+1 very true. You can do both. I still like to pull out a vinyl disk every week or two. But I listen to mostly new music the other 20 hours a week.
Ruminations On CD Players
After multiple factory rebuilds, I'm ready to replace my twenty year old Arcam CD-73 CD player. I've looked through lists of recommended CD players in the $2000 range, and have noticed that some are all-inclusive while others have separate transports and DACs. Other than ease of replacement, what are the benefits of having the transport and DAC separate? Any recommendations on CD players in this price range? I only have music CDs so don't need anything that can do more than that.
Thanks,
John Cotner
New Ulm, MN
118 responses Add your response
Streaming sucks. Why.......because people Don't sit there and enjoy a certain song or complete album...they bounce around playing 1 minute of this song and 30 sec. of the next song etc...etc. ..Put on vinyl and you are forced the listen to your beautiful albums the way the artist intended you to hear them...completely |
A lot of over simplified cliches going on here. Let’s look at a few.
1) streaming is great because it facilitates exploration of new music, and people that listen to the same stuff all the time are dinosaurs. Well, streaming does make it easier to hear new music. However the CD era ushered this in, because the cost of producing and storing CDs was lower than vinyl. In Classical Music, budget labels such as Naxos and Independents such as Chandos, Hyperion, and Bridge and a raft of others gave exposure to thousands of previously little known composers. Streaming lowers the barriers again, but the trend was well on its way before streaming. Internet Radio is another great way to discover unfamiliar music. The Dinosaur Issue-most people here are on the wrong side of fifty and while we have our favorites, and keep listening to them, that is still a heck of a lot of music. I have several thousand CDs on my shelves. Several hundred of them are favorites and it is a rare CD that I don’t enjoy. Frequently I pull something that I haven’t played in 30 years and then wonder why I haven’t given it more love, and it becomes a new favorite. 2) Streaming sucks because it facilitates ADHD style listening, and artists intended you to listen to a whole album at a shot. Streaming does allow one to jump around. In my genre I still listen to whole albums most of the, even when streaming. For example if I am listening to Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, the chances that I will want to follow the epic first movement with the Can Can by Offenbach isn’t great. However this week I have been obsessed by a short work of J.S. Bach, the Fourth Fugue from Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier. I pulled up 5 different Pianists during the week on Apple Music that I didn’t have in my collection. Wonderful! And we have no evidence that Bach intended people to play or listen to all 24 of the Preludes and Fugues in one sitting so no sacrilege committed there. Not every pop album is Sargent Pepper or DSOM. Most Motown albums until Marvin Gaye What’s Going On were just random collections of singles. The artist and the label expected you to buy 45s, and the albums were issued as a way to buy multiple records at once when the lp format began to be popular with consumers. Miles Davis albums were someone editing hours of tape into a 45 minute finished product, and I doubt that Miles expected people to inhale them in one sitting or viewed the outcome as a planned journey.
These technologies are not mutually exclusive. One can happily play their physical media and also listen to streaming. Or not. I don’t think that we have to badger people to do it one way or the highway |
@mahler123 "These technologies are not mutually exclusive. One can happily play their physical media and also listen to streaming. Or not. I don’t think that we have to badger people to do it one way or the highway"
+1 |
I gave up on CD players. Library got too complicated. So, FLAC form a PC. I can then use a very good DAC. I am not aware of any CD player for any price with a DAC that can beat some I know of for $100, let alone a RME, CORD, Denifritz etc. CD transports are inherently SYNCHRONOUS, so you are stuck with the transports clock. If it was good enough, fine. You lose all the issues of not well implemented USB and PCM outputs. Big IF. My best CD player was the old "last" tray style Rotel. Internal DAC was garbage compared to today but excellent in the day. I used at that time a SOA Wolfson. Now, a PC, JRiver or MusicBee into a JDS Atom+ blew it away plus I can find my music, drag half a dozen CDs to the play list and walk away. |
@tvrgeek "I am not aware of any CD player for any price with a DAC that can beat some I know of for $100, let alone a RME, CORD, Denifritz etc"
Hyperbole! What high end CD players have you listened to please detail? Any of these for example amongst them Vitus, Esoteric, Metronome, CH Precision, Neodio, Goldmund, etc? |
