Why do digital sources sound different to each other?

[Infiniteloop]

Could someone explain to me why the sound from a CD using my old Denon DVD player through my Chord DAC sounds awful compared to the sound from the same CD using a Roksan M2 as a transport into the same DAC sounds great? According to what I've read on several threads there shouldn't be a difference, but there is.

And please don't insult my intelligence by using the 'expectation bias' excuse.

 

[Leif]

Could someone explain to me why the sound from a CD using my old Denon DVD player through my Chord DAC sounds awful compared to the sound from the same CD using a Roksan M2 as a transport into the same DAC sounds great? According to what I've read on this thread there shouldn't be a difference, but there is.

And please don't insult my intelligence by using the 'expectation bias' excuse.

Dunno. I have an ancient Teac Reference 300 CD player. I hooked it up to my amplifier using the digital out. It sounded as good as when played on the modern decent CD player in my system. You can buy them for peanuts on ebay. And yet the Teac amp sounds poor.

By the way, why would suggesting expectation bias insult your intelligence? Are you above psychological influences that plague the rest of us? I suffer dreadfully from the beggers.

 

[Vladimir]

Is it optical or coax link?

 

[CnoEvil]

The answer is Brexit...or you're mad.....but most likely Brexit.

The difference you hear, is down to the fact it was made by an Immigrant. British made goods all sound better....but Britain doesn't make much any more.

Everything now has got more expensive due to the weak Pound...and we all know, anything expensive sounds better than anything cheap....so what's not to like

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.

*crazy* *unknw*

 

[Infiniteloop]

Is it optical or coax link?

It shouldn't make a difference. Digital is digital.

 

[jjbomber]

The answer is Brexit...or you're mad.....but most likely Brexit.

The difference you hear, is down to the fact it was made by an Immigrant. British made goods all sound better....but Britain doesn't make much any more.

Everything now has got more expensive due to the weak Pound...and we all know, anything expensive sounds better than anything cheap....so what's not to like

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.

*crazy* *unknw*

Glad you're back. *clapping*

 

[Gray]

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.

*crazy* *unknw*

The nurse that syringed my ears was English (long before the Brexit vote)

My best ever upgrade - and free.

 

[Leif]

Was it a full moon?

The answer is Brexit...or you're mad.....but most likely Brexit.

The difference you hear, is down to the fact it was made by an Immigrant. British made goods all sound better....but Britain doesn't make much any more.

Everything now has got more expensive due to the weak Pound...and we all know, anything expensive sounds better than anything cheap....so what's not to like

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.

*crazy* *unknw*

Superb. *crazy*

 

[Leif]

Is it optical or coax link?

It shouldn't make a difference. Digital is digital.

Yes but if he squashed the cable, the zeroes would look like ones, and you'd get rubbish out.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_100004211376004]

Infinite..you have just asked the question.....why does my cd player sound better than my dvd player at playing cd's .....think about it.....there's more than just a dac chip in these machines...power supplies,optical drive,clock etc....would it not be the case that all is not equal when using a cd player vs dvd players as a transport.....I'm no electronic engineer but I'd rather use my old arcam cd 82 over my playstation or Sony blueray player into any external dac for cd replay.dvd players,consoles are designed to play multiple types of media....a cd player is designed from the ground up for only one use....the replay of a simple silver shiny disc.

 

[davidf]

I remember switching from a Pioneer DV737 - which was used as a DVD and CD transport, plugged in digitally to a Tag AV32R/192 (at the time) - to a Teac VRDS10, and the difference between the two was pretty big. I didn't know what to expect at the time as I'd always been pretty happy with the Pioneer, but that was enough for me to disbelieve that 'digital is digital, and that digital products that do the same thing create the same end result.

Bluray players are designed, first and foremost, for the reproduction of Bluray Discs. DVD players are designed for the reproduction of DVD discs. Ask them to play CDs and they do the job adequately, but not with the ability of a dedicated CD player. DVD discs usually look pretty shabby on a Bluray player, unless it's a flagship model (Sony BDPS5000ES/Pioneer BDP-LX91, for example) where more budget has gone into other areas than just Bluray playback.

 

[Andrewjvt]

Isn't the op using an external dac?

The question is: can 2 different types of transport sound different using the same dac?
If so, why and how?

 

[Al ears]

The answer is Brexit...or you're mad.....but most likely Brexit.

The difference you hear, is down to the fact it was made by an Immigrant. British made goods all sound better....but Britain doesn't make much any more.

Everything now has got more expensive due to the weak Pound...and we all know, anything expensive sounds better than anything cheap....so what's not to like

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.

*crazy* *unknw*

;-) That Brexit has a lot to answer for....

