charlieboy Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 Iv'e never really had a great cd player to speak of. Probably the best was an adcom cd and dac combo. I just got in my Musical Fidelity 308CR cd player today and I'm telling you right now its like I was listening with a thin sheet over my head before. I'm finding it hard to describe but snare hits seem crisper and Ive heard a few things that I havent on cd's I've heard hundreds of times. My Conrad johnson pre is out till next week so I'm listening with a SS yahmaha right now as my pre for my wright 2a3 monoblocks and it sounds nice. I will be listening much more this weekend! ;D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwinr Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 Thanks for your observations. Most of the inexpensive good quality CD players have gone, leaving us with the DVD/CD hybrids. The sound of dedicated CD players is well worth the extra money. The other thnig I don't like about using a DVD player to spin CD's, is the programing functions when playing CD's. Or lack, thereof. Random play and delete play are not options easily accessible on many DVD players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 Sony went back to offering some SACD/CD models without DVD. They must have been listening to the audiophiles who hate having video circuits in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmdridq Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 About 10 years ago I had a Sony player that had their 'delete bank' feature. You could program the player to skip specific tracks on a CD and the next time you played it, the machine would remember your picks. I loved that feature, as most rock albums always seem to have a few horrid tracks. Alas, I got rid of the player only to discover that their newer models do not have this feature. Does anyone know of any players that still have this feature? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted May 28, 2005 Share Posted May 28, 2005 a pc might be another alternative... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmesa Posted May 28, 2005 Share Posted May 28, 2005 Are there any good digital CD players that just dish off the signal in the untouched digital format? Seems that would not be a very expensive item which would allow a superior preprocessor up to the converting task -being that you have a good one that is. It seems liek a waste to spend a lot of a cd player after buyiung a nice reciever/prepros.. thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmikid Posted May 28, 2005 Share Posted May 28, 2005 ---------------- On 5/27/2005 10:55:39 PM cmdridq wrote: About 10 years ago I had a Sony player that had their 'delete bank' feature. You could program the player to skip specific tracks on a CD and the next time you played it, the machine would remember your picks. I loved that feature, as most rock albums always seem to have a few horrid tracks. Alas, I got rid of the player only to discover that their newer models do not have this feature. Does anyone know of any players that still have this feature? ---------------- The Marantz CD80 had this too. Favourite tracks for about 200 cd's. You could also program the title/artist so it would roll over the display after inserting. Great 17bits player from early 90's. Sold it, should have kept is as a player to connect to a DAC! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JewishAMerPrince Posted May 28, 2005 Share Posted May 28, 2005 I too just went the dedicated CD player route after becoming disenchanted with "all in one" CD/DVD players. I've recently become the proud owner of a Shanling CDT100 which has four or five different types of output to choose from. It has upsampling, pcm, tube, upsampling tube, ss analog and upsampling ss analog outputs. So far the tube output wins. Unit looks great and it's futureistic appearance attracts a lot of attention from my son's 16 yo friends. It is purely single play and doesn't waste any processing power on programming. Jerry Rappaport Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fletcherkane Posted May 28, 2005 Share Posted May 28, 2005 ---------------- On 5/27/2005 10:55:39 PM cmdridq wrote: About 10 years ago I had a Sony player that had their 'delete bank' feature. You could program the player to skip specific tracks on a CD and the next time you played it, the machine would remember your picks. I loved that feature, as most rock albums always seem to have a few horrid tracks. Alas, I got rid of the player only to discover that their newer models do not have this feature. Does anyone know of any players that still have this feature? ---------------- Sony's new Mega storage changers have this feature. I have the three hundred disc changer, and you can program it to skip tracks. You can also group your albums by genre so you can hit random play and only have it play randomly from certain genre discs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmdridq Posted May 28, 2005 Share Posted May 28, 2005 ---------------- On 5/28/2005 11:59:38 AM fletcherkane wrote: ---------------- On 5/27/2005 10:55:39 PM cmdridq wrote: About 10 years ago I had a Sony player that had their 'delete bank' feature. You could program the player to skip specific tracks on a CD and the next time you played it, the machine would remember your picks. I loved that feature, as most rock albums always seem to have a few horrid tracks. Alas, I got rid of the player only to discover that their newer models do not have this feature. Does anyone know of any players that still have this feature? ---------------- Sony's new Mega storage changers have this feature. I have the three hundred disc changer, and you can program it to skip tracks. You can also group your