Several in the high end stores. Did not pay attention to the brand but hooked up to very high end systems. One was a Moon, Another a Mac. What you may be missing is how good a select number of inexpensive DACs really are. My dirt cheap Atom+ is much smoother than any DAC I have tested in my desk system under the price of a Aries.* It is the only one that tames the sibilance of a Joni Mitchel, Judy Collins, or brass edginess of Harry James. I have heard multi-thousand dollar CD players in the stores that did not. I have heard multi-thousand dollar DACs that did not. Now, what is critical to everyone is not the same. You may ignore what irritates me and vise-versa. Can you adjust in your high end transport gain in the digital domain to prevent filter overshoot? Does it do it it's self for you? Can you match your filters to emphasize detail for headphones vs speakers? I do not believe any you listed do. As both a music lover and an engineer, I know the transport is basically irrelevant. Any $20 disk player is as close to perfect as it gets to read a disk without error. The sound is all about the DAC, mostly the reconstruction and analog stage. It was not always true. Back in the day we did not have decent buffers and clocks so going back to the Phillips POOGE days, there were real improvements to be made. Now, it is my experience the only improvement is to the prestige CD player bank account. Of course placebo and ego are totally relevant and I don't dismiss or criticize for that. If it makes you feel better, then well you feel better and that is great. Enjoyment is the bottom line. If $15,000 worth of billet aluminum and slick advertising makes your music better for you, by all means. Someday I may hear something that changes my mind. Here in N.C., we don't have too many opportunities. Just went through Richmond, DC, and Baltimore with little progress. I would be far more impressed if someone like CORD slapped a decent DAC into a $200 transport. Use real engineering rather than advertising. *My next possible upgrade is to compare the Aries, Qutest, RME and maybe a Geselli to see if they can surpass my lowly JDS. Nothing SMSL, Topping, Schiit, or IFI has so far for the specific issue I hear. Amazon probably hates me. Is there a higher level? Does Dave sound better? Not that I can hear and I have heard a Qutest vs Dave in a store. But I am not 30 any more either and I only listen to speakers, not headphones. |
I’d never dispute the advantage you cite! In fact, I’m finding it’s been harder and harder to find CDs I want to buy. This has in fact been going on for some time. But this is not for lack of trying! I spend a lot of time on spotify looking around for possibilities. The "problem" is me. It’s an idiosyncrasy of mine that I’m very album-focused, rather than artist-focused. It’s not at all uncommon for me to own only one or two recordings from a single artist, because when I compare their entire output, those are the ones that really grab me. The rest, I can do without. And repeated listening rarely changes my opinion. If I didn’t like something 10 years ago, hearing it again almost never changes my initial impressions. Similarly, I favor a small number of visual artists, photographers and poets, whose work I go back to again and again. Restaurants, too. It’s just the way I’m wired, I guess. If you want to call if "Neanderthal", that’s OK -- I don’t take it personally! ;o)
|
@tvrgeek Your perspective on things fits right in with ASR. Whatever works for you have at. |
Ironic. I find ASR useful and informative as I do have an engineering background, designed and modeled in Spice amplifiers, crossovers, and preamps. But most of us understand specs as currently understood are not the last word. I'll take a Hegel over a Benchmark amp any day. The irony is, I was tossed off ASR because I believed ( know) I could hear the difference between DACs and amplifiers. My wife can do with more precision than I. I suggested load variances as one factor effecting sound. I also mentioned dynamic compression in tweeters. Both quite real, measurable, but not in Amir's playbook. Harder to measure is the effect on IPS and VAS from bass transients with poor board layout or insufficient dynamic current. Again very real. I can even model it. I found by testing, tweeter breakup causing IM making upper midrange edgy. Again, Amir does not believe this so he banned me. Not exactly scientific in my book, but it is his site. I only have about 500 CDs on my server. Hitting Goodwill every week to grab any 69 cent one that looks' even mildly good. I have not gone streaming yet as it takes too much effort. I am an old guy and do not live with a phone attached to my hand and don't own a tablet. Eventually. Soooo much great music out there. And Sooo much garbage to wade through. I wish I had any assurance that streamed files were at least CD quality. From what I have heard and read, a lot are just old garbage up-sampled. I gather Qobuz is about the best. I have Prime, but found it to be a mess and did not have half of what I went looking for. I compared some "HD" streamed files with the same music in RedBook and did not hear any difference,. Always a "but" and in this case, it was not showing the specific edginess that bothers me. Nora Jones does not hit those notes. She is always smoooooth. So, I RIP with JRiver. Play over USB to my DAC. WASAPI Exclusive, asynchronous. Testing buffer sizes, testing if -3 dB is best. May test ASIO as well but I don't see the advantage. Looking into host based oversampling, normalizing, and any other possible off-line processing to feed the DACs. Or, just a DAC like the RME or Cord that has the power internally. My PC DVD transport, about $15, reads the disks 100% error free at about 5X. There is nothing else a transport need do. Any jitter, noise, rise time issues are completely lost when the file is saved to disk. Just physics. We now have USB interfaces that don't mess up the signal, even in CH-FI. The DAC chips are all fantastic, which leaves the reconstruction (including clean power) as what effects the sound. Good and bad. |
