CD Player advice and sugg.

[ahblaza]

It really is true that a cheap CD player with a good DAC will sound just as good as a high priced model. Of course, there are other considerations with buying high priced stuff. Brands like Bryston and McIntosh are expensive but snake oil free. Their products tend to be over-engineered and look high end. If you can afford to have a Lexus in your driveway, you wouldn't want to settle for a Sony in your equipment rack if if the Sony is perfectly good.

There's very little difference with transports nowadays. The cheap ones have plenty of buffering and oversampling. The other two parts of the equation are the DAC and the analog out circuitry. I'm sure a Bryston CD player will have a noise level that is barely measurable but you don't really need that for it to be inaudible.

We're mostly bang for buck people here. I'd rather have a player that is good enough and save my money for something else like more movies and CDs.

Jim

PS: The heft thing sort of applies to amplifiers but it is only part of the story.

Thank you, really I mean that.

 

[ahblaza]

gpost3,
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to ease the intimidation factor which has really gotten a grip on me with digital stored data and HD drives and media players and the whole gamut of this most interesting aspect and format of storing and playing music, my interest has really peaked and I am excited about exploring this side of musical fidelity, I will definitely keep you and the rest of the most caring and helpful group of people that I have never had the pleasure of meeting informed of my progress, it truly is an honor being a member of this forum, again thanks so much.
Best Regards to all, Jeff

 

[TLS Guy]

gpost3,
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to ease the intimidation factor which has really gotten a grip on me with digital stored data and HD drives and media players and the whole gamut of this most interesting aspect and format of storing and playing music, my interest has really peaked and I am excited about exploring this side of musical fidelity, I will definitely keep you and the rest of the most caring and helpful group of people that I have never had the pleasure of meeting informed of my progress, it truly is an honor being a member of this forum, again thanks so much.
Best Regards to all, Jeff

I'm going to pour a little cold water on the advice you have been given.

All of these systems are pop music geared and don't work well for the classical enthusiasts. In fact they are not handy at all.

The problem is the cue file or lack thereof.

If you download a bunch of tracks and each is a separate item and the pause does not matter you are fine. However that is seldom the case for classical productions. The movements and whole pieces of music have definite sections, but the music must be continuous, Take an opera for instance, individual arias and choruses are tracked, but the music is continuous.

However when you download it, you have a dogs, dinner as likely as not. You end up with pauses clicks and other artifacts between sections.

The result is that is I download a CD, I invariably have to remaster it. The thought of remastering a long opera would certainly put me off not buying the hard media.

I have experimented with HD downloads, and then I end up having to make a DVD A master.

So, yes I buy and play hard media most often. I have not bothered to put most of my vinyl on my hard drives. It does not change the quality and grabbing an album is no problem.

SACDs can not be put on the hard drive unless converted to PCM.

As far as CD is concerned it is frustrating, as I developed a system for linking CD files to the cue file, that is fool proof, but few bother to implement it. It works great for downloading a CD. You can download in FLAC but have to convert to standard CD for it to work.

The system does not work for data files as there is no cue file, just an ordering system, which is not adequate.

So in my view the whole download scene is infantile at present and not ready for prime time if you are a classical enthusiast.

So hang on to your disc players for the present.

 

[gpost3]

gpost3,
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to ease the intimidation factor which has really gotten a grip on me with digital stored data and HD drives and media players and the whole gamut of this most interesting aspect and format of storing and playing music, my interest has really peaked and I am excited about exploring this side of musical fidelity, I will definitely keep you and the rest of the most caring and helpful group of people that I have never had the pleasure of meeting informed of my progress, it truly is an honor being a member of this forum, again thanks so much.
Best Regards to all, Jeff

You are most welcome. And we thank you for your patience. I would suggest that you start by:
1. Figuring out available hard disk disk space
2. Ripping your CDs into apple's loseless .aac format. (Apple's iTunes will do the job)

I use VIA VT series audio chip. Like Bryston, it does 192 Khz content and just like Breyston it does 24-bit sampling. With s/n ratio of 98 db from my phewny VIA chip, Breyston has nothing to boast about and mind you this is my $30 chip.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/audio/codecs/vt1708b/index.jsp

Anyway feel free to private message me about any of this.

 

[bikemig]

I'm going to pour a little cold water on the advice you have been given.

All of these systems are pop music geared and don't work well for the classical enthusiasts. In fact they are not handy at all.

The problem is the cue file or lack thereof.