albums by genre so you can hit random play and only have it play randomly from certain genre discs. ---------------- And once you tell it which tracks you don't want to hear, it will save and remember that the next time you play that CD? Which model do you have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted May 29, 2005 Share Posted May 29, 2005 Dac's are like speakers, every brand has a different sonic signature, some are heavier with bass than others, some have forward highs, some are more laid back, some are fun and jumpy, some are smooth as silk. From my experience, the DAC>Amp>Speaker hookup is just a big balancing act of sonic signatures. Once you get to the point where your happy with your DAC, when you know it's fidelity is higher than what your speakers are producing, then all you have to do is balance the sonic signature of the DAC w/ that of the speakers by finding a nice amp to compliment both styles. For me it's the TEAC A-L700P tripath amp. My AKM DAC has a very fun/lively sound compared to some from Wolfson, Burr Brown, Apogee, etc. the TEAC is a very smooth/natural/realistic sounding amp, so I get my dynamics from the DAC and the Speakers but the amp just smooths things out to a comfortable level. I doubt anyone found anything interesting in what I said above, but there's a point in there somwhere. -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted May 29, 2005 Share Posted May 29, 2005 Ehh, time to do my usual "use an HTPC as a transport" speech. I am sure everyone is bored of it already, but yeah - PC->DAC->... is on par or better than ANY CD player... depending on the quality of the DAC of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted May 29, 2005 Share Posted May 29, 2005 ---------------- On 5/29/2005 5:11:11 PM meuge wrote: Ehh, time to do my usual "use an HTPC as a transport" speech. I am sure everyone is bored of it already, but yeah - PC->DAC->... is on par or better than ANY CD player... depending on the quality of the DAC of course. ---------------- Totally 100% correct there. Any crappy digital-out from a computer full of jitter connected to a high end DAC, like the Benchmark DAC-1 will beat any system because the high end DAC's can handle TONS of jitter. Oh, and hopefully the files on the PC being transported to the DAC are lossless as well which helps. Lossless for those not-in-the-know is a 100% bit for bit copy of the CD on the hard-drive, but compressed down w/o losing any bits. Sort of like a .zip file. Best thing is if you have lots of CD's like me, you might have about 5000-6000 songs in your library (which i have all ripped to lossless), so i can switch back and forth between any song at ease, rate all the songs 1-5 stars, have the software track how many times i play em then graph out my listening trends. Have the software skip certian songs, create playlists to burn to CD for friends or for my car, search for a specific song among ALL my song titles using a keyword and then just double clicking on the one I want. Gapless playback, crossfading, parametric equalizers, resampling, replaygain, the list goes on and on. Once you use a PC as a lossless transport, it's hard to imagine going back to a standalone cd-player. At least for me it is. -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted May 29, 2005 Share Posted May 29, 2005 ---------------- On 5/29/2005 5:28:42 PM Erukian wrote: ---------------- On 5/29/2005 5:11:11 PM meuge wrote: Ehh, time to do my usual "use an HTPC as a transport" speech. I am sure everyone is bored of it already, but yeah - PC->DAC->... is on par or better than ANY CD player... depending on the quality of the DAC of course. ---------------- Totally 100% correct there. Any crappy digital-out from a computer full of jitter connected to a high end DAC, like the Benchmark DAC-1 will beat any system because the high end DAC's can handle TONS of jitter. ---------------- I can imagine that some of the inferior sound cards might have issues with digital output, but I cannot imagine a decent card, like an EMU, or any of the Envy24HT-based cards outputting a high-jitter stream. As far as I know, jitter is a result of timing errors, which are inherent in any transport that reads the track without utilizing a hard clock. But this is clearly not an issue with PCs, since any good sound card's digital output will be tied to the main CPU and its clock generator, which have picosecond precision. So from what I understand, a decent soundcard will output a far less jitter-infested SPDIF stream than most transports. ---------------- On 5/29/2005 5:28:42 PM Erukian wrote: Oh, and hopefully the files on the PC being transported to the DAC are lossless as well which helps. Lossless for those not-in-the-know is a 100% bit for bit copy of the CD on the hard-drive, but compressed down w/o losing any bits. Sort of like a .zip file. Best thing is if you have lots of CD's like me, you might have about 5000-6000 songs in your library (which i have all ripped to lossless), so i can switch back and forth between any song at ease, rate all the songs 1-5 stars, have the software track how many times i play em then graph out my listening trends. Have the software skip certian songs, create playlists to burn to CD for friends or for my car, search for a specific song among ALL my song titles using a keyword and then just double clicking on the one I want. Gapless playback, crossfading, parametric equalizers, resampling, replaygain, the list goes on and on. Once you use a PC as a lossless transport, it's hard to imagine going back to a standalone cd-player. At least for me it is. -Joe ---------------- I'm totally with you on the rest of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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