@stuartk Sorry, that wasn’t meant toward you at all but rather how the act of spinning CDs today seems to me. That said, I do find it surprising you’re not discovering tons of new music you’d like to explore and listen to. I feel like a kid in the audio candy shoppe and am constantly finding intriguing new music all over the place, and more often than not when I go to Qobuz it’s usually there in CD — and often times better — quality. But, in the end we all experience audio and music the way we enjoy most and that suits us best, and that’s really all that matters. |
Thanks for the clarification but the apology isn't necessary. I didn't take it at all personally -- I was simply attempting to be humorous, which doesn't always translate well in a medium where non-verbal cues are absent! It's all good. I'm familiar with that "kid in a candy store" feeling -- it lasted for a good 20 years while I was focusing on exploring Jazz but at this point, I have a very good sense of what I like and don't like and it takes very little listening to an unfamiliar artist or release to determine whether it's something I'm likely to enjoy playing over and over. In other words, I'm limited by the boundaries of my own tastes/preferences, which I haven't found to be very flexible.
|
@mbmi “…Streaming sucks. Why.......because people Don't sit there and enjoy a certain song or complete album...they bounce around playing 1 minute of this song and 30 sec. of the next song etc…”
That is typically only true when the sound quality of streaming is significantly below that of your other medium. In my system I get glued to a new streamed album I typically would not listen to and just can’t quit because I get immersed in it.
The “surfing” problem used to haunt me and my system until I finally raised the sound quality of my streamer / DAC. It put the musicality into streaming without loosing the detail. Both my main system and headphone system glue me to nearly anything musically in my sphere of interest… and a lot of things outside.
|
I appreciate your opinions. But for the benefit for those new to this pursuit I have to say your engineering background is getting in the way of your ears. This is not uncommon, that when you are absolutely sure something cannot mater it can cause your mind to focus on similarities and choose not to believe you hear a difference.
To those of use that developed our listening skills there is a huge world of difference out there. I recommend spending more time listening and a bit less time thinking about how there cannot be a difference. Find some audiophiles that can let you listen to great systems and coach your listening skills and your life will become richer in the nuance of music. |
@ghdprentice BIG +1!!! |
I have had players/transports w/separate DACS for years and am still buying CD's. New doesn't mean better. I had 2 Arcams and were underwhelmed. Detailed but over all thin sounding ( to me) I have a wonderful California Audio Labs Icon II CDP .Built like a tank, nice transformer and is bullet proof. It's mated to a very rare Kora-Hermes non over sampling tube DAC with a Monarchy Audio re-clocker in between the two. I think used the whole set up- used ,was maybe 1,400 bucks - less interconnects AC and digital cables . Sounds fantastic! If you want new the Rotel would be the bang for the buck choice. The nice thing about the outboard DAC is the ability to get more SQ and tailor (especially with a tube DAC) the sound to your liking. As far as the whole streamer thing: I have a Internet tuner, running into the Kora,( 3 input DAC! )I have not found a streamer I like yet... An internet tuner ( there are many out there for a reasonable price ) maybe the way to get your feet wet. I HAD to go that way because of all the new high rise construction in my area. I couldn't receive the Classical music station I liked cleanly in MONO! -Stereo reception went away years ago -despite a range of antennas. My humble Ocean Digital tuner, less than 200 bucks new with an added IFI power supply - 50 bucks and another Monarchy re-clocker is doing an OUTSTANDING job. It's been running 24/7 for years! It's background mostly but it's great fun to listen to stations from all over the world and it does not need a smart phone to run it. It's self contained like a normal piece of gear. Don't let those snobs push you around. As far as physical media,they are still making plenty of turntables aren't they...... Good luck whichever way you go! HG-NYC
