Long Live the CD Player................well if you do have £15k

[staggerlee]

I had a great surprise today. My friendly dealer lent me a Naim CD 555 for a week or so and i was absolutely gob smacked as to how good it was. I am a new convert to messing around with digital music and love the convenience of having play lists and all my albums on computer etc.

Admittedly, this is very high end i think the CD player and power supply retails for around 15k and i have decent pre-amp/power amps, but wow, to quote an overused cliché it was really like the band where in the room.

It was perfect.i spent about 8 hours just playings CD's and enjoying they music - the way it should be

I know on the computer based forum there is a lot of talk about transports, dacs and hard drives for music, but i haven't yet heard a computer based system that blows me away.

Now i just need to find £12k for the Cd player.........maybe should start a charity campaign on ebay!

 

[Andrew Everard]

Another one tempted to the dark side - excellent...

 

[The_Lhc]

1978:I guess many people would change their minds and hear how good CDPs and digital music can sound but not many have the privilage to such an expensive gear. This is still a drawback of technology - you need to pay relatively more to hear what you want.

Quite, take the CD drive out of this thing, replace it with a network port and decoding gubbins for FLAC/ALAC/WAV and it probably won't sound an awful lot different. the 15k has to have been spent in the DACs and power supplies, there's no CD mechanism that costs that sort of money.

Personally I'd have hoped Naim would already have done this, but I bet they haven't.

 

[Anonymous]

staggerlee:
My friendly dealer lent me a Naim CD 555 for a week or so and i was absolutely gob smacked as to how good it was.ÿ

How friendly is your dealer? I'd quite like to borrow one for a couple of years if that's OK with him.

 

[staggerlee]

Actually the olive does look very good, although have not heard it. But you would still need to pair it with decent amps and speakers to get the best out of it. I'm sure Naim are working on something, hence their latest range of products.

 

[JoelSim]

Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

I've lined up a demo of some valve amps next month from Unison and Pathos. Can't wait, as I think I have fallen in love with the Sinfonia. Looking forward to hearing it now, if it's as good as the Unico CDE then I'm in for a treat.

 

[jaxwired]

staggerlee:...to quote an overused clich‚ it was really like the band where in the room.

I was thinking about this cliche the other day and it occurred to me that "the band in the room" is not the gold standard in music reproduction. There is another level of detail that is beyond that. It's when you are transported to their room. You're in their room. This happens when the playback is good enough to convey the atmosphere of the recording enviroment. You can hear breathing and shifting in chairs and other secondary audible cues that tell the brain what the room is like. That's the gold standard...

 

[Anonymous]

JoelSim:
Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

 

[JoelSim]

storsvante:JoelSim:
Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

Mate, I did an A/B comparison with the same tunes, flick of a switch. Same DAC, same amp, same cables, same speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:
Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

Mate, I did an A/B comparison with the same tunes, flick of a switch. Same DAC, same amp, same cables, same speakers.

Bit confused still - what is the point that you are making? Something about your Unico, or a general statement that CD-players automatically sound "better" than other digital sources fed through a DAC?

 

[Dan Turner]

storsvante:JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:
Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

Mate, I did an A/B comparison with the same tunes, flick of a switch. Same DAC, same amp, same cables, same speakers.

Bit confused still - what is the point that you are making? Something about your Unico, or a general statement that CD-players automatically sound "better" than other digital sources fed through a DAC?

I think it's really interesting how different people can make these sorts of comparisons and come up with different results. I compared CD on my Arcam CD37 vs lossless on my laptop through a DacMagic and the latter sounded better for me - not night and day, just more neutral and subtly better in most regards - admittedly that wasn't as direct a comparison as Joel's lossless file fed from a computer vs the CDP's own transport, both through the CDP's DAC.

Then the other day my friend and I tried the same experiment at his, playing lossless files from my Mac through the DacMagic vs the same material replayd on CD through his Arcam CD192 and niether of us could tell any difference whatsoever in the way it sounded!

 

[staggerlee]

to me the gold standard is how I perceive they would sound live on stage. I go to lots of gigs and that's my reference point.

