Single Disc CD Player Recommendation

[oqpi]

Digital signal by definition doesn't gets noisy. It's ether passes bits or it doesn't.
Potentially an issue with long usb cords or high bandwidth required (hd video).
What you may experienced by using usb cord to external dac is a em/rfi noise which has nothing to do with digital portion, everything to do with your crappy power supply and other badly rf designed components in your pc.

I have a situation right now, where I use the PC USB port to go to the receiver USB input and play audio (either wav, mp3, or CD itself). The sound is not good, very strange even. It has a smaller frequency range, as I have to enhance the high's and low's in order to hear the same detail, plus it is somehow convoluted sound, unnatural, cannot even explain, but it is obvious, not just some little difference that maybe you would not detect if not warned. It is a real bad sound.
Now, this is a digital signal, just bits, just 1's and 0's, as you mention. And it goes badly from the PC USB out to the Receiver USB in.
I spoke to the Receiver tech people and they confirmed their internal DAC is of good quality and was tested.
The PC is not the best around, but decent enough to be able to listen to the music and enjoy it with a Grado pair of cans.
After some research online, I found Schiit Audio company and told them the story. I wanted to buy an external DAC from them and see if that one works.
Their Tech Support advised me to try a USB decrapifier (called WYRD), which might clean the USB port, mainly by stabilizing the USB 5 VDC power (voltage).
As we all say, these are only 1's and 0's, and they came badly, heck knows in what order, or time difference, from my PC USB port.
As soon as I inserted the USB decrapifier between the PC and the Receiver USB ports, the sound became normal.
I also bought a CD player in the meantime, and I can say the sound from the CD player via analog RCA and the PC via USB, with the decrapifier inserted, are virtually identical.
This is a clear example that digital signal can transmit badly, not only "perfectly, or not at all", as you guys try to convince the world about.
Clock misalignment, jitter and other stuff can happen to a digital signal.
If an external DAC has its own USB decrapifier inside, then it's ok, no need for a separate one.
But in my case, the internal DAC of the receiver seems not to have it. And I kinda believe many internal DACs do not include a USB signal cleaner or power stabilization.
So you need signal cleaner and electronic/electrical stabilization, even with the digital signals.
The example is in front of my eyes.
Another issue is the DAC itself. Every CD player, or other source has its own type of DAC. As long as they are not identical, they will produce a different analog signal, even if the digital signal is the same.
I agree that you do not need an expensive CD player, but a decent one, with a decent DAC. And I agree that for a decent CD player, there is no need of an extra external DAC either.
The whole point is that even being made only from 1s and 0s, the digital signal can be noisy, or mixed up, or messed up, anyway you want to call it, but can transmit badly from point A to point B.

 

[oqpi]

Tom Andry wrote a bit about using a DAC to resolve issues with jitter that might answer some of your questions. Read the entire article for context, but he specifically addresses jitter in the penultimate section, "But seriously, do I need an external DAC?"

Tom describes jitter as sounding like wow and flutter, like minute pitch and tempo variations from mechanical analog sources. I imagine jitter to sound more like a slightly rushed downbeat, or a crisp plosive K being subtly distorted into an almost imperceptibly longer Ksh. At least that's what I think I hear when I have experimented with having Kodi upconvert video streams to the display's refresh rate, then sync to the audio clock. Jitter makes the output less perfectly metronomic, if I understand it correctly.

TLS is at a conference the rest of the week. He'll be back Monday.

That is a great article.
Thank you !

