Is it really worth it to buy a external DAC to hook your cd player. A
salesman have told me that no matter if you have a cheapo $50,oo cd
player, if you hook it with a external DAC you are going to have the
best possible sound out of a cd. If this is true, wich are the
recommended brands? Thanks!

insoc wrote:
Is it really worth it to buy a external DAC to hook your cd player. A
salesman have told me that no matter if you have a cheapo $50,oo cd
player, if you hook it with a external DAC you are going to have the
best possible sound out of a cd. If this is true, wich are the
recommended brands? Thanks!

Yeah, I'll bet the salesman told you that. And if you already owned a
DAC, he'd have told you about something else you don't have that would
make a world of difference to your system. Anytime someone tells you
that such-as-such is the right way to go "no matter what," it's time to
walk away.

There are people who will argue that an external DAC will make a real
dfference. I am not one of them. But even if you believe that, it still
might not make sense for you, depending on what kind of a system you're
installing it in.

I have a suggestion: Put away your credit card for a few days, and tell
us what your system is right now. Don't worry about how good or bad it
is; we promise not to insult it. Just lay it out, and you'll get some
advice on the best way to upgrade. If you could tell us how big a room
it's in, and what kinds of music you listen to, that would help.

bob

insoc wrote:
Is it really worth it to buy a external DAC to hook your cd player. A
salesman have told me that no matter if you have a cheapo $50,oo cd
player, if you hook it with a external DAC you are going to have the
best possible sound out of a cd. If this is true, wich are the
recommended brands? Thanks!

An external DAC will always make your CD player sound
different. If we take the stand that the goal is to reduce jitter,
you can go by a few rules. These only apply for DAC with reclocking!

The total jitter of the system is close to the jitter of the DAC. That
means if you buy a better one than your CD player you will get an
improvement. However if your CD transport is the better one it would
actually make it worse to add a DAC.

A better CD transport will always result in better jitter. It is not
true that a DAC can eliminate all incoming jitter. However the effect
is usually a relative small one. Reducing the jitter of the CD
transport by 200ps will perhaps only decrease the jitter of the total
system by 30ps.

The quality and sound of the analog part of the DAC will always have
an distinct effect and is a matter of personal taste.

I can recommend each of these ones as a good buy in there price range.

Musical Fidelity X-DAC V.3
Benchmark DAC 1
Meridian G68
--
NewsGuy.Com 30Gb $9.95 Carry Forward and On Demand Bandwidth

wrote:
insoc wrote:
Is it really worth it to buy a external DAC to hook your cd player. A
salesman have told me that no matter if you have a cheapo $50,oo cd
player, if you hook it with a external DAC you are going to have the
best possible sound out of a cd. If this is true, wich are the
recommended brands? Thanks!

An external DAC will always make your CD player sound
different.

Poppycock.

If we take the stand that the goal is to reduce jitter,
you can go by a few rules. These only apply for DAC with reclocking!

The total jitter of the system is close to the jitter of the DAC. That
means if you buy a better one than your CD player you will get an
improvement. However if your CD transport is the better one it would
actually make it worse to add a DAC.

A better CD transport will always result in better jitter. It is not
true that a DAC can eliminate all incoming jitter. However the effect
is usually a relative small one. Reducing the jitter of the CD
transport by 200ps will perhaps only decrease the jitter of the total
system by 30ps.

But none of this will make any difference unless your CD player has
audible jitter. Almost none of them do, to my knowledge.

The quality and sound of the analog part of the DAC will always have
an distinct effect and is a matter of personal taste.

Or, more likely, an indistinct effect. Fancy labels and price tags are
a matter of personal taste.

I can recommend each of these ones as a good buy in there price range.

Musical Fidelity X-DAC V.3
Benchmark DAC 1
Meridian G68

Fine products all, but the chances of them making a significant
difference to the OP are slim.

bob
--
NewsGuy.Com 30Gb $9.95 Carry Forward and On Demand Bandwidth

bob wrote:
wrote:
An external DAC will always make your CD player sound
different.

Poppycock.

Fisk.

But none of this will make any difference unless your CD player has
audible jitter. Almost none of them do, to my knowledge.

Most of them do from my experience.

The quality and sound of the analog part of the DAC will always have
an distinct effect and is a matter of personal taste.

Or, more likely, an indistinct effect.

No. It is always a distinct reproducible effect.

Fancy labels and price tags are
a matter of personal taste.

Yes. But that is irrelevant for this discussion.

I can recommend each of these ones as a good buy in there price range.

Musical Fidelity X-DAC V.3
Benchmark DAC 1
Meridian G68

Fine products all, but the chances of them making a significant
difference to the OP are slim.

I know from personal experience that they will all make a significant
difference to most players and all cheap players.


--

wrote:
bob wrote:
wrote:
An external DAC will always make your CD player sound
different.

Poppycock.

Fisk.

But none of this will make any difference unless your CD player has
audible jitter. Almost none of them do, to my knowledge.

Most of them do from my experience.

Excuse me? Please tell us exactly how you have come by the knowledge
that most CD players have audible levels of jitter.

bob


--

On 25 Mar 2006 00:57:52 GMT, wrote:

Fine products all, but the chances of them making a significant
difference to the OP are slim.

I know from personal experience that they will all make a significant
difference to most players and all cheap players.

I plugged a Micromega BS DAC into a budget NAD CD player and the
difference is palpable - better sound stage, tons more subtlety etc.
If you want to reduce jitter feed the dac from your PC via apple
Airport Express.

I paid UK 60 for it on ebay ...

Neil


--

wrote:

I plugged a Micromega BS DAC into a budget NAD CD player and the
difference is palpable - better sound stage, tons more subtlety etc.

Sounds like you didn't match levels.

If you want to reduce jitter feed the dac from your PC via apple
Airport Express.

The AE's analog output has very high jitter--not too surprising, given
all it's trying to do in a cheap, tiny package--so using an external
DAC will certainly bring improvement. The same cannot be said of the
average CD player, however.

bob


--

I picked myself up an old Cambridge Audio Dacmagic 2i a while ago (=A350
on eBay). I primarily got it to hook my PC through. This gave much
better quality sound, not suprisingly, due to cheapo soundcard built
into the motherboard of the PC. Can really notice the difference
between MP3's and lossless Flac's now.

I also hooked my Playstation 2 though it, which gives a slight
improvement. I think sound here is really held back by low quality,
highly compressed samples used in computer games.

Since there was a spare input on the DAC I also hooked up my CD player,
a Marantz CD4000. Here the difference in sound was very minimal, but
still existed. Through the DAC I got a slightly sharper, more defined
sound, but it is only a slight difference, my wife couldn't tell any
difference...

Which basically backs up what has been said here, a DAC will only
improve things, if the DAC is the weak point in the chain. If your CD
player already has a good DAC, your going to have to get a much better
external DAC to improve things, anything less is a step backwards. Of
course if you have other sources with not so good DAC's (e.g. computer,
console etc), it makes a lot more sense.

Rest of my setup:-
Cambridge Audio A4
Cambridge Audio P500 (power amp)
Gale Gold Monitors MkII.
Cambridge Audio Atlantic interconnects.
Gale XL160 speaker cable.
Bi-amped and Bi-wired.

Arthur


--