I hope the answer at the end of this discussion will be a 'no', but I'm far away from that at this point.
I purchased the Marantz CD5004 earlier this week hoping that a dedicated CDP will outwit the stereo SQ that my current setup (Sony BDP -> HDMI -> Onkyo NR 609 -> Kef Q300) delivers - which was/is very good. But that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact so far it seems to be the other way around.
I started with an analog connection between the CDP and the amp (using the CDP DAC), and then tried out the coax (using the amp DAC, which sounded better than the analog). But compared to the SQ/openness that my (affordable Rs.9K) BDP delivers via HDMI, the CDP falls way short. The difference is not subtle, its in-your-face. I've tried to test with various tracks and the difference in consistent. This was very surprising for me since all the theories point to a dedicated CDP delivering better SQ than a BDP/DVD. I'm sure someone is thinking "a dedicated stereo amp" but I seriously doubt if it will knock the socks off my current setup.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
I purchased the Marantz CD5004 earlier this week hoping that a dedicated CDP will outwit the stereo SQ that my current setup (Sony BDP -> HDMI -> Onkyo NR 609 -> Kef Q300) delivers - which was/is very good. But that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact so far it seems to be the other way around.
I started with an analog connection between the CDP and the amp (using the CDP DAC), and then tried out the coax (using the amp DAC, which sounded better than the analog). But compared to the SQ/openness that my (affordable Rs.9K) BDP delivers via HDMI, the CDP falls way short. The difference is not subtle, its in-your-face. I've tried to test with various tracks and the difference in consistent. This was very surprising for me since all the theories point to a dedicated CDP delivering better SQ than a BDP/DVD. I'm sure someone is thinking "a dedicated stereo amp" but I seriously doubt if it will knock the socks off my current setup.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
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