Sonos & Dacmagic Vs Cyrus CD6s & Dacmagic & potentially a new cable....

Pete Shields

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Sep 23, 2008
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I thought that I had totally made the move to computer based music.

I have been using a Sonos/Dacmagic combo for the last year and I'm finding that I can hardly be bothered turning on the CD player.

I was looking through a box of old cables in the garage and came across an old Ixos 308 optical interconnect. Curiosity got the better of me and I connected it up between my Cyrus CD6s Cd player and the Dacmagic - I'd always used the Cyrus's own built -in dac in the past. Wow! It's finding so much more detail than my lossless Sonos files and seems better than the Cyrus by itelf

Or at least that's the perception - not sure whether it just sounds different, so I like it.

Anyway, the CD6's only digital connection is an optical. At the risk of starting the 100th digital interconnect cable forum punch-up, will I benefit much from an upgrade to a better optical interconnect or am I just throwing the cash away?
 

eternaloptimist

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Mar 29, 2009
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Hi Pete,

Your thread got my attention...

I have a Cyrus setup and love the sound from the Cyrus 6SE CDP, but... have recently bought an excellent DAC (Wyred-4-Sound DAC-2) and having ripped all CDs to lossless and now streaming... don't use the CDP much at all.

I was experimenting last weekend with using the CDP as a transport only ie. the optical out into the DAC (then into Preamp etc) versus via the analogue out.

This was using a cheap, plastic optical connect!

The sound was very similar, but the sound using the CDP as a transport only was better - more detailed and punch in the base particularly.

This was directly comparing A/B/X with the CDP playing and the laptop streaming and switching between (wife switching.. me listening and trying to pick the difference!) My wife is soooooooo sick of these tests!

I suspect, for "CD quality" ie 16/44 it won't make much difference if the DAC is good with good jitter rejection etc. The sound should be potentially be better from a streamed source if all elements in the chain are done perfectly ie. accurate rips (using EAC or dBpoweramp for example), quality playback software capable of bit perfect output etc. as the CDP is having to get the digital stream "on the fly" off the CD....

Oh.. Re: optical interconnects... I think you need one made from Guatamalan diamonds (eastern mine-face only), cryofrozen, then hand polished by 10 small children... :D

Just my 2c.

D
 

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