Yours,

Jean Claude Junker

 

[Al ears]

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.

*crazy* *unknw*

The nurse that syringed my ears was English (long before the Brexit vote)

My best ever upgrade - and free.

Unfortunately, in the UK, this is no longer a recommended practice and many doctors refuse to do it.... pardon?

 

[Al ears]

Isn't the op using an external dac?

The question is: can 2 different types of transport sound different using the same dac? If so, why and how?

And if he is using the same cable to connect each device it's a very valid question. There is very little in the way of differences betweeen either device before the signal gets to the digital out socket. Perhaps we need to know a bit more about how, exactly, he is connecting these devices up (are both devices connected to the Chord DAC simultaneously using different inputs?)

 

[Samd]

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.
*crazy* *unknw*

Waxing lyrical again eh?

 

[CnoEvil]

People who think that everything sounds the same, need their ears syringed...but due to Brexit, all the nurses have gone back to Europe, so there is nobody left to do it. It's great...they save a fortune.
*crazy* *unknw*

I can't afford wax any more...it seems to have gone up in price! *wink*

Waxing lyrical again eh?

 

[Gazzip]

Is it optical or coax link?

This might make a difference given that optical cannot carry any electrical noise from the transport to DAC whereas coaxial can.

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

I understand it will be to do with things like how the transport can get the data from the cd error free, and the reclocking circuits to ensure low jitter since if you feed some dacs with too much jitter, they don't perform as well and that translates into sound quality. Also it's about the mechanism and whether it's bought off the shelf from someone like Sony or if it's made in house because the optics of the mechanism must surely play a part. Also huge i think on sound quality, is the power supply in the transport since if the power supply is coping just with the transport it will be dedicated to its job. Whereas if you use a CD player as a transport which has its own dac, then the power supply is doing more than one thing , which depending on how the circuits are designed could mean interfearance in the delicate transport circuits by the dac circuit.

What you are experiencing is probably the fact that the power supply in the DVD player is not as good and dedicated to the function of playing CDs. It more muddy. It's probably a switching power supply and your roksan I bet has a more stable toroidal supply. The re clocking parts are likely to be of better quality and design for cd, whereas the design idea of the DVD player is probably to play cd through a TVs speakers, so quality doesn't matter so much. The DVD player will send the dac more jitter, which the dac can't handle, whereas the roksan less so, so the dac will work better.

 

[Vladimir]

Is it optical or coax link?

It shouldn't make a difference. Digital is digital.

Optical is very prone to jitter if badly implemented. Coax has impedance issues, you have to get the cable right. Third alternative is the actual transport in the Denon being super cheap PC drive crapola.

 

[Leif]

Is it optical or coax link?

It shouldn't make a difference. Digital is digital.

Optical is very prone to jitter if badly implemented. Coax has impedance issues, you have to get the cable right. Third alternative is the actual transport in the Denon being super cheap PC drive cr*pola.

So if PC drives are cr*pola, how come most of us rip our disks on a PC drive and are quite happy with the result?

 

[davedotco]

PC disc drives do not have to 'play' in real time, CD drives do. A big difference.

Back when I was a dealer I was quite convinced that the difference between CD transports were quite marked. Subjective evaluations of course, but these were things I dealt with every day, so not just a one off impression.

With the advent of better dacs with buffers and reclocking I kind of assumed that this issue was a thing of the past as conventional wisdom has it that transports don't matter.

Maybe another area where 'conventional wisdom' is way off the mark.

 

[CnoEvil]

With the advent of better dacs with buffers and reclocking I kind of assumed that this issue was a thing of the past as conventional wisdom has it that transports don't matter.

This is Hifi....EVERYTHING MATTERS!

(but you know this). *biggrin*

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

PC disc drives do not have to 'play' in real time, CD drives do. A big difference.

Back when I was a dealer I was quite convinced that the difference between CD transports were quite marked. Subjective evaluations of course, but these were things I dealt with every day, so not just a one off impression.

With the advent of better dacs with buffers and reclocking I kind of assumed that this issue was a thing of the past as conventional wisdom has it that transports don't matter.

Maybe another area where 'conventional wisdom' is way off the mark.

id agree with David. And also it's not just simply about a comparison of ripping from a pc cd drive as a comparator to listening to a cd from a transport, as lots of factors come into why a transport can sound good over another, like reading quality and errors, power supply, reclocking, circuit design, firmware, etc etc. So as with all hi fi it's the whole approach to everything, not this kind of 'my streamer is as good as yours as it's the same 0s and 1s' thinking, which seems to exclude all variables to what creates good sound, as there are many.

 

[Vladimir]

The OP thinks expectation bias is for people lacking intelligence and experience with expensive kit. Here lies the true challenge. *smile*