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Digital Front End: Critical Listening

I'm motivated to write this post after some initial comparisons I made between the DAC in my Marantz DVD player and my Levinson 360S. Using the Marantz as transport, these units fed into a Mccormack RLD1 pre, a Levinson 334 amp, and Celestion SL12si monitors. I realise this system is not your typical "high-end" system used for comparison.
The problem is that I couldn't hear much of a difference between the Marantz and the Levinson. Actually I felt a little foolish for having paid over $3000 for the Levinson when it doesn't seem to offer asignificant improvement. The Marantz is a mid-level DVD player with their "HDAM" technology which is said to replace op amps.
Can anyone offer an opinion as to why I'm not hearing not only a significant difference but drastic improvement with the Levinson. Could it be the Preamp not passing on the improved resolution offered by the 360S? Or maybe it's the speakers but I really don't think so.

Any thoughts?
sjh32
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
A couple of thoughts:
1) The marantz transport could be the limiting factor if the 360S is not reclocking the digital input. Does the 360s reclock the digital input to remove jitter ? The marantz player probably does not have a very good clock internally. Mind you, it seems unacceptable to me that the 360, costing over $3k doesn't reclock the input !

2) People overemphasize the differences in digital. My own experiences are that moving from a $400 player to a $2000 player do not give the same leap in performance as that amount would do in terms of speakers or amplifiers.
rsbeck
887 posts
 
>>People overemphasize the differences in digital<<

I completely disagree. The difference between a $1,000 [new] Universal Player like the Yamaha s2300 and a 1,700 [used] cd/sacd player like the
Sony SCD XA777ES is nothing short of astounding. The difference between the Sony and the Meitner Emm Labs DAC6 is a similar order of magnitude. Astounding. Speakers are important -- and I might even rate them as most important, but the quality of your front end matters -- a lot. After you find a nice set of speakers, do yourself a favor and get a great front end.
mr_bill
348 posts
 
I'm with you Sean, differences in digital are small.
dennis_the_menace's avatar
dennis_the_menace
467 posts
 
yep, learned this from personal experience as well. moving up in digital didn't really net much for me... small differences for big bucks.
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