Good cd player and a great DAC or great cd player?

Conscious,

We started off looking at receivers: the Marantz, the Onkyo, the Denon, and the Harmon Kardon...the high end of mass market stuff.

When we looked at separates, we looked at Adcom and Rotel...both of which are more expensive than the Outlaw Audio, but I didn't think sounded nearly as good. I read the reviews, and everyone said Outlaw was an amazing buy for the money. We wanted something with Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS, etc, and component switching that would still sound great with 2 channel audio. (The 950 has an analog bypass.) And with deal they were running, we were able to get the 7 monoblocks and biamp our tower speakers. We explored the idea of getting a used pre-amp, but still couldn't approach what we wanted in our price range.

What we didn't look at was the integrated amps from the high end companies. Audio Research makes an integrated amp for $3k, Linn makes a Linn Classik Movie System integrated DVD/CD/Tuner/Preamp/Processor/Power amp for $3k (which I can't believe can sound that good for the money, but I am a Linn fan), Musical Fidelity makes a few integrated amps, as does Moon, Krell makes a one for their KAV series. Actually, so does Outlaw Audio. There are a ton out there. I'm sure some of them might be better than the Outlaw, but I didn't do the comparisons. There are a ton on Audiogon for fairly cheap.

My Bel Canto should be arriving sometime early next week. I plan to compare it against the Linn Ikemi (borrowed), and also try the Ikemi as a transport to see how much of a difference it makes. I'll let you know how it sounds.

Getting a seperate transport and DAC does NOT necessarily mean better sound. And I have found in many instances its not as good. For $2500 you should get a cd player with great out of the box performance. There are a handful of players in the price range. THe Wadia 301 leads the pack in my opinion. And for a few reasons. You can buy a 301 for under $2500 and then down the road spend another $900/$1600 for some basic/reference modifications that will give you better imaging,resolution and detail than pretty much any player at any pricepoint. Ive been a big fan of Wadia, due to their modular upgradeable design philosophy.

But if your going to be spending money on a system worth of about $20k, put most of that investment into the best speakers you can get your hands on as they(along with room treatments)are the most critical part of a quality sound system. After the speakers and room treatments comes the source unit, then amplification, then cabling.

I've heard the argument for putting most of your money into your speakers before. Often the people who advance it say that speakers are the most critical part of the sound system, but they don't say why. Or they say, well, that's the part that actually moves the air. Or that the speakers are responsible for some large percentage of the total distortion in the system, 35 % for example. I believe these arguments, with or without the distraction of figures, miss the point.

Ritteri, I agree with you that a separate transport and DAC are definitely not a guarantee in themselves of good reproduction. I even think, like you, that unless there is a compelling reason to get a two-box system ( a reason such as an upgrade opportunity too good to miss, or a combination which your ears tell you beats everything else at the same price ), then a single-box player is a much better bet.

You may choose to develop a system around a pair of wonderful speakers, but unless you can immediately afford to purchase all your other components at the same level of performance, you will then wait for your upgrades as you listen to the weaknesses of your upsteam units in horrible clarity. Whereas if you have a fine source, upgrades downstream will progressively reveal what a fine buy you made at the start. This is why it makes more sense to start building a system at the source.

Joyelyse, I too would like to hear how the Ikemi turns out in your tests, if you get the chance to post !

Tobias: Reason why most people state to put most of the money into the speakers is due to the fact that mankind in general has yet to master the physics of sound reproduction. We can store,decode and transmit a signal that is therotically close to perfect in the digital/analogue line level realm, but we cant do this anywhere near close to the same level on the output(speaker/transducers themselves)stage which is what we actually "hear".

Its a well proven fact that the speakers, their placement and the actual room acoustics are the absolute most critical part of ANY system regardless of price. I would rather take a killer set of speakers placed properly in a well set-up room with a minimal money invested in source and amplification from a price point of view then get average sounding speakers with better source and amplification. I personally think that budgetwise anywhere from 50-75% of the money should go into speakers that match up accoustically to the room they will be going into. If your budget is in the real world area of about $5-$10k that would mean investing about $2500-$7500 on the speakers themselves with about $2500-$5000 left over for source,amplification and cabling. I sure as hell know you can get incredible sounding transducers for $2500 no question. And $2500 leaves alot left over for good quality source,amplification and cabling.

Hell if the budget is less than$5k(say $2500 total)I still know that there are real good speakers in the $1250 range. And $1250 is still plenty for a high sound quality source and amplification, still leaving enough for some good cabling. But once again, most of the budget NEEDS to go into the speakers no question. They are the theoretical weak link in the chain.

Agree with Ritteri. While I do believe that all links in the chain are equally important, I desided to build my system around speakers. Why? Speakers set the final limitations on your system: even "cheap" CD player usually can do certain kinds of music quite well, but being harsh on complicate orchestral pieces. But if the speakers become "bad" for you, it won't be good on any genre. My 'old good' NAD CD player sounded pretty good with new Revel M20 speakers (on most genres). But I hardly imagine my new Moon Nova (I consider it as a very good source) would benefit to the sound being coupled with old-cheap Mission 702 speakers.