 

[slipperybidness]

I have a situation right now, where I use the PC USB port to go to the receiver USB input and play audio (either wav, mp3, or CD itself). The sound is not good, very strange even. It has a smaller frequency range, as I have to enhance the high's and low's in order to hear the same detail, plus it is somehow convoluted sound, unnatural, cannot even explain, but it is obvious, not just some little difference that maybe you would not detect if not warned. It is a real bad sound.
Now, this is a digital signal, just bits, just 1's and 0's, as you mention. And it goes badly from the PC USB out to the Receiver USB in.
I spoke to the Receiver tech people and they confirmed their internal DAC is of good quality and was tested.
The PC is not the best around, but decent enough to be able to listen to the music and enjoy it with a Grado pair of cans.
After some research online, I found Schiit Audio company and told them the story. I wanted to buy an external DAC from them and see if that one works.
Their Tech Support advised me to try a USB decrapifier (called WYRD), which might clean the USB port, mainly by stabilizing the USB 5 VDC power (voltage).
As we all say, these are only 1's and 0's, and they came badly, heck knows in what order, or time difference, from my PC USB port.
As soon as I inserted the USB decrapifier between the PC and the Receiver USB ports, the sound became normal.
I also bought a CD player in the meantime, and I can say the sound from the CD player via analog RCA and the PC via USB, with the decrapifier inserted, are virtually identical.
This is a clear example that digital signal can transmit badly, not only "perfectly, or not at all", as you guys try to convince the world about.
Clock misalignment, jitter and other stuff can happen to a digital signal.
If an external DAC has its own USB decrapifier inside, then it's ok, no need for a separate one.
But in my case, the internal DAC of the receiver seems not to have it. And I kinda believe many internal DACs do not include a USB signal cleaner or power stabilization.
So you need signal cleaner and electronic/electrical stabilization, even with the digital signals.
The example is in front of my eyes.
Another issue is the DAC itself. Every CD player, or other source has its own type of DAC. As long as they are not identical, they will produce a different analog signal, even if the digital signal is the same.
I agree that you do not need an expensive CD player, but a decent one, with a decent DAC. And I agree that for a decent CD player, there is no need of an extra external DAC either.
The whole point is that even being made only from 1s and 0s, the digital signal can be noisy, or mixed up, or messed up, anyway you want to call it, but can transmit badly from point A to point B.

Digi circuits will do weird things when underpowered!

If it isn't at the rated voltage, then 1 and 0s are NOT getting triggered correcly, thus error is introduced.

If it was really underpowered USB port, perhaps your PC power supply is spec'd too low.

A good way to prove your theory is to install a high quality PC power supply that is shielded and rated 2x the expected load and remove the decrapifier to see what happens.

 

[oqpi]

My understanding is that the decrapifier is doing just that: stabilizing and reinforcing the 5V power supply of the USB line.
The tech support said with long USB cables, something like that could also happen.
They use it for 25 ft long USB cables which, otherwise, would not work properly for PC sourced audio.

 

[slipperybidness]

My understanding is that the decrapifier is doing just that: stabilizing and reinforcing the 5V power supply of the USB line.
The tech support said with long USB cables, something like that could also happen.
They use it for 25 ft long USB cables which, otherwise, would not work properly for PC sourced audio.

That makes sense.

But your PS may not be robust enough to handle all of the demands that you are putting on it.

That could be detrimental to other components that are relying on the PS.

 

[Tunkika]

I have the Sony BDP-S790 that I use to play cds with its 2 channel analog out and I use HDMI for watching movies. I have a Pioneer VSX-1120 receiver that I use for sound. I really don't like using my Sony blu-ray player to play cds. I tried out the Onkyo C-7030 cd player, it had really good sound quality but I had to return it because it could not play my cd-rs. I know that I finalize them right because my car's cd player could read them as well as my Sony bluray player.

I'm planning to use the analog output from the cd player to my receiver. I've been looking at the Marantz CD5004 and the Yamaha CD-S300. Please recommend a cd player thats around $350.

Hi!

Before you try something else, have your friend try to put your CD in their player and see if it works. A car deck would have a much different drive than a conventional CD player would and Blu-ray players are a whole different story again.

You could also try some of the following players:

Denon DCD-520AE
Denon DCD-720AE
Cambridge audio 351C

or even a Tascam CD200 which is a professional-grade machine and has a more robust CD transport.

My choice would be the Cambridge as it would sound the best but something like an Onkyo or Denon would be very much similar. Onkyo a little light-footed but with nice highs and Denon a bit more robust-sounding.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!