Good CD player or cheap CD player connected to a good external DAC?

[Analogous]

I use a cheap CD/DVD player with a digital output (Coax/TOSlink) connected to an external DAC.
I was wondering if a better engineered (more expensive) CD player with a good inbuilt DAC would sound better?

 

[sachinchavan 15865]

I use a cheap CD/DVD player with a digital output (Coax/TOSlink) connected to an external DAC.
I was wondering if a better engineered (more expensive) CD player with a good inbuilt DAC would sound better?

Let’s look at it this way. What justifies CD transports? Even the budget level transports from Cambridge and Audiolab cost around Rs 40k. So why do people buy them when CD/DVD players come even at under Rs 10k and can be used as transports?

I am no technical expert, but I use a transport (CXC) and have been satisfied with it for over five years now. When I purchased, the reviews emphasised on the servo-control circuitry that is supposed to ensure ‘perfect disc speed and error-free playback’. Now, is that marketing jargon or really useful (and how), more qualified members could tell. To me, I believed it and intuitively felt for a component with moving parts, speed and vibration control must be quite critical. Besides, specialised CD transport also boast of better power supply, grounding and digital processing. Again, these seem important, but how why exactly, I can’t say. All I know is that my transport has worked without glitch with all CDs I’ve thrown at it, including old ones procured from second hand market. But I cannot say that the premium of around Rs 30k I paid above an ordinary CD/DVD player with a digital out gets fully jusiified. I just assume that it must be.

Somehow I feel that separates produce better sound than composites due to the isolation of circuitry and separate power supply. So, given the same budget (say Rs 80k), I’d think, space permitting, separate CD transport of Rs 40k and DAC of Rs 40k should yield better result than CD player of Rs 80k. But this might not universally apply. There might be some well-designed and made CD players that outdo the separates in same price bracket.

A definite value of a separate transport is that DAC technology keeps changing (as compared to the transport part) and it’s be cheaper to upgrade DACs than upgrade a comparable CD player. (I’ve used three different DACs over these years while my CXC has remained steadfast in the chain) I’ve read about the same CXC transport being used with DACs priced over lac of Rupees.

Here’s an article that goes into technical details justifying the value of a good transport. Perhaps you could understand it better than me. I cannot verify it technically, but what they say seems to make general sense to me.

The mysteries of a CD Transport explained | Rapallo

Since 2005, Rapallo has been the friendly Kiwi company focusing on the sale and installation of quality Audio-Visual Products of the highest standards for a wide variety of budgets.

www.rapalloav.co.nz

 

[Nitin K]

I use a cheap CD/DVD player with a digital output (Coax/TOSlink) connected to an external DAC.
I was wondering if a better engineered (more expensive) CD player with a good inbuilt DAC would sound better?

Hi Analogus,

Maybe a good transport should be good enough for you as your MHDT dac is supposed to be very good analogue sounding. Imho better to continue with your cd/dvd player if the transport is good and if you are satisfied with the sound.
In any case by using a digital output of the cd player, you will be bypassing your cd player's dac.

Regards,
Nitin

 

[arj]

I use a cheap CD/DVD player with a digital output (Coax/TOSlink) connected to an external DAC.
I was wondering if a better engineered (more expensive) CD player with a good inbuilt DAC would sound better?

There are no 2 views on this. Reading a CD is complex and a lot of engineering has gone into making it good. A transport impacts the sound in a very big way and I have experienced the same and am a strong proponent of a good transport. Since the reading is based on a light being reflected off the cd, the smallest of vibrations of the cd doubles the reflection angle of the ray and hence leads to reading errors.

BD players are pretty good transports as well due to advances of lens and sensors used to read them ( higher density read compared to CDs)

This Article I am linking is old and context is different but gives you a very good idea of the transport ( and ignore anything about the memory player)

Since you do like details, am also linking an old article on how CDs are really constructed which gives and idea of the Reed Solomon Encoding and why reading a cd is pretty complex

 

[Analogous]

Thanks to everyone above who responded with some good insight into the subject.
My cd player does make a bit of audible noise while running discs.
This vibration would imply less than precise laser reading of the CDs.

