pc vs cd

[fishheads]

There was a similar thread to this recently but it drifted off into high-end DACs, so excuse the repetition.

I've recently dipped my toes into "budget" audio and have myself a nice little setup mainly based around vinyl (rega rp-1, yamaha a-s500 amp, wharfedale diamond 10.1 speakers). Well, nice to my ears anyway.

I recently added a HRT music streamer II for to play cds (which I convert to FLAC) and I've been very impressed with the results.

So the question I have is whether or not it is worth adding a CD player to this setup?

Given my budget, I'd probably be looking at a Marantz CD6003.

Is there a clear difference in quality between playing the cds directly or am I better off spending the time (and saving the cash) converting everything onto my computer?

 

[MajorFubar]

It's dificult for a topic like this not to drift off into talking about DACs because that's where the difference lies.

Common thinking on here seems to be that if you can tolerate/prefer to use your PC as a music player, then that's where it's 'at' because £xxx or even £xxxx (*insert any price you can think of) will buy you a better DAC than a standalone CD player at the same price.

I'd still prefer the CD player, but that's my personal choice.

 

[Anonymous]

Agreed with the above. But to be honest, I own a £150 DAC, a £500 DAC and the new speakers I have have a top of the line DAC built in.

The difference between the 3... zilch (to my ears).

However, the difference between any of the 3 and my squeezebox duet, laptop, desktop pc analogue out is considerable (ie the DACs in those (or the analogue out) is poor.

Beresford, Cambridge etc or speakers such as mine are ideal.

I haven't used my CD player in over 12 months. The future is downloads...that's why there are suddenly so many DACs on the market

 

[fishheads]

Thanks for the quick responses.

I do understand the DAC argument but the reason I was looking at the CD option was more convenience.

And when I say "convenience", I mean "the girlfriend is more inclined to have one extra bit of equipment lying around if it means she can use it very easily"!

So I suppose I was wondering if I could expect to gain anything in sound quality if (more likely when) I take the jump towards convenience?

 

[Anonymous]

Considering the equipment you already have, I'm not sure what the use of a CD player would be. Much better getting a good, budget DAC. The difference between transports is small, so any DVD, BDP player will serve as a CD player, and something like the Cambridge DACmagic or Beresford will fit in beautifully, and live through many future upgrades. I have among my rather extensive collection a Beresford 7520 DAC, which is excellent, and includes a good headphone amp too. I wouldn't worry about hgh end DACs as we are talking severely small increases in quality for seriously large increases in cash.