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The Law of Diminishing Digital Returns

When is the sound good enough? Is that $2500 CDP $1500 better sounding than the $1000 player? I have read posts on members favorite CDP'S - i.e., Ayre, Opus, Sony, Rega, Arcam, Naim, Musical Fidelity, and countless others. I guess my question is: When you get to a certain price point (I am guessing it is in the $1000 - $1500 range) are players worth the additional $1000's in some cases for the 5% improvement in sound quality? There has to be a player out there that is really close to those $4k to $5k CDP's that is a pleasure to listen to (or even a Giant Kiler) for around $1000. Am I the only one who feels this way? Let's keep modded players out of this please. I am looking for your thought on players right out of the box that wowed you!
mattcone
phaelon
1,052 posts
 
Tvad, Thank you
audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,183 posts
 
With what I heard in my system, it is pretty tough to beat the Bel Canto DAC2 I am currently using. I compared it to a more expensive dac. Yes, the more expensive dac was better, but it still did not make me want to sell the Bel Canto. I really was looking to hear big improvement and got dissapointed by a hair splitting differences. It wasn't worth it. Now back to Warren's point. I am thinking of moddig the DAC2. I think I can bridge that small gap between it and the performance of the more expensive dacs. Looking for a good modder, I am considering TRL. $550 that they charge for a mod is way less than the difference I need to pay to obtain a new dac that's going to beat the Bel Canto by a significant margin. So, point of dimishing returns for me in my system started at around the performance of a $1000 dac. May be my system is not revealing enough, but I have doubts about that.
hiend3
38 posts
 
Well the diffrence between digital players for the most part is SMALL. I have a older 500.00 player and a newer 3500.00 player. there is a difrence yes about 10% at best.
I can make a much bigger diffrence swapping tubes much bigger. Buy a very good player, spend the money and upgrade your speakers. Too many people upgrade everthing else forgetting the speakers. I kept my 500.00 player and purchased 22,000 speakers there are huge diffrences actally between players but you need other great componants FIRST
mapleleafs3
190 posts
 
dac is what makes the difference, If you cant hear the differecne between 200 cd player and 1k you have tin ears>
audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,183 posts
 
I had a $400(retail) Marantz 5-disc changer in my system for 7 years. Wanted to upgrade. Bought a modified Music Hall CD-25. This was a significant step up. CD-25 was over $800. Then I bought the Bel Canto DAC2 and it was again a significant improvement over modded CD-25. DAC2 is $1350. From here on, anything I auditioned never resulted in the level of improvement I was able to achieve with stepping up from $400 5-disc changer to $800+ modded CD-25 to $1350 DAC2. There are definitely difference between $200 cd player and a good $3500 player. And these differences should not be subtle. I personally never heard a good $200 cd player.
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