|
Folks, Please re-read my comments again and you will see my current viewpoint IS based on listening. Yes, behind that, I do understand the technology and along with measurements are ONE side of the information, but it is the music that counts and that is always first. Set aside the convince factor of playing a disk vs dragging several disks to a queue. That does not have any bearing on sound. When what is suggested stretches from the unknowns about our hearing and our inadequacy of measurements to flat out impossible in this universe, then yea, my understanding of science pops up it's head. Maybe a little broader understanding of how the transports actually work would help. In the land of only sound, once you have the bits in a buffer, it is the reconstruction that makes all the difference. All of it. How stable the transport is becomes irrelevant. What is super is we can then spend our money on that part that does matter: DAC, AMP, Speakers. Even the analog cables if you must as real effects that do not violate the laws of physics exist. At least when I RIP a CD, any re-read is taken care of so playback will never have a skip. Well never is if I set the buffer correctly in the player as Windows is too stupid to pay attention to run level like True64 was. Maybe we can then talk about the really confusing and unknowns with the dozens of digital filtering algorithms, how to deal with filter overshoot, different up sampling, different dithering, and how those effect the DAC with respect to everyone's preferences in sound. All of these things can effect the sound. Some more than others and it differs person to person. I looked at the WEBs of the fore mentioned transports, and surprise! no discussion of this at all. Granted, how well controls work matters. One thing I loved about my old Rotel is how snappy it was to controls. Push "Open" and it opened. Did not have to think about it. Powered up without taking forever to boot Java. Hit play, and no screen saying "reading disk". It played. I miss my OPPO DVD as when I upgraded to 4K I had to buy a Panasonic. Dog slow. If these mega buck transports are actually streaming real time from the disk so the stability and micro-vibrations they claim are important effect the accuracy or timing, well IMHO, they were obsolete both in engineering and in sound 30 years ago. If your DAC is so obsolete as to require the input timing to be precise, well it too is obsolete. Sorry. My $109 JDS DAC is better than that and it is far from SOA. A CD transport is not a turntable and those mechanical factors that are critical just do not happen in a transport. There is a lot we don't understand about sound reproduction. But there is a lot we do. I have found a degree in electronics to be helpful to point me to where there could be real sonic differences so I can afford real improvements, not that I have not been fooled in the past. We are all human. I express my experience and understanding so others can think and make rational decisions based on their own hearing and still be within this universe laws. Not "Madison ave. engineering" For the international audience, that is the headquarters in NY for advertising. Home of very slippery squamata as they are well oiled. Your money of course. |
@mbmi ah, no. Maybe that's a generational thing but I only search by artist then CD. Hit play. Listen. If I like it I add it to my "virtual" collection. It's like having a free pass to an infinite record store for less than the price of 1 CD per month. FLAC quality and I can't tell difference from the disc with a transport and separate DAC. |
I will describe to you my experience, not what I had read or heard from others. I bought Denafrips Ares II and utilized Arcam CD192 as a transport, it was great improvement, then I replaced Arcam with Cambridge CXC transport that was very noticeable improvement over Arcam transport section. I did go further up the ladder since. I have learned from my own experience that dedicated transport matters. P.S. I do not understand why whenever there is a discussion about CD medium, there are multitudes of posters joining in on bandwagon trying very hard to "persuade" how antiquated this concept is and the streaming is the ONLY way to go. Then there are others coming up with ideas of an equipment with price tags severalfold exceeding clearly stated OP's budget. Just my three cents. |
Plus he doesn't get the joy of ripping off an artist with every stream!! Good times!! |
@secretguy Nobody is forcing an artist to make their music available to stream, so if they feel they’re getting “ripped off” then just don’t do it. Plus, the vast majority of music I stream I would’ve never found or bought otherwise, so at least they’re getting something through streaming rather than nothing. I suggest getting off your high horse, or, maybe more appropriately, your dinosaur. |
