Using CD player without Preamp?

either way (digital or analog) it is compromised. Especially if digital as Kal said. However that compromise, whichever it is, may still be better than the preamp you had before going direct. Full output with internals in the Phillips bypassed and a good exterior passive between the CDP and amp would be better (and more costly). Even a "good" volume pot is bad, that's why CJ doesn't use pots in their preamps anymore, they use resistor ladders made w/good quality resistors. Experiment, Enjoy!

ET

Usually the manual for your CD player tells you that your player has a gain section made to drive an amplifer via direct hook-up without a separate pre-amp. My Wadia 830 manual specifically addresses this issue, and I'm sure that other companies do as well. When I have the remote volume control set at about the half-way mark, the sound is very loud and quite musical. In other words, the Wadia was made specifically to do this, as were other companies' CD players, I cannot speak to your Phillips.--Mrmitch

Shadorne...Left shifting a digital word, be it 16 or 24 bits, is a divide by two. Quanta size will be doubled. We are talking about "truncation" not "rounding".

I have no doubt that representing audio with 5 bits will sound rotten, and dither won't really help. My point is simply that the volume control of a CD player can be implemented in ways other than left shifting (or "dropping bits" as some like to say). The gain of the analog output circuitry can be changed under digital control.

The gain of the analog output circuitry can be changed
under digital control.

Exactly! A Crystal digitally controlled resistor network volume control chip with
0.5 db SPL intervals costs around $10 and has excellent performance.
(Surprisingly this is actually an expensive item as far as electronics go...although
it is far cheaper than the front fascia of most amplifiers or the volume control
knob itsef!!!!)

Tduffy1,
I'm in the same situation you are - driving an amp directly from a CD player. In my experience only, I have compared the CD->AMP Vs CD->PRE->AMP combinations within my system using an Audio Aero Capitole MKII SE CD player, First Sound Presence Deluxe MKII preamp and Art Audio PX25 SET amp.

Here's what I found:
(A) CD->AMP
* more detailed, for example it was easier to distinguish the words a vocalist was singing and mids & highs were a bit clearer -- this makes sense as fewer pieces in the audio signal path should be less damaging to the signal

(B) CD->PRE->AMP
* more bass
* more dynamic

The preamp section of the Audio Aero is very good and uses an analog volume control, but I suspect it can be bettered by either custom modifications to it or with a very expensive preamp. . .

I chose to go with the CD->AMP config as musical details across an entire freq spectrum are more important for me than a slight increase is bass and dynamics (as I'm using 97dB efficient speakers they're already quite dynamic). I can improve the bass amount and dynamics when I plan to buy a pair of subwoofers and put a high-pass filter ahead of the SET amp thereby reducing the heavy bass demands on it to improve dynamics.

Hope this helps in some small way.