Shifting from a midrange to `proper` CD player

[LDTM]

Evening all,

Was rather hoping if anyone has experience, auditioning or ownership, in moving from a run-of-the-mill CD player to a higher end one. Thinking of moving on to an Esoteric K05 or something like that from my Yamaha but its going to be a while before I can go to a bigger city to compare.

In your opinion, considerable difference or just a posh looking box?

Much obliged.

 

[BigH]

Evening all,

Was rather hoping if anyone has experience, auditioning or ownership, in moving from a run-of-the-mill CD player to a higher end one. Thinking of moving on to an Esoteric K05 or something like that from my Yamaha but its going to be a while before I can go to a bigger city to compare.

In your opinion, considerable difference or just a posh looking box?

Much obliged.

Seems like a Blu-Ray transport, I would compare it with the Oppo 105.

I would consider other options such as streaming.

 

[MajorFubar]

In your opinion, considerable difference or just a posh looking box?

Any digital front end is the last thing I'd change in a HiFi chain. The advice I will always give anyone is: if you're absolutely sure your amp and speakers can't be considerably improved by spending the same money, then yes, go for it, why not. But in a digital world, the difference in sound between a £20 DVD player from Argos and a £1500 dedicated CD player is never going to be like upgrading a Crosley Cruiser to a Michell GyroDec.

 

[BigH]

The player he is considering is over £7,000. Those are going to be very low volume so not economies of scale. Whether it sounds better than more affordable players is debatable and something he needs to try.

 

[BigH]

Not in Japan its not*biggrin*

How much is it there?

 

[LDTM]

Not in Japan its not*biggrin*

I appreciate the feedback.

 

[LDTM]

JPY 550,000

I forget the FX rate, 200:1 sounds familiar though

 

[BigH]

JPY 550,000

I forget the FX rate, 200:1 sounds familiar though

Is that all, well that does make a difference. ROE is now 156 so about £3,500.

 

[MajorFubar]

The player he is considering is over £7,000. Those are going to be very low volume so not economies of scale. Whether it sounds better than more affordable players is debatable and something he needs to try.

Even more reason then to be absolutely certain that the same money can't be better spent elsewhere.

 

[matthewpiano]

Another worthwhile question is, does the money need to be spent at all?

Great CD player, great amplification, and great speakers. What's annoying you/distracting you from the music? If nothing, then perhaps the money could be saved...

 

[Al ears]

Evening all,

Was rather hoping if anyone has experience, auditioning or ownership, in moving from a run-of-the-mill CD player to a higher end one. Thinking of moving on to an Esoteric K05 or something like that from my Yamaha but its going to be a while before I can go to a bigger city to compare.

In your opinion, considerable difference or just a posh looking box?

Much obliged.

Seems like a Blu-Ray transport, I would compare it with the Oppo 105.

I would consider other options such as streaming.

Ditto, which the Oppo can do of a sort as well as play from a USB hard drive. Not much it doesn't do very well really...... ;-)

 

[Aestate dies longiores sunt]

Should be a considerable improvement - a top notch cd player is a very worthwhile investment - best thing is to ask someone who owns a decent cd player - their advice might be a little more sensible

 

[lindsayt]

LDTM, excellent advice fromMajorFubar.

The choice is, of course, entirely yours. And we all have our own paths to follow in the hi-fi world.

If I had your system I'd be looking to change the speakers from your GS20's to something that I'd prefer a lot more over them.

 

[Macspur]

I'm sure the Esoteric would be a major upgrade... as you are in Japan, have you thought about an Accuphase player they are supposed to be a bit special and they have recently brought out a new stand alone DAC.

Good advice to consider possible changes to amp or speakers though.

Mac

www.macsmusic.blogbubble.net

 

[MajorFubar]

...their advice might be a little more sensible

...than whose piece of misadvice? Seems to me everything said so far has been very sensible.

 

[nopiano]

Some years back, I upgraded from a Marantz cd63se, an earlyish top loading player with the Philips 14 bit oversampling chip, to a Meridian 208. That was a cdp and preamp, which cost c. £1,600 whereas the Marantz was about £300. That was the early 80's. The Meridian had the new bitstream chip, and was a massive improvement.

After about five years it was stolen in a domestic burglary. The Krell which replaced it is still in use about eighteen years on. It has a decent TEAC drive, rare HDCD processing, and custom circuitry. You can google pictures of the insides. It's a KAV-300cd. That cost over £3,000. It was strikingly more resolving than the Meridian, musical though that had been.

They still sell for £700 to £1,000 so have held their value remarkably. I suspect it remains one of the best sounding CD players ever made. I've no idea what the nearest equivalent might be today, save for some Krells from a few years ago, though I'm quite attracted to the top end Yamaha and Marantz models. Audio Research too, at a price!

Definitely you need to audition carefully, however, as your current player with a decent DAC might provide all you need for far less outlay.

 

[expat_mike]

At a risk of sounding like TrevC, all the CD transports inside decent CD players should extract the same musical data from a particular disc, and any differences in sound will be due to the differences in internal DAC implementations, interacting with jitter, power line noise, RF noise, etc.......

