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A DAC to beat NAD C541i?

I've had NAD for about 6 years. It used to be a good one 6 years ago in my system, but now I think it is a bottle neck in my current system -- Tyler Taylo 7U, Linn AV5105 amp, Rogue Magnum 99 preamp.
My friend brought his Rega Apollo CD player and compared it with my NAD on my system, but I did not hear much difference, except Apollo sound a little bit more warm. But I liked NAD's more bright sound.
If Apollo is a real good one at $1000, I guess I need to spend over $2000 for a new CDP to for better sound.
Instead, if I want to go for DAC with NAD, which DAC (at $500~1000) would be best to beat both Apollo and NAD?
Which CD player (used at $500~1000) would be far better than Apollo or NAD?
Thx
128x128ihcho
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ihcho's avatar
ihcho OP
612 posts
 
Any SS DAC would better impedance match with bigger sound, better bass and treble extension? Then probably I would give another shot. Any suggestion?
I would expect the similar amount of improvement from Grado gold to AT150mlx. LOL
ihcho's avatar
ihcho OP
612 posts
 
I think most reviews on Paradisea+ are correct: provide warmer sound but lose some detail, except that I did not experience wider sound stage with Paradisea+. DR700 even provides better dynamics.

DR700+Paradisea is more pleasant to listen than C541i+Paradisea, but still DR700 alone is better for me. Paradisea may be different on ss preamp.

OK, enough for now. I will get back when I have a new digital cable (1.5m).
tobias
1,534 posts
 
The extra half meter delays internal reflections just enough that they don't arrive at the DAC in time to cause jitter. Here's a quote from another thread to explain why.

[Almarg]If the input impedance of the dac and the impedance of the cable don't match precisely, a portion of the incident signal would be reflected back to the transport. A portion of that reflection would then re-reflect from the transport to the dac. The two-way reflection path, assuming propagation time of roughly 2 nanoseconds per foot, would be 12ns for the 1m cable, and 18ns for the 1.5m cable.

I don't know what the typical risetimes/edge rates are for transport outputs, but it does seem very conceivable that the extra 6ns could move the arrival time of the re-reflection sufficiently away from the middle area of the edge of the original incident waveform so that it would not be responded to by the digital receiver at the dac input.
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