I went on quite a journey looking for a better sounding CD player. Then I remembered I do have a few SACDs, and now used SACDs are inexpensive, so I narrowed the choice to CD/SACD players. I don't stream, so external DAC, versatile inputs are of no interest to me. It became clear to me that is is the combo of transport, processor, filters, over-clocking, IOW, it is a salad of many parts that give the final sound. I ended up buying and loving the sound of a used Sony XA-5400 ES. The lasers do get old/weak, so any used one, find out the approximate hours of use. Also, are parts available for that model, do a simple search on hifishark for units and parts. My Quest, with help here, a long read, but much discovered along the way. It may be helpful to you when finalizing on a different unit. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/sony-sacd-player-scd-xa5400es-yay-or-nay
|
As far as supporting artists, one can still stream and continue to buy physical media. To @soix point, even if one’s been collecting physical media; there is so much music to explore out there. Those opposed to streaming are simply not keeping an open mind or content with repeated playback their music collection. |
| Post removed |
I second the remark about why certain individuals here that enjoy streaming always feel compelled to tell people inquiring about CD players to junk them . In truth we live in a time where there are many ways to achieve excellent sound. Analog, CD replay, streaming. Even Internet Radio and Bluetooth have improved to a point where they probably sound better than what most of us had back in the day. There are differences between them, enough to want to have preferences between technologiies. It’s interesting how small differences sometimes yield the loudest controversy
|
| Post removed |
@secretguy Well, you’re wrong and I do love music as does everyone else here (most of whom stream BTW), but I don’t control how the music industry operates. So I guess this means you’re also against the used CD market because the artist gets zilch from those sales. If they wanna up the streaming subscription price to pay artists better I’m ok with that. What I do know is the toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube and streaming is here to stay, and hopefully they’ll work it out so it’s more fair and everyone wins. Further, choosing to not stream music will not change a thing, and you’ll just be missing out on discovering worlds of awesome music out there. To each his own. |
mahler123"Perhaps Audio Fanaticism is an outlet for this kind of aggression, much the way that sports channels aggression into less dangerous areas." I think it is very poignant observation. |
Soix, is spot on. The amount of hi-res music out on Qobuz and other platforms is impressive. Like many other Agon members, I enjoy listening to new artists and music by utilizing Qobuz. It will be interesting to watch how the use of CDs changes over time. With a good streamer, you can already obtain CD quality music. With the advancements in audio/digital technology, we will see continued improvements in the future. |
If you are willing to sell a car, you can attend a concert. My kids like KPop and attend Korean pop concerts in Dallas. A good, but not great seat is $300 and they fill baseball stadiums. Front row center and back stage passes are beyond expensive. |
I just read that online shopping hurts new product discovery. When you go to a grocery store, you buy whatever you like and come across. When you buy on Instacart, you buy the same thing as last time, so low variety. Online grocery shopping makes product demand less elastic. People can buy whatever book they want on Amazon but by going to a bookstore you can buy what you weren't looking for. Online shopping hurts new product discovery compared to in-person shopping. Despite what you think you're doing online, an algorithm is pushing what it thinks you'll like base on past preferences and buying habits/records. Not what I'd call exploring but more of a guided tour. There are sites that map out music similar to the artist you like but I rarely, if ever, like them. This is why I miss places like Borders where they used to have these vast collections of physical media (CDs) and plenty of listening stations with headphones. I'd spend inordinate amounts of time listening to all manner of music, making myself try out all types and genres of music. Call me a hunter-gatherer. It's in my DNA. I'll stick to CDPs. All the best, |
I appreciate your sentiments but your argument doesn’t quite hold up here. Streaming is exactly akin to places like Borders but at much much larger scale. You may be lacking the physical touch, human interactions, ambiance of shopping music in a store but with Streaming, you are gaining huge library of music at a bargain price of one CD. I still buy CD and Vinyl but very selectively cause l like the enjoy the tactile experience. |
+1 @lalitk I’ve found more new music on Qobuz than I ever have in a store. I do admit I miss the smell of a real record store though. |