Rather than blow a huge amount of money on another CD player, why not experiment feeding the optical from your existing CD player, to a Chord DAC like the 2Qute or Hugo, and then into your existing power amp.

If you find that this produces the sound that you are searching for, then you will potentially saved several thousands of pounds/yen, which you can use for upgrading other parts of your system (similar ethos to the Major). At least it should be cheap to borrow a DAC, and audition it, before spending a lot of time/money chasing CD player perfection.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

At a risk of sounding like TrevC, all the CD transports inside decent CD players should extract the same musical data from a particular disc, and any differences in sound will be due to the differences in internal DAC implementations, interacting with jitter, power line noise, RF noise, etc.......

Rather than blow a huge amount of money on another CD player, why not experiment feeding the optical from your existing CD player, to a Chord DAC like the 2Qute or Hugo, and then into your existing power amp.

If you find that this produces the sound that you are searching for, then you will potentially saved several thousands of pounds/yen, which you can use for upgrading other parts of your system (similar ethos to the Major). At least it should be cheap to borrow a DAC, and audition it, before spending a lot of time/money chasing CD player perfection.

I am at a stage were I am pretty sure I need to buy a better CD player or buy a very good dac but which road do you go down as I am not bothered by streaming or anything like that . If I brought a top dac it would be just for cd playback that's all or do I buy a top cdplayer that's made for the purpose and would this cdplayer still have a good dac inside without blowing silly money ?

 

[Al ears]

At a risk of sounding like TrevC, all the CD transports inside decent CD players should extract the same musical data from a particular disc, and any differences in sound will be due to the differences in internal DAC implementations, interacting with jitter, power line noise, RF noise, etc.......

Rather than blow a huge amount of money on another CD player, why not experiment feeding the optical from your existing CD player, to a Chord DAC like the 2Qute or Hugo, and then into your existing power amp.

If you find that this produces the sound that you are searching for, then you will potentially saved several thousands of pounds/yen, which you can use for upgrading other parts of your system (similar ethos to the Major). At least it should be cheap to borrow a DAC, and audition it, before spending a lot of time/money chasing CD player perfection.

I am at a stage were I am pretty sure I need to buy a better CD player or buy a very good dac but which road do you go down as I am not bothered by streaming or anything like that . If I brought a top dac it would be just for cd playback that's all or do I buy a top cdplayer that's made for the purpose and would this cdplayer still have a good dac inside without blowing silly money ?

Personally if you have some money but not silly money I would invest in a CD transport of very good quality and an external DAC of good quality as it is the improvements in DAC's that has moved the playback on somewhat.

It's a bit like turntables and cartridges, the turntable itself is difficult to upgrade once you have a decent one, however it is the link with the cartridge that gives the real upgrade.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

At a risk of sounding like TrevC, all the CD transports inside decent CD players should extract the same musical data from a particular disc, and any differences in sound will be due to the differences in internal DAC implementations, interacting with jitter, power line noise, RF noise, etc.......

Rather than blow a huge amount of money on another CD player, why not experiment feeding the optical from your existing CD player, to a Chord DAC like the 2Qute or Hugo, and then into your existing power amp.

If you find that this produces the sound that you are searching for, then you will potentially saved several thousands of pounds/yen, which you can use for upgrading other parts of your system (similar ethos to the Major). At least it should be cheap to borrow a DAC, and audition it, before spending a lot of time/money chasing CD player perfection.

I am at a stage were I am pretty sure I need to buy a better CD player or buy a very good dac but which road do you go down as I am not bothered by streaming or anything like that . If I brought a top dac it would be just for cd playback that's all or do I buy a top cdplayer that's made for the purpose and would this cdplayer still have a good dac inside without blowing silly money ?

Personally if you have some money but not silly money I would invest in a CD transport of very good quality and an external DAC of good quality as it is the improvements in DAC's that has moved the playback on somewhat.

It's a bit like turntables and cartridges, the turntable itself is difficult to upgrade once you have a decent one, however it is the link with the cartridge that gives the real upgrade.

I understand what a cd transport is it not got a dac inside but what makes this different from me using the marantz sacd 8005 cdplayer and using it as a transport only and adding a very good dac to it ? Or Are the stand alone transports better quality in the first place

 

[expat_mike]

At a risk of sounding like TrevC, all the CD transports inside decent CD players should extract the same musical data from a particular disc, and any differences in sound will be due to the differences in internal DAC implementations, interacting with jitter, power line noise, RF noise, etc.......

Rather than blow a huge amount of money on another CD player, why not experiment feeding the optical from your existing CD player, to a Chord DAC like the 2Qute or Hugo, and then into your existing power amp.

If you find that this produces the sound that you are searching for, then you will potentially saved several thousands of pounds/yen, which you can use for upgrading other parts of your system (similar ethos to the Major). At least it should be cheap to borrow a DAC, and audition it, before spending a lot of time/money chasing CD player perfection.

