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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.
dylanfan
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,418 posts
 
Mikirob is right. You can go for a mid-priced DAC and add in a reclocker for smoother playback. You could then keep your Marantz as the transport (which is the weak link).
The higher up the DAC chain you go, the better the master clock is. (jitter control).
dylanfan's avatar
dylanfan OP
141 posts
 
Thanks Mikirob and Lowrider57 for the suggestions. Those are in my price range. Do you know a good dealer to work with in the U.S.A. Any preference over the two?
melbguy1
1,438 posts
 
10-28-15: Dylanfan
6000.00 is out of my budget. PS Audio looks great but....I need something for 1/2 of that.
Dylan, Music Direct have an ex-demo PS Audio DirectStream dac for $4799 if you're interested which you should easily be able to negotiate down to $4500. I can't get markup quotes to work today for some reason, but google is your friend. In/around your price range, that's the dac i'd shoot for. It does DSD right, is modular in design & upgradeable through free firmware updates making it future-proof. I know Paul is very committed to ongoing product support & connects with customers through the Community section of his website. Paul also posted a thread how to build a Mac Mini server for less than $1k fyi.
rzado
176 posts
 
Dylan,

I agree with Melbguy, mesch, and Lowrider - go for the great DAC and use the 6005 as a transport for now. I would recommend an earlier used EMM - in my view, better than the PS Audio DSD for much less (~$3.5k, which is around your budget, but a huge step up in performance from where you are now).

Best of luck.
melbguy1
1,438 posts
 
Rzado, as you're referring to a discontinued Emm product, perhaps it would
be helpful if you mention specific models?
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