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Is it all in my head?

Okay, sad to admit it but I just did an a/b comparison, granted it was only on one dubbed cd, between my musical fidelity a3.2 cd players dac and my new parasound z dac and could hear absolutely no difference. When I got my dac a few days ago I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, but spank me and call me sally, I can't for the life of me distinguish between the two. I hooked it up such that I could go between the two on the fly with a press of a button. Hmmmm... I could hear a difference between my denon dvd 2900 and the musical fidelity a3.2 but no dice between the a3.2 and z dac. I can also hear slight, slight differences between i.c.'s and speaker cables so I dunno. I think I may be spitting the kool-aid out if it doesn't give me a buzz anymore, or else I'm gonna buy some of those ufo thingies to put on my windows (sorry G).

Doh...
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erndog's avatar
erndog
261 posts
 
Funny post.

I wouldn't worry about it. Leave the dac in there for a few weeks.... then take it out and see what you think then.
mezmo
516 posts
 
Probably not. Generally, in my opinion, I wouldn't expect to be able to significantly "improve" a well-designed integrated CDP by relegating it to transport duties and adding an off-board DAC. (I'm assuming that's what we're talking about?). Just too many new variables, and unless you're spending orders of magnitude more on the DAC than the CDP (and why do that), you could easily end up doing worse. So, under the circumstances, equal performance is likely not such a bad result. Not what you were after, I know, but maybe not all that surprising.

Now for what may be your central question -- then why bother? Personally, if your goal is to continue spinning CDs, I wouldn't. Full stop. But if you're looking, now or in the future, to convert your medium and your transport to something computer-based, then an off-board DAC is of course required (unless you've got a usable digital in on your CDP and can thus repurpose its DAC...). And in that case, if you find a combo that equals or betters your reference CDP, then you totally win. Conversion succeed! Or, at any rate, that's how I look at it.
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