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New CD player, Transport or DAC?

Finally got my system where it sounds great to me. Have Primaluna power amp and preamp. Power amp now has KT 120 power tubes. Have a great turntable and a pair of Klipsch Cornwall's with Crites crossovers and a pair of Dynaudio 1.1 monitors. Some room treatment now and working on cables. My weak piece now is my CD player. Older CDs still sound bad. Newer well recorded CDs sound great. I have been using a Marantz 6005 CD player. I wanted to make some of my rare albums into CDs so I dragged out a 15 year old at least Pioneer cd recorder. Hooked it up and my wife and I did an a-b between it and the Maranrz and neither of us could tell a difference. So in 15 years CD players haven't improved or are they both mid fi CD players? I do have an Emotiva dac and some things sound marginally better through it and some things sound worse. Long story to get to my point. Should I invest in s high dollar CD player (I have probably 6000 CDs) or a high quality DAC or a DAC and transport. Most of my listening is done on CDs. My albums sound great through my system but I don't have room to replace CDs with lps. Any suggestions of brands to look at or things to consider? Thanks for any help.
128x128dylanfan
rodge827's avatar
rodge827
619 posts
 
Dylanfan,
What is your budget?
dylanfan's avatar
dylanfan OP
139 posts
 
Trying to keep it at 3000.00 or less. Just wondering if digital is just going to sound digital no matter what. I have so many great CDs that are just so bad on a good system.
celtic66
1,656 posts
 
Time to load up. I'm convinced that a sizable investment in a CD transport is now futile. A music server should be your course as it will outperform a transport. It also provides the convenience of having your library on you iPAD. Good luck.
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,417 posts
 
Celtic66,
A music server is the ultimate way to go. But, before he can make that move, he still has the problem of a CDP playing back with a high jitter rate.

Dylanfan, In your other thread you asked the same question, "new CD or DAC?" First, forget about the Emotiva; it will never sound close to analogue. Second, $3000 will get you a very good "close to analogue" sounding CDP such as a used Ayre or ARC. Is it worth it, probably not, since you will have spent all your money and eventually you will want a DAC in your system.

Start researching DACs. I see your Marantz 6005 has a digital coax output, get a high quality coax cable for input to the DAC.

melbguy1
1,438 posts
 
I own a high end cd player (Vitus) which makes old cds sound musical and enjoyable, so given my music collection is mostly comprised of cd's, it is a great friend. The Vitus is also a great dac. Though unlike you, I have a relatively small collection of cd's & plan on continuing to collect cd's until storage becomes an issue. At that point I plan on adding a Server transport to feed off my Vitus dac, then start the process of archiving my collection onto the server - with backup hopefully to a mirror drive in the same product (like Burmester), or to an external drive.

Then there are products like the Bladelius Embla which has a good built in dac & slot drive which allows you to rip or play cd's like a normal cd player. To me, servers and streamers are the future. With that said, I plan on keeping my cd player for the long haul (mainly as a dac, but also to occasionally play cds). I don't think i'll ever lose the enjoyment of spinning shiny discs.
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