 

[Andy H]

Intresting, I did a comparison and found the DacMagic stronger in bass and dynamics, the cd player was better with mid range and high end, smoother and more revealing. I did say at the time that it was very close run thing though.

I listen to the dac with sonos 90% of the time but when I'm in on my own and want the best sound the cd player goes on. I would like to listen to a better dac, that would probably be my next upgrade when finances allow.

 

[JoelSim]

storsvante:JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:

Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

Mate, I did an A/B comparison with the same tunes, flick of a switch. Same DAC, same amp, same cables, same speakers.

Bit confused still - what is the point that you are making? Something about your Unico, or a general statement that CD-players automatically sound "better" than other digital sources fed through a DAC?

Not at all. Just stating that there is more to a CDP than just a transport and a DAC.

 

[floyd droid]

JoelSim:
. Can't wait, as I think I have fallen in love with the Sinfonia.

Sorry chaps off topic .

You will prolly marry it joel !! .

None of that hash,grittyness,grain and all the other junk that solid state chucks into the mix. Look forward to your thoughts. No i havnt got one btw. However.................

 

[Anonymous]

JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:

Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

Mate, I did an A/B comparison with the same tunes, flick of a switch. Same DAC, same amp, same cables, same speakers.

Bit confused still - what is the point that you are making? Something about your Unico, or a general statement that CD-players automatically sound "better" than other digital sources fed through a DAC?

Not at all. Just stating that there is more to a CDP than just a transport and a DAC.

Interesting. What else is there?

Also, many top-end CD-player solutions are split between physically separate DAC and transport (WHF had one at the front of thier web page until yesterday?) - how does this fit into your world view?

I'm sorry Joel but this still make no sense at all.

 

[arashid]

The Naim CD player is good. However technology is changing and so is the world. Remember a world in which mobile phones and broadband weren't that common place. I do, it wasn't that long ago.

The point is that a high resolution file with 24 bit resolution will sound amazing on an average dac. Should one spend 15K on a cd player, or try and buy 15K worth of vinyl or high resolution downloads. Or simply wait for new technology which doesn't cost 15K.

Also being an amateur musician for me the gold standard is the emotion of the music, IMHO. If any piece of equipment can recreate the emotion of live instruments, then it has done it's job. Any talk of treble, image, bass is secondary to the emotion itself. It should be about what the music makes you feel.

Hope this helps and open to further comments on this topic.

 

[staggerlee]

Good post Arashid. I think that's exactly the question i am asking myself . If you were going for a high end system what do you get as your source ?

 

[JoelSim]

storsvante:JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:storsvante:JoelSim:
Having heard lossless streamed through the DAC on my Unico, CDs are better, no contest.

Absolute nonsense, at least if you meant that as a general statement. There is nothing magic about a CD-player. It's a transport and a DAC in a box.

Mate, I did an A/B comparison with the same tunes, flick of a switch. Same DAC, same amp, same cables, same speakers.

Bit confused still - what is the point that you are making? Something about your Unico, or a general statement that CD-players automatically sound "better" than other digital sources fed through a DAC?

Not at all. Just stating that there is more to a CDP than just a transport and a DAC.

Interesting. What else is there?

Also, many top-end CD-player solutions are split between physically separate DAC and transport (WHF had one at the front of thier web page until yesterday?) - how does this fit into your world view?

I'm sorry Joel but this still make no sense at all.

All you have to do is take the lid off a good CDP and you will see there is much more in there. Better components, short circuitry runs, shielding, damping, valves etc etc etc.

 

[arashid]

The Benchmark Dac-1 is a pretty good dac. I don't own one yet, but it has got consistently good reviews.

I know many people will disagree, but when I auditioned a Naim 202/200 with B&W 805 speakers I used my Ipod with the apple dock. Yes I could hear the compression, and, - the music was very entertaining. I sat in the dealers showroom for 4 hours that day just listening to music.

Right now, until I get a decent DAC, I am playing from my PS3 audio output straight into my NAIT XS and use B&W 805 speakers. The music is good. When I get a good DAC, it will still be the PS3, but the optical output into the DAC.