No, it's not the same for the very same reason you brought up: physical touch, which was my point. Akin but not exact. Everyone who pushes streaming sounds like they're reciting ad copy from the manufacture. Others here have pointed out that all that's out there doesn't really appeal to them. Same with me. The main point of my take was that there's music out there in a store setting that you happen upon whereas with streaming you have to intentionally look for something you have no idea of exists. No algorithm is going to push that at you. For the price of one CD you have a tenuous hold on all that music as the provider can change or drop it at will. You never really own it. You're just renting it, and by the sound of it, hoarding it. Some of the time it's not what they say it is (HiRez). There is also music that is only on CD that's not available online (certain versions, takes, special editions, rare venues, etc.). If this were happening in China (which we're starting to emulate) you'd all be getting high marks for being that good citizen/consumer. All the best,
|
Some of the chatter (which I highly respect) on Compact Disc and her future survival after all this time boggles the mind. Happens to be my preferred format since its conception. Yeah, those Redbook. Besides, if one angles them sunlight just right … “blinded by the light.” @nonoise we share something important in common. In fact, two out of three … not bad of an average if ya asked me. |
I did not mean this to be a debate, just a matter of differing opinions. Hey, two out of three ain't bad at all. 😄 Despite CDs not doing as well as vinyl and streaming here, stateside, CDs have double the sales of vinyl in Germany and England. I don't think CDs are going anywhere for the foreseeable future. All the best, |
@nonoise Sorry, but there’s some info here that’s just not true and needs to be corrected.
It’s manufacturer. Manufacture is a verb, not a noun.
That’s not true. At least on Qobuz and probably most others you have the option to purchase and download music in which case you do own it. Plus, you have the flexibility to download just the songs you like if you prefer and not have to buy the whole CD.
That’s also not true in my experience. I’m constantly finding excellent new music in Qobuz I didn’t know existed, and there are thousands upon thousands more options there than in any store anywhere. You’re wrong that you can’t just randomly find interesting new music through streaming — just flat-out wrong. Plus, I can find just about everything you can find in any store on Qobuz with relatively very few exceptions while you can’t find a small fraction of what’s on Qobuz in any store. Period. I get that you like the tactile feel of flipping through discs at a store and that’s fine, but don’t pretend that streaming is some substandard way to discover new music because it’s absolutely not and you’re just speaking out of total ignorance. If u wanna stay old school that’s fine and to each his own, but don’t put down streaming just because you don’t understand it and it’s not your bag. You’re in the extreme minority here in that virtually none of us would give up streaming and go back to searching for physical media in stores (or even online). What does that tell you?
|
Getting rather picky for my typing too quickly and leaving out an "r", eh? "At least on Qobuz" isn't representative of the entire industry. I never said I can't randomly find music online as I do it all the time without streaming. It's just that you're more likely to see something new in a store setting by accident. I'm not saying streaming is some substandard way to discover new music. You're just putting words in my mouth so you'll have some made up motive to attack. I'm not speaking our of total ignorance. Project much? Your defensive nature and knee jerk reaction is completely out of line to this discussion. To say I'm in the "extreme minority" because you don't want to go back to CDs speaks of some unresolved issues you have so keep them to yourself. The OP wanted advice on CDPs stating he wanted only views on that so chill down and stop pushing your agenda. All the best, |
I personally disagree here. It’s not so much the tactile feel (save for LP’s) as is the ease of use, “quality” playback, and keeping Record Stores (what’s left) in business. Half of their showroom floor is devoted for such cause, obviously. And if one doesn’t find what they’re looking for “Spin” is more then obliged special ordering for customers needs. I’ve no quarrels paying more at certain times for the greater good. Spin Records, Carlsbad San Diego. |
You forgot an “er.”
You were clearly painting streaming as “less than” because with streaming you don’t own the music and that you have to intentionally look for something you don’t know exists (see my prior post) both of which are patently false. I’m not “attacking” anyone but rather just refuting your statements because they’re either inaccurate or run counter to my own experience. Sorry if you take having your false or uninformed assertions as an attack, but I stand by everything I said in response to your statement.
But you are in the extreme minority. Most people here have embraced and love streaming. That you choose not to is perfectly fine, but you don’t get to make up your own facts. Most people who stream don’t go back to CDs unless it’s not available to stream. Maybe it’s time to face the fact that you’re the one with the unresolved issues (i.e. trapped in the past) and not the vast majority of us who’ve moved on with both technology and the times.
|