CD Player/Transport Quandary


While I haven’t exactly been in the market for a disc player, from time to time I’ve thought it’d be nice to have one. A few days ago I spotted a Denon DVD-1940ci at a thrift store for $20, and although a fairly pedestrian unit, it does play SACD, and was fairly well received by both TAS and WhatHifi, so I snagged it.

I took the player home and hooked it up to my Black Ice Glass FX Dac via the coaxial output, and also connected the analog audio output to my preamp via another single-ended source input, so I could compare my outboard dac against the player’s internal dac by cycling back and forth between inputs.

This is where it gets weird, as when cycling between my dac and the player’s analog output, I found it EXTREMELY difficult to distinguish any substantial difference in SQ between the two. I drove myself crazy with this for a couple of hours before conceding that my dac had the slight edge in terms of spatial cues and high end sparkle, but these differences were extremely subtle. I’m fact I’m not entirely ruling out that these perceptions were psychological in nature.

This level of performance parity between my dac and a 13 year old player that retailed for $370 is unsettling, to say the least. I’m not sure what conclusions I should be drawing. That my dac sucks? My amp? My speakers? Or maybe it’s my ears that are trash?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

My setup:

LSA-10 speakers

ARC LS25 mkii pre

CODA Stage 3 amp (rebadged by Legacy)




rfnoise
@chayro
Up til now my digital source has exclusively been an Auralic Aries Femto. Moving from the analog output on my laptop to the dac was a HUGE improvement. Moving from laptop’s usb output to the Aries again made substantial gains. Hence my current bewilderment.

Albums I was listening to:
Tracy Chapman New Beginning,
The Cardigans First Band on the Moon,
and The Harder They Come Soundtrack.

@soix

Part of why I bothered with the Denon is that I’ve seen Denon universal players used as the basis for some aftermarket modders online. When you say the transport could be wrong for my dac, could you elaborate on that? Still not sure where I sit in terms of the “bits are bits” or “transports matter” camps.

I’ll keep my eye out for a reclocker, and look into sourcing a digital interconnect. Should I concern myself with a power cable? I keep reading about “hash” coming from digital sources via power cable/connection.


I've had the same experience when playing a CD on my Apollo-R and switching to the Orchid DAC. It' very difficult to hear a difference. I will do what Chayro suggested. That said, streaming through the Orchid is wonderful. 
rfnoise
I would certainly match an ARC cd player to your ARC LS 25 MkII Pre-amp.Thank me later.
Happy Listening!