 

[amit11]

I would say there are 2 things to the transport.

Be it CD player, or streamer wherever digital music is concerned.

The first part reads the music, stored in cd, or a file in case of streamer, or reads from attached harddisk, or reads from wifi / spoitify over the network. This is all just a mechanism of reading. Till this point there is no music involved.

After that the real thing starts which i would call as transport.
The information is transmitted (transported) via optical / coax / usb.... and this is where things start getting ugly / refined.

A) timing is not accurate of transmisitting the bits

B) and in case of coax / usb ( not optical) there is this additional problem, which some volts (2 volts / 5 volts) to transmit the bits. Here if there is noise (which means the 5 volts fluctuate between 4.7 to 5.3 for example,, then the receiving dac gets instability in its inside current..... and that instability causes minor fluctuations in the analog output of dac.

 

[Analogous]

I would say there are 2 things to the transport.

Be it CD player, or streamer wherever digital music is concerned.

The first part reads the music, stored in cd, or a file in case of streamer, or reads from attached harddisk, or reads from wifi / spoitify over the network. This is all just a mechanism of reading. Till this point there is no music involved.

After that the real thing starts which i would call as transport.
The information is transmitted (transported) via optical / coax / usb.... and this is where things start getting ugly / refined.

A) timing is not accurate of transmisitting the bits

B) and in case of coax / usb ( not optical) there is this additional problem, which some volts (2 volts / 5 volts) to transmit the bits. Here if there is noise (which means the 5 volts fluctuate between 4.7 to 5.3 for example,, then the receiving dac gets instability in its inside current..... and that instability causes minor fluctuations in the analog output of dac.

Could the vibration from imprecise spinning interfere with the laser reading the information and thus transmit information onwards with errors?

 

[prem]

You can look at one of the older SONY 555 ESD or Sony 333 ESD cd players. They are still available occasionally on eBay in very good condition. The transport section of both these players are very good. If in good condition, comparable to the best available today. The dac in 555 is also very very good. You can treat that as a bonus.

If budget is not much of an issue, an older CEC TL1 or TL0 will be superb.

 

[arj]

Could the vibration from imprecise spinning interfere with the laser reading the information and thus transmit information onwards with errors?

yes all of that contributes to wrong readings. Although the Reed Solomon Encoding keeps some redundancies /checksums for correction. In realitythe redbook format is not read as traditional 0/`1 but in terms of 4 bit nibbles each of which needs to be decoded and error corrections performed.

 

[Jayant_S]

Thanks to the kindness of an FM, I was able to audition my Sony BDP used as a CD transport vs a dedicated CDT in the same audio chain - documented here
Like @arj mentions above, a decent BDP will work very well as a transport.

 

[essrand]

I have tried a Pioneer DVD player as a CDT, then tried a CEC TL5 side-by-side. The CEC was better for sure, by a mile, if I remember correctly. The pioneer was worse than CD rips, the CEC was equal to it.

 

[Ramanuj]

The transport matters. A good Japanese transport is what I would recommend from a Denon or a Pioneer

 

[Amarendra]

I use a cheap CD/DVD player with a digital output (Coax/TOSlink) connected to an external DAC.
I was wondering if a better engineered (more expensive) CD player with a good inbuilt DAC would sound better?

Sometime back I had compared my Panasonic Bluray player-220 (budget) with the Marantz CDP 6007 and then to my Iphone + dragonfly dac. Played same songs again and again. I wanted to convince myself that I needed the Marantz I could not find any difference between the blu ray player and the Marantz and finally preferred the sound of the iphone (apple music) + dragonfly. Could be my ears but that was my preference.

 

[mehtaurvesh]

DAC is, of course, very important for good sound production. But a good resource is equally important. In case of a mediocre source, take the optical/coaxial output to a good DAC. In fact, if the external DAC is really good, always bypass the CD player's DAC.

 

[Sopra]

Higher end players have error correction and a cache that pre loads music so there is no buffering in case of a bad quality cd