I am at a stage were I am pretty sure I need to buy a better CD player or buy a very good dac but which road do you go down as I am not bothered by streaming or anything like that . If I brought a top dac it would be just for cd playback that's all or do I buy a top cdplayer that's made for the purpose and would this cdplayer still have a good dac inside without blowing silly money ?

If you opt for the one box solution of an expensive CD, you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and trying to find CD player which contains both a good transport and an excellent DAC. I know you stated in your initial thread, that you are searching for a one box solution, but I do think that you might find it useful (and more flexible) to explore the two box option of a relatively cheap CD player (maybe your existing CD player) feeding an external DAC. This also means that each time you audition a new option, you are only assessing if changing just one element (the DAC) improves the sound. Every time you audition a new CD player, you are assessing if two elements (the transport plus the DAC) yields an improvement.

You could start at the relatively cheap (compared to some of the CD players that have been mentioned in this thread) level of a Chord 2Qute http://www.head-fi.org/t/749582/chord-electronics-2qute-dac-announced and work your way up in price. There are certainly a lot of people falling over themselves at the sound of the Chord DAVE http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave but at that price, you are making even expensive CD players look cheap.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

At a risk of sounding like TrevC, all the CD transports inside decent CD players should extract the same musical data from a particular disc, and any differences in sound will be due to the differences in internal DAC implementations, interacting with jitter, power line noise, RF noise, etc.......

Rather than blow a huge amount of money on another CD player, why not experiment feeding the optical from your existing CD player, to a Chord DAC like the 2Qute or Hugo, and then into your existing power amp.

If you find that this produces the sound that you are searching for, then you will potentially saved several thousands of pounds/yen, which you can use for upgrading other parts of your system (similar ethos to the Major). At least it should be cheap to borrow a DAC, and audition it, before spending a lot of time/money chasing CD player perfection.

I am at a stage were I am pretty sure I need to buy a better CD player or buy a very good dac but which road do you go down as I am not bothered by streaming or anything like that . If I brought a top dac it would be just for cd playback that's all or do I buy a top cdplayer that's made for the purpose and would this cdplayer still have a good dac inside without blowing silly money ?

If you opt for the one box solution of an expensive CD, you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and trying to find CD player which contains both a good transport and an excellent DAC. I know you stated in your initial thread, that you are searching for a one box solution, but I do think that you might find it useful (and more flexible) to explore the two box option of a relatively cheap CD player (maybe your existing CD player) feeding an external DAC. This also means that each time you audition a new option, you are only assessing if changing just one element (the DAC) improves the sound. Every time you audition a new CD player, you are assessing if two elements (the transport plus the DAC) yields an improvement.

You could start at the relatively cheap (compared to some of the CD players that have been mentioned in this thread) level of a Chord 2Qute http://www.head-fi.org/t/749582/chord-electronics-2qute-dac-announced and work your way up in price. There are certainly a lot of people falling over themselves at the sound of the Chord DAVE http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave but at that price, you are making even expensive CD players look cheap.

ok that sounds sensible to me then to do it that way because the marantz cdplayer I've got is well made and reliable the only thing it has not got is XLR input on the player it self but this should not make much of a difference . Thanks for the links

 

[expat_mike]

ok that sounds sensible to me then to do it that way because the marantz cdplayer I've got is well made and reliable the only thing it has not got is XLR input on the player it self but this should not make much of a difference . Thanks for the links

Glad to have been helpful. You know your Marantz well already, so all your DAC auditions start from a known baseline.

In the past few months, I have progressed from a Dragonfly, via an OPPO HA-2 to a Chord Mojo, and each time I have been amazed at the amount of extra detail and musicality that these modern DACs now extract from standard CD quality recordings. It has made me think seriously about exploring a system with a cheap transport, plus a 2Qute DAC.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

ok that sounds sensible to me then to do it that way because the marantz cdplayer I've got is well made and reliable the only thing it has not got is XLR input on the player it self but this should not make much of a difference . Thanks for the links

Glad to have been helpful. You know your Marantz well already, so all your DAC auditions start from a known baseline.

In the past few months, I have progressed from a Dragonfly, via an OPPO HA-2 to a Chord Mojo, and each time I have been amazed at the amount of extra detail and musicality that these modern DACs now extract from standard CD quality recordings. It has made me think seriously about exploring a system with a cheap transport, plus a 2Qute DAC.

I am not keen on a battery operated dac to be honest with you I want one that is off the mains

 

[Al ears]

ok that sounds sensible to me then to do it that way because the marantz cdplayer I've got is well made and reliable the only thing it has not got is XLR input on the player it self but this should not make much of a difference . Thanks for the links

Glad to have been helpful. You know your Marantz well already, so all your DAC auditions start from a known baseline.

In the past few months, I have progressed from a Dragonfly, via an OPPO HA-2 to a Chord Mojo, and each time I have been amazed at the amount of extra detail and musicality that these modern DACs now extract from standard CD quality recordings. It has made me think seriously about exploring a system with a cheap transport, plus a 2Qute DAC.

I am not keen on a battery operated dac to be honest with you I want one that is off the mains

Think I'm losing thread here, has it been hijacked? This has nothing to do with the OPs question.