Newbie questions on Home Cinema / Hi-Fi

[admin_exported]

Hello All,

I have heard / read from several sources that a pure CD player will provide better music quality than a player which can play all discs i.e. CD, MP3, DVD etc.

My doubt is that since the information is stored on the CD in digital form, the player just reads this information and feeds the output (say in digital form) to an external amplifier with a digital input. In this setup, I would have thought that only the AV receiver / amplifier would influence the quality of the music (other than the speakers, of course), as it would convert the digital signal to analog, amplify the same and then feed to the speakers.

I cannot understand how the CD player would have an influence on the music quality. I realize that this is a rather newbie question, but I would be happy to get some advice on this.

Thanks

 

[Gerrardasnails]

The cd player converts the signal to analogue before it feeds it to the amplifier.

 

[John Duncan]

Except when you use the digital output from the CD player to the DAC in the receiver. The OP is right to some extent, in that the DAC in the receiver will place most influence on the sound, but the CDP still plays its part in getting that digital signal correct in the first place, without errors and jitter.

In the most budget of systems, the DAC in a receiver can be better than that in the CDP, but as your budget increases, you'll find that the DAC in the CDP should outstrip that in the receiver by some margin - depends on the components themselves.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies!

If I understand correctly, you are suggesting that an good CD player would provide a better DAC than the AV Receiver, and we must use the analog output from the CD player and connect it to the AV receiver rather than digital output from the CD player.

 

[professorhat]

Yup, that's the idea. I tried both from my Marantz CD-63mkII KI-Sig CD player to my Denon AV amp - undoubtedly, I got a better, more natural sound when I used the analogue output from the CD player to the amp compared to the digital coaxial i.e. suggesting the DAC in the CD player is better than the one in the AV amp.