Reading a spinning disc

[Anonymous]

Hifi test monkey:
If you buy an audiophile CDP you get an internal DAC that has been listened to by experienced engineers and tuned for best sound quality

I'm sure engineers listen to their audiophile DACs too.

 

[Anonymous]

@Eddie - indeed, but how many people playing music on a computer are using an audiophile DAC? My point was that the design and voicing of the DAC will have far more influence than the source of the digital data stream, be it Red Book Compact Disc or a buffered data file.

 

[Anonymous]

Hifi test monkey:@Eddie - indeed, but how many people playing music on a computer are using an audiophile DAC? My point was that the design and voicing of the DAC will have far more influence than the source of the digital data stream, be it Red Book Compact Disc or a buffered data file.

Monkey,

It seems we agree that the DAC has the biggest influence on the sound.

I expect that those using an audiophile DAC are a marginal minority. Most might just use laptop speakers or headphones.

 

[idc]

Hifi test monkey:

If you buy an audiophile CDP you get an internal DAC that has been listened to by experienced engineers and tuned for best sound quality whereas a computer DAC or a non-audiophile or budget DAC is simply made to work and off it goes.

Hi Hifi test monkey. You appear to be arguing that experienced engineers have the best ears and that the sound they are happy with should also be the sound to make the rest of us happy. I do not think that that is the case. There are plenty of budget products that giant kill more expensive products. If what you say was the case then the more expensive product will be better sounding than the cheaper one, but that is not guaranteed.

 

[crusaderlord]

i am giving up this debate as some people are a little too agressive for my taste

 

[chebby]

There is too much conjecture on this subject.

Too many people telling those who have heard both - and therefore know what they prefer - what should sound better.

To find out you have to try it for yourself otherwise it is all guesswork.

 

[The_Lhc]

crusaderlord:I disagree idc and dont believe Monkey is arguing that engineers have the best ears.

The point is that the engineered CD player and DAC is far more likley to deliver a better quality sound output than a CD tray stuck inside a PC and probably done so at a budget mass produced cost level, or even a cheap DAC which isnt specifically designed and set up to be an audiophile piece of kit. Some DAC's of course are engineered to be audiophile levels and i would trust these would compete well against a CD player.

FTLOG, nobody plays a CD in real-time from a PC's CD player to an amp! You rip the data from the CD, data, not audio, it doesn't matter how cheap the PC cd tray is, you aren't extracting sound from it, you're extracting data, which is something that computers are really quite good at these days...

 

[Andrew Everard]

Again the_klf speaks wisely...

 

[The_Lhc]

Andrew Everard:Again the_klf

AHA (aha) AHA (aha)!

Actually I quite like that one...

 

[Anonymous]

the_lhc:

FTLOG, nobody plays a CD in real-time from a PC's CD player to an amp! You rip the data from the CD, data, not audio, it doesn't matter how cheap the PC cd tray is, you aren't extracting sound from it, you're extracting data, which is something that computers are really quite good at these days...

Hmm. I do this occasionally, esp before I decide if I am going to rip the CD or not. I also tried to play the same track off a CD and directly after play from an ALAC file on my laptop and noticed ZERO difference in sound.

 

[Clare Newsome]

chebby:
There is too much conjecture on this subject.

Too many people telling those who have heard both - and therefore know what they prefer - what should sound better.

To find out you have to try it for yourself otherwise it is all guesswork.

See also anything else rabidly debated on here! Keep demo-ing, one and all....