What makes music with bluray/AV receiver less musical?

[RobinKidderminster]

Just wondering why a bluray player though an AV receiver is (in general) less suited to music/CD playback. Are there particular 'weak' components? (Which one might bypass??)

And - just wondering (again - like ya do) if you use HDMI or optical/coax digital output from a BD player, presumeably you don't use the players DAC but the AV receiver DAC.

And then - is it better (for music) to use analogue output from the BD?

Just pondering !

Cheers

 

[Paul.]

I assumed it was just the quality of the amps in AV kit being a bit rubbish. That being said, the Pioneer BDP-330 I had sounded lovely with CD's, far better than the Panasonic BDT-310 I have now. Even better than the Phillips CD I was using as transport. It must be some dark JuJu.

 

[RobinKidderminster]

Mmmm - 'Dark Juju's' ?? Dem de juju's what in cables an' blutac?

But amp quality (I think) is an oversimplification maybe? TBC?

Cheers Paul (Love yr photos)

 

[Andrew Everard]

Just wondering why a bluray player though an AV receiver is (in general) less suited to music/CD playback.

The theory is that multipurpose drives able to play CDs don't do so as well as a dedicated CD drive. That being said, many modern CD players do use CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives as their transport, with dedicated CD-only drives mainly being reserved for more expensive players.

As I said, that's the theory, not a personal opinion; anecdotally, I use a Cambridge Audio 'universal' player through an Onkyo receiver to play SACDs – my CDs these days are ripped and streamed – and have no complaints about its performance.

Are there particular 'weak' components? (Which one might bypass??)

Well, all the video processing circuitry in both BD players and AV receivers is a potential source of interference, so it would make use of any 'Pure Direct' or 'Pure Audio'-type switching available on each device, which usually turns off video processing and/or routes the signal down the shortest possible path through the component.

And - just wondering (again - like ya do) if you use HDMI or optical/coax digital output from a BD player, presumeably you don't use the players DAC but the AV receiver DAC.

Correct.

And then - is it better (for music) to use analogue output from the BD?

Kinda depends how good the digital-to-analogue conversion and analogue output stage in the player is. IME, some more expensive players tend to do better in this respect than budget machines, but again this is based on limited experience.

 

[RobinKidderminster]

Thanks Andrew for an interesting response. I too rip my CDs when I have chance. (FLAC) But then (is this yet another ponder?) Is a FLAC rip using what may be a 'cheap' computer CD reader going to produce a better quality than the original CD played thru the BD. I guess we then put the FLAC player into the equation. Mmmmm.