Onkyo C-7030 CD Player - Thoughts on this Bargain Basement CD Player?

[Benedict_Arnold]

Has anyone got any opinions on the Onkyo C-7030 CD player?

For the 120 quid I'm paying for it, I'm not expecting miracles. It'll be hooked up to the Onkyo TX-NR717 home theatre setup (Klipsch Reference 42 speakers) as a get-by until we move house and I can use the hoped-for garage apartment or mandatory home media room to house a pukka Cyrus system again. The hope is CDs will sound a whole lot better than playing them on the Onky BD-809 bluray player.

Interconnects will be some old Chord Chorus ones (which probably cost more than the new CD player) I have lying around waiting for a decent hifi to use them with. Speaker cables right now are some 12-gauge multi-strands I bought off Amazon, didn't see much value in spending mega-bucks given the quality of the source components.

Living room is about 35 feet long x 15 feet across and the setup sits half-way along one of the long walls.

Thoughts?

 

[ksoundwerx]

Whilst it may be a perfectly acceptable sound (I have no experience of said CD player), why do you not save the money for the future 'higher end' system you plan for, and instead continue using the Blueray player, as CD transport only, by connecting it to you Onky 717 AVR digitally via optical/toslink?

That way you are using the on-board DAC in your (pretty decent) receiver to convert the digital CD data, rather than the 'cheaper' DAC in the new budget CD player? The DACs and amplification used are what will brings out the detail etc in the music, not what you use as transport.

The DACs in both the CD player and the suggested CD player may be similar in build and/or character anyway (both being Onkyo), so could be a pointless move in terms of sound quality. In which case save the money for something better as/when you are in a position to do so and forget the cheap CD player stop-gap.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

The receiver uses a Burr-Brown 192/24 DAC but only one, I think, to handle up to 7.1 audion channels plus, I'm guessing, video as well. Don't know which DAC is in the Bluray but that too must be designed to deal with up to 7.1 plus video.

The CD player uses an allegedly superior Wolfson 8718 DAC to handle just two audio channels. Hence the output from the CD player should be clearer than the sound from either the Bluray DAC output fed analogue-mode into the receiver or the digital code from the Bluray fed into the receiver DAC. Both sound muddy and muted as I have always found receiver or Bluray / DVD based audio to be.

This is a stop-gap solution, remember, and will ultimately end up in the front room where the wife can happily watch Oprah, Martha Stewart doing her "Blue Peter" routines for bored hausfraus, and the ****ing Lifetime (all men are barstewards and should be castrated just as soon as their DNA has been extracted, screened for psychopathic tendencies, and used to produce the next generation of sperm - and paypacket - donors) TV channel, while I'm upstairs rocking out to the Cyrus system.

The Cyrus System I want (CD-XT-SE-whatever, DAC-XP-Plus-whatever, 2 x Mono-X200s and one of their streamers, plus a couple of ProAc Studio 140s, plus the interconnects and speaker cables) is likey to cost me close to thirteen large in Pounds, or 100 times what the CD player is going to cost, which itself is less than the cost of a decent pair of interconnects, so it really doesn't figure in my savings for the Cyrus setup.

 

[ksoundwerx]

The Cyrus System I want (CD-XT-SE-whatever, DAC-XP-Plus-whatever, 2 x Mono-X200s and one of their streamers, plus a couple of ProAc Studio 140s, plus the interconnects and speaker cables) is likey to cost me close to thirteen large in Pounds, or 100 times what the CD player is going to cost, which itself is less than the cost of a decent pair of interconnects, so it really doesn't figure in my savings for the Cyrus setup.

So what's the consideration here then? If the cheap CD player is comparatively pocket change (and it sounds like it is), why not double the budget and buy one of the many superb CD player offerings in the £200-250 range rather than fishing for something half-decent (and arguably compromised) in the £100-120 region?

I'm not half as well off as you sound, but stop-gap / temporary measure or not, I couldn't bring myself to buy something considered truly 'budget' when I'm into decent CD players for the small sum of £120+ extra. These can then be kept for a second room (or wife's enjoyment in your case) later. Or even sold on for most of the money back, as current Marantz / Rotel etc CD players seem to hold value really well.

Just not sure why you'd bother with the cheap CDP in your case.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Not sure the 300 Pound CD players are that much better than this player, which seems to have gotten a few excellent write-ups, and has been knocked down in price (end of production) from 250 bucks (160 Pounds) plus tax here (probably 250-300 Pounds inc VAT in the UK) anyway.

Could I hear from anyone who has actually listened to the thing?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

As an aside, do WHF ever take the lids off the products they review?

I'd be interested, for example, to see what mechanical transports and DACs are used in the high price stuff compared to the run-of-the-mill (i.e. one or two steps above Currys) stuff. A lot of people think the high-end stuff uses the same mechanical transports and DACs as the cheaper stuff, which makes people wonder why the higher price stuff is justified, apart from snobbey, of course....

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Well, the Onkyo arrived yesterday afternoon, and wa splugged in as soon as I got home. At first I thought the right channel wasn't working, but sure enough one of the interconnects had pulled out of the receiver.

Nice, dull looking unit (which I like), and quite heavy for a CD player, all of which gives the impression, I did say impression, of a quality unit.

Plugged in to the Onkyo TX-NR717 receiver and thence to the Klipsch Reference FR-42II speakers, I wasn't expecting miracles. I'm pretty sure the weak link in the chain is the speakers, which only have iddy-biddy 4-inch cones, failing that the receiver. It isn't the interconnects or speaker cables, all Chord from dear old Blighty, that's for sure.

I hooked it up via a Chord ProDAC digital coaxial cable and Chord Chorus interconnects so I could compare the CD player's DAC with the receiver's. Not a night and day improvement, but I tell you what, the sound through the CD player's DAC rather than the receiver's, sounded a whole lot less like the band was playing uder a duvet. Some bigger cones would probably have, pardon the pun, amplified the difference.

The CD player's running in right now, has been for about 18 hours or so, so when it's fully baked (is that a bad thing to say in connection with Onkyo stuff right now?) it should improve some more.

100 quid well spent, even if it's not going to wow the WHF afficianadoes...

 

[richardw42]

Onkyo do seem to offer real VFM with their stuff.

Too many will think it can't possibly compete with a £300 player, why not ?

 

[the record spot]

A Sony PS1 will compete with a £300 CD player, so I doubt the 7030 will let you down. Onkyo make some very good stuff. Rather like Kenwood about 15 years who had some great CD players (the DP7090 was vastly underrated) but seem to be overlooked from the more popular brands.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Onkyo do seem to offer real VFM with their stuff.

Too many will think it can't possibly compete with a £300 player, why not ?

I think in the UK this unit has a recommended retail of 250 quid, although they can be had on line for 180 or less. Here in the US they started out at about US$320 plus tax, but can be had for about $180 plus tax on line.

I tend to agree that Onkyo products tend to get overlooked, except when they catch fire of course, and that there probably isn't really that much difference between this, and say, a Marantz CD6004, especially when played through a relatively low budget system like mine at the moment.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

FWIW Marantz CD-6004 in the US goes for around 500 bucks plus tax, 244 quid inc. VAT in the UK by the same (named after a long river) vendor, so the US isn't ALWAYS cheaper...

 

[BigH]

FWIW Marantz CD-6004 in the US goes for around 500 bucks plus tax, 244 quid inc. VAT in the UK by the same (named after a long river) vendor, so the US isn't ALWAYS cheaper...

Good to know that not everything is cheaper in the USA.