sherez said:
i have a question which is better dac or cd players?
Both CD players and DACs contain DACs. A CD player is a DAC with a built-in disc transport. Either a CD player DAC or standalone DAC can be of better or worse quality.
I think it's better to have a DAC for a couple of reasons:
1. More versatile - most of my CDs are on a computer, and whether I listen to a disc, watch a movie, watch digital TV, or play a game, it sounds great since it's all coming through my DAC. With a CD player, I might have a good DAC but it will only work for CDs.
2. Better sound. By buying a professional DAC, everything I listen to sounds the best it can. Sure, the DAC chips in TVs and computer soundcards are perfectly accurate, but what makes a standalone DAC better is the stuff around the chip - the output stage, the timing and buffering improvements, the approach to error correction, a fully balanced circuit, a good power supply. Some expensive CD players do this just as well, but look at the price.
3. Better long-term value. Disc players break. They have a lens that gets dirty, moving parts that wear out, dust that enters, etc. A really good DAC will make any CD or DVD player with a digital output into a high-end CD player, assuming that the DAC reclocks. The only job of a disc transport is to extract a bit-perfect stream of 1s and 0s from the disc and send it to the DAC, whether the DAC is in a separate box or not. And any disc transport will do this - a CD-ROM drive that retails for less than 20 bob is still bit perfect (otherwise, you would not be able to install applications from it, since one wrong bit in an executable and the file is worthless). Thus, the best high-end CD player is any disc player with a digital out, connected to a high-end DAC of your choice. You can replace the dsic player when needed, for next to nothing, and keep the DAC for decades.
There are other reasons but those are the most compelling to me.
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