Thors1982 Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 My CD player is shot I think, it randomly plays cds when it feels like it. I am currently using my Home Theater PC to play CDs and I think I would benefit from a nice CD player. Can anyone recommend one, so far I have no clue where to look and the only one I have really looked into is the Denon DCM-380 for about $250. Any suggestions are welcome, mainly I just want a nice cd players 5-6 disc, i thought about the 100-300 disc sony one but I don't like sony audio stuff. My current components are 2 RF-7s 1 RC-7 2 RS-7s 1 RSW-15 Denon 3803 HTS3500 Monster Power Center Onkyo DXC220 6 disk CD Player Mitsubishi WS-42311 42" widescreen HDTV 1080i Thanks for your suggestions Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 ---------------- On 5/31/2005 12:40:07 PM Thors1982 wrote: I am currently using my Home Theater PC to play CDs and I think I would benefit from a nice CD player. ---------------- You couldn't be farther from the truth. An HTPC is the ideal medium for playing CDs. Actually, you should cut out the playing part altogether, and rip the CDs to your hard drive in an uncompressed format such as WAV or FLAC. I am not sure whether you're using analog outs from your HTPC sound card, or using a digital output. In either case, the limiting factors are the DACs on the sound card or your Denon receiver respectively. If you feel that the DACs are inferior, just get an outboard DAC, such as my MSB Link III, which cost me under $250 on Audiogon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thors1982 Posted May 31, 2005 Author Share Posted May 31, 2005 Well, because i have like 2000 mp3's I haven't used a WAV format :-) I try to get 192k or 256k bit rate mp3's. But mainly my mp3's are just a large music database for fun and when I want to go quality I to play the CD. Using WAV's temp would be a great idea for replicating a 5 disc player though. Maybe, you can help me :-) cause actually I don't want to buy a CD player (I am out of shelves, lol), but I thought a CD player would be better quality than the HTPC. This is the sound card I just bought (BlueGears/HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829127001 I will be using digital out, hope thats best, if not i can always attach both and switch when needed. I am still new to all this so im not 100% what the MSB Link III would do for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 ---------------- On 5/31/2005 1:31:57 PM Thors1982 wrote: I try to get 192k or 256k bit rate mp3's. But mainly my mp3's are just a large music database for fun and when I want to go quality I to play the CD. Using WAV's temp would be a great idea for replicating a 5 disc player though. ---------------- I try to stay away from mp3s altogether. On my system anything below 256 sounds like it's coming out of an elevator speaker. If you must use compression, try to get Ogg Vorbis or MPC files at 320kbit ---------------- On 5/31/2005 1:31:57 PM Thors1982 wrote: Maybe, you can help me :-) cause actually I don't want to buy a CD player (I am out of shelves, lol), but I thought a CD player would be better quality than the HTPC. This is the sound card I just bought (BlueGears/HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829127001 I will be using digital out, hope thats best, if not i can always attach both and switch when needed. I am still new to all this so im not 100% what the MSB Link III would do for me. ---------------- I am not familiar with the card, but when using the digital output, it shouldn't matter. The reason I suggested an external DAC, was because a lot of people don't like the way receiver DACs deal with music. So to bypass that problem, you'd wire it as follows: Digital Out -> DAC -> stereo cable to one of the inputs on the receiver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thors1982 Posted May 31, 2005 Author Share Posted May 31, 2005 I am kinda worried about my sound card not being good enough now... I know it will work but at what quality, i dunno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dzapper Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 According to our resident digital expert, sfogg, the Benchmark DAC1 is a tremendous value for $995 new. It is small and unobtrusive, 1 rack high and 1/2 rack wide ( 2 1/2"x 9"?) Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KungFuNat Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 the problem with most soundcards is that they upsample all 44.1khz to 48khz before output. even if you can set 44.1 output, its downsampled from 48khz.. very few cards avoid this problem, and the soundblaster cards are the worst offenders.. normally upsampling isnt a problem, but the way windows does it was made for efficiency not quality. the only soundcards i know of that avoid this problem natively are RME cards. other than that, you need to see if you can enable ASIO output or kernel streaming... i have no experience or even heard of this soundcard, so i cant help you much on how to set it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjohnsonhp Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 The HTPC is a convienent way to listen to music... If you want a great value on a new CD only player the Onix XCD-88 at $299 is impressive. It is a tweaked version of the Shanling player used by MusicHall at over $500. You can upgrade the XCD-88 in stages down the road if you want. I've been listening to this unit for a few days as a loaner...nice for the price. For big bucks I've read great results from many that use the Emperical Audio modifed Perpetual technology P3A DAC...not cheap but reviewed better than the Modwright version. The p3a could be used with the HTPC, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 ---------------- On 5/31/2005 12:40:07 PM Thors1982 wrote: Can anyone recommend one, so far I have no clue where to look and the only one I have really looked into is the Denon DCM-380 for about $250. ---------------- I have the Denon DCM-380 myself. It replaced a 13 year old Sharp DX-200 CD plyaer (which got relegated to the bedroom system). So far, I like it. Sounds clean with good imaging. It does sound a little bit better than my old player. The 5-disk carosal is convient since I don't have to get up and change disks as much as I did (plus the old CD player did not even have a remote). Been a good solid unit to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben. Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 ---------------- On 5/31/2005 9:50:39 PM NatGun wrote: the problem with most soundcards is that they upsample all 44.1khz to 48khz before output. even if you can set 44.1 output, its downsampled from 48khz.. very few cards avoid this problem, ---------------- Really? That's an incredibly stupid thing to do, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 ---------------- On 5/31/2005 10:34:49 PM ben. wrote: Really? That's an incredibly stupid thing to do, I think. ---------------- It's part of the AC97 specifications. Every creative labs card and/or cheap card does it except the Chaintek AV-710 $20, the santa cruz turtle beach which is $45, and every E-MU, M-Audio doesnt resample from 44>48. The big problem isnt that it's resampling all the audio to 48, it's that it does SUCH a horrible job because the hardware resamplers are NOT audiophile grade. -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 ---------------- On 6/1/2005 5:29:25 AM Erukian wrote: ---------------- On 5/31/2005 10:34:49 PM ben. wrote: Really? That's an incredibly stupid thing to do, I think. ---------------- It's part of the AC97 specifications. Every creative labs card and/or cheap card does it except the Chaintek AV-710 $20, the santa cruz turtle beach which is $45, and every E-MU, M-Audio doesnt resample from 44>48. The big problem isnt that it's resampling all the audio to 48, it's that it does SUCH a horrible job because the hardware resamplers are NOT audiophile grade. -Joe ---------------- I believe the C-Media chip is also capable of handling 44.1kHz without upsampling it. At this point, I think Creative cards are the only ones that require extensive driver modifications and still don't do ASIO correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 At the low end, people here were raving about a Toshiba DVD player that sounded good, the tubed Ah! Tjoibe (sp?) is also quite popular Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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