To DAC or not to DAC, that is the question.

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I've got an old Marantz CD52 MKII CD player which is pretty good. It's got a digital output on the back for connection to an off board DAC but I'm not sure if it's worth trying. Has anybody else tried connecting one of these to a seperate DAC and if so did it make a noticeable improvement?

I know that the quality of the off board DAC will make a difference so are there any recommendations for a good one?

All comments are appreciated.

 

[Anonymous]

Possibly not, the idea is to kick the cd player out of the equation, rip your cds to a lossless format and bypassing the soundcard on the pc or indeed ps3 and instead using the external dac by connecting the source to the dac via an optical cable.

 

[Anonymous]

How old is your CD player and what was it retailing at when you bought it? You may think these are strange questions but let us know.

 

[Anonymous]

Interestingly, i was just pondering the same thing. ÿI have a Cambridge Audio Azur 540c CD player, running into an Ion Obelisk amp. ÿI wondered if going optically out of the Cambridge into a Beresford TC-7510, then into the Obelisk would make any noticeable difference. ÿAs a newbie I wasn't sure- but does this effectively mean i'd just be using the Cambridge as just a transport? ÿ

ÿ

Any help at all would be great!

Neilÿ

 

[Anonymous]

Going back to the original question I asked above, I have a Pre-TAG Audiolab 8000CD which cost £1000 about 9 years ago. It has an digital out socket. I bought a DACMagic and fed the CD's digital signal into it and back into my 8000S amp. I could hardly tell the difference between the two.

On my second system, I do not have a CD player, just feeding lossless files to Airport Express/DACMagic into the Cyrus Pre/Power combination into floorstanding Spendor S6e speakers. I reckon lossless files + DACMagic can compete against current CD players up to around the £1,000 mark.

Hope this helps, but the golden rule is - always demo before you buy!

 

[Anonymous]

Ridleski: Interestingly, i was just pondering the same thing. I have a Cambridge Audio Azur 540c CD player, running into an Ion Obelisk amp. I wondered if going optically out of the Cambridge into a Beresford TC-7510, then into the Obelisk would make any noticeable difference. As a newbie I wasn't sure- but does this effectively mean i'd just be using the Cambridge as just a transport?

Any help at all would be great!

Neil

I understand that the DACMagc is approx the same as the internal DAC of the Azur 740 CD player so that should be an improvement over the 540 but not sure how much or noticeable. Yes you will be using the 540 as transport only with the signal being fed into an external DAC for decoding and then into amp. If you are thinking of the Bereford, I understand there is a new model 7520 which is meant to be better according to other forum members who own it.

 

[Anonymous]

AKL:How old is your CD player and what was it retailing at when you bought it? You may think these are strange questions but let us know.

I would guess that it's probably about 20 years old and would have cost about £250 but I don't really know coz I got it second hand.

I wasn't thinking of using a DAC magic but getting a dedicated external DAC like you used to get with top end CD players a few years ago.

 

[Anonymous]

andygerbil: I would guess that it's probably about 20 years old and would have cost about £250 but I don't really know coz I got it second hand.

I wasn't thinking of using a DAC magic but getting a dedicated external DAC like you used to get with top end CD players a few years ago.

You are probably thinking of rigs like a Cyrus CD XT Transport fed into a dedicated Cyrus DAC X; Transport/DAC of the same make.

I am not sure whether Marantz makes DACs but if your CDP is about 20 years old, then I would think an external entry level DAC like the DACMagic or Beresford would sound a lot better than the CDP's internal DAC. The other option is to update your CDP altogether but I doubt you can tell which is the best way to go until you have demoed a few bits. For example, go to Richer Sounds and get a DACMagic plus a "modern" CDP to try at home. If you don 't like either, you can return them within a certain period for a full refund provided you keep all the packaging and don't scratch the goods

 

[Anonymous]

I have recently bought a squeezebox and dacmagic.

I have an Arcam Alpha+ CD player and although with flacs the Dacmagic/Squeezebox combination is better than the CD player the improvement is quite small. The rest of my system is Arcam Delta 60 amp and Tannoy dc2000 speakers.

The difference might be greater in a better system.