liked his classy face and get for it. I miss nothing, even with high resolving gear and good prepared room. Had some Accuphasee, Audia, Rega, Luxman and other Wadia running in the same conditions before of that.

I have a completely opposing point of view to this. I use my CDP as a transport only in to a DAC. Having recently switched from a Bel Canto CD2 with outboard power supply (Phillips Pro 2 transport mechanism), to an Esoteric X-03SE (VRDS-NEO transport mechanism) the differences are night and day. My research leads me to the conclusion that clocking anomolies are responsible for this.

Check out the link below for the science bit explaining how jitter not dealt with in the transport stage can effect SQ.

http://www.whathifi.com/hi-fi/esoteric-sacd-player?page=1

So what are these night and day differences?

 

[BigH]

I now heard hundreds of cd players in my hifi part of life. And I must say that they don't matter that much. You are finding excellently sounding cd players for a couple of hundred bucks. Used, a good cdp will cost your nearly nothing.

On my accuphase set, I have a simple denon dcd running that I found on ebay for 200$. I liked his classy face and get for it. I miss nothing, even with high resolving gear and good prepared room. Had some Accuphasee, Audia, Rega, Luxman and other Wadia running in the same conditions before of that.

I have a completely opposing point of view to this. I use my CDP as a transport only in to a DAC. Having recently switched from a Bel Canto CD2 with outboard power supply (Phillips Pro 2 transport mechanism), to an Esoteric X-03SE (VRDS-NEO transport mechanism) the differences are night and day. My research leads me to the conclusion that clocking anomolies are responsible for this.

Check out the link below for the science bit explaining how jitter not dealt with in the transport stage can effect SQ.

http://www.whathifi.com/hi-fi/esoteric-sacd-player?page=1

So what are these night and day differences?

 

[DIB]

Use dbPoweramp - $39 for a single use copy (which you can actually install on several machines so long as you don't try using them all at once.

Easy to use and one of the nice things it does for you is find cover art on line and / or from a library the developers have built up, so you don't have to go looking for it on line yourself (most of the time - there's always going to be the odd obscure album out there). It also cross checks your rips against reference standard rips they have from numerous users. That means you automatically know if you've got an accurate rip or one full of errors.

dbpweramp will also let you rip in FLAC format and mp3 simultaneously and / or let you batch convert all of your FLAC files to mp3s.

In fact, short of loading and unloading the CDs yourself and a few mouse clicks it pretty much takes care of everything.

Not sure if the latest Windows media player has FLAC codecs or not, but they're easy to add if it doesn't. Otherwise your disc spinner, pre-amp or DAC has to be capable of decoding FLACs. Sounds obvious but most cheap ones can only handle mp3s and itunes, so check carefully, even if you're buying it at the charity shoppe (with the cash left over from the priceless Ming vase and the long-lost van Gogh you got for 50p each).

+1

As easy to use as it gets, well worth the money if you've got a large collection to rip.

What is actually meant by Inaccurate Rip? For example, I've just ripped my new 14 Disc SAHB Last of the Teenage Idols collection, and there were one or two tracks where Inaccurate Rip was indicated. Those tracks played and sounded OK to me when played back on Foobar2000, but I deleted them and re-ripped just those tracks again. Same result, they were showing as Inaccurate Rip but again played fine to my ears so I just left them as they were.

.