Why oh why does cd always sound best??????

[admin_exported]

using a Chord QBD76 with a macbook pro, and playing through usb, sound is great... but i hooked up a new addition, a Plinius cd player straight into the amp and it sounds better.

I will be getting a digital cable to have the plinius feed the QBD76 as the chord is a better DAC, but why ohh why does cd still have an edge on what is meant to be just ones and zeros?

 

[Andrew Everard]

...And of course there's no guarantee that the Plinius unaided may not sound better than the Plinius/Chord combination...

 

[AlmaataKZ]

... and what about feeding the QBD with higher rez signal?

 

[Anonymous]

unfortunately / fortunately for me, I heard the CD101 transporting into the QBD76 and it is much better than the Plinius on its own.

I have ripped my CD at lossless, but will also try downloading higher res - i need to have cd equivalent, what are likely options?

 

[AlmaataKZ]

Try Linn Records, naim Records and Society of Sound for hi-rez downloads. Many albums have both cd and higher quality versions.

you can also order this cd/dvd combination (it has cd audio and 24/96 and 24/192 versions of the same jazz album) if you want to compare same track but different resolutions, but I found it is not necessary to compare the very same track. Just pick a nice album to your your taste from one of the above sites, get it in hi-rez and you will like!

http://www.designwsound.com/Design_w_Sound/Design_w_Sound_-_Audiophile_Jazz_Prologue_III.html

 

[Craig M.]

have you tried a toslink connection rather then usb?

i haven't tried the usb on my qbd, but the optical was better then usb with my old dacmagic.

 

[Dan Turner]

CD certainly doesn't always sound best. There is no reason why the digital data coming off a CD should be inherently more accurate than that coming from a computer file, however you are taking a pretty high-end CD player in this instance and there are a lot more variables in the computer replay chain. And Craig pointed out another variable too - there may be more.

That said, CD replay only works perfectly (I'm only talking about reading the disc with 100% accuracy here) under perfect conditions. Because the disc is read in real-time and can be subject to dust/scratches etc, any gaps in the data have to be guessed at by the CDP's error correction. Hard disk replay is not limited in this way, so theoretically has the potential to be a more accurate (or at least more reliably accurate) source.

 

[Anonymous]

woollyjoe:
... why ohh why does cd still have an edge on what is meant to be just ones and zeros?

Because it is not the ones and zeros that count but what your gear does with it. Apparently the way the Chord handles the usb data could have been 'better' (in your definition), at least compared to the way it handles the toslink data.

 

[nads]

cant say that CD is any better for me.

must be the way you are playing your 1's and 0's.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

woollyjoe:
using a Chord QBD76 with a macbook pro, and playing through usb, sound is great... but i hooked up a new addition, a Plinius cd player straight into the amp and it sounds better.

I will be getting a digital cable to have the plinius feed the QBD76 as the chord is a better DAC, but why ohh why does cd still have an edge on what is meant to be just ones and zeros?

I'm surprised but there is no way I would use USB with a £3k DAC! Try a decent coaxial cable and also, your macbook could be the issue. Are you using iTunes? It doesn't just send the 1s and 0s to your DAC. This is probably where the sound gets messed with and why it doesn's sound as good. Try another player like Winamp or Foobar.