If you download a bunch of tracks and each is a separate item and the pause does not matter you are fine. However that is seldom the case for classical productions. The movements and whole pieces of music have definite sections, but the music must be continuous, Take an opera for instance, individual arias and choruses are tracked, but the music is continuous.

However when you download it, you have a dogs, dinner as likely as not. You end up with pauses clicks and other artifacts between sections.

The result is that is I download a CD, I invariably have to remaster it. The thought of remastering a long opera would certainly put me off not buying the hard media.

I have experimented with HD downloads, and then I end up having to make a DVD A master.

So, yes I buy and play hard media most often. I have not bothered to put most of my vinyl on my hard drives. It does not change the quality and grabbing an album is no problem.

SACDs can not be put on the hard drive unless converted to PCM.

As far as CD is concerned it is frustrating, as I developed a system for linking CD files to the cue file, that is fool proof, but few bother to implement it. It works great for downloading a CD. You can download in FLAC but have to convert to standard CD for it to work.

The system does not work for data files as there is no cue file, just an ordering system, which is not adequate.

So in my view the whole download scene is infantile at present and not ready for prime time if you are a classical enthusiast.

So hang on to your disc players for the present.

I take it that gapless playback doesn't work for you (or perhaps I don't understand the problem you are having). Certainly itunes and the other players tend to be geared towards pop, not classical (especially when it comes to metadata), and there are issues with computer based playback but I don't think the classical music computer playback scene is infantile. This is the direction where things are moving . . . . Just check out all the various symphonies that make hi res files available for subscription download.

 

[TLS Guy]

I take it that gapless playback doesn't work for you (or perhaps I don't understand the problem you are having). Certainly itunes and the other players tend to be geared towards pop, not classical (especially when it comes to metadata), and there are issues with computer based playback but I don't think the classical music computer playback scene is infantile. This is the direction where things are moving . . . . Just check out all the various symphonies that make hi res files available for subscription download.

I have been experimenting with Hi res files.

It is gapless, but not without artifact. There are clicks, gips and worse, missing music across the gap. However when concerting back to Wav, files the data is usually there, so I can remaster. This is a lot of work and a big pain.

Some, but not all of the trouble is due to incompetence of the individuals putting the items up for download. The biggest error is failure to snap to zero crossing at edit points.

However lack of a proper cue file is a big problem.

So to get a cue file that makes the production work properly you have to make a CD production on your computer or for Hi Res A DVD A production. You don't have to burn a disc, bit you have to make an image on your computer.

I suspect most people do not have the means to do this, as they don't have professional studio software on their rigs like I do.

I have a performance of the Mahler No 8 in high res from New York, that is full of tics and gips, that I have not had the energy to remaster yet.

Ordering discs on line is a lot easier.

So yes, I stand by my statement that the online music business, as far as the classical buyer is concerned is infantile and not ready for prime time. There is lot more work to do. It is absolutely not good enough.

I'm totally opposed to, and constantly fighting this, "good enough" mentality.

 

[jinjuku]

So yes, I stand by my statement that the online music business, as far as the classical buyer is concerned is infantile and not ready for prime time. There is lot more work to do. It is absolutely not good enough.

I'm totally opposed to, and constantly fighting this, "good enough" mentality.

I hear you there. My classical music is all on CD. I have a ton on Telarc. No worries there since they know to to properly master music.

 

[ashergill]

+1 for the Logitech Squeezebox Touch. I just got a new pair of paradigm speakers for my living room, and have setup the SB touch (foregoing the CD player altogether from this setup) and have started playing FLACs from my PC. The setup was a breeze; the SB touch is connected wirelessly, and the convenience of having my entire library available on the SB touch is huge. The sound is great, though I am just a casual listener and not an audiophile. I still might add a cheap CD player just to be able to play CDs I have yet to rip, but the SB Touch will definitely be the primary player. Highly recommended!

Next is to setup the home server, and use that to stream instead of the PC. Just waiting on the WHS 2011 to arrive...

 

[cvcgolf]

If you're an audiophile type, meaning you sit down between 2 speakers and relax listening to your favorite music then the rotel with the dac magic should be real nice.. Having the magic means when the rotel dies, you just need to swap in a decent player and still get your great sound.. If you listen to jazz, big band, Sinatra, classical, etc, then this would be an ideal set up..

The new technology is mainly for convenience.. Having a million songs at your finger tip is cool but is it the best way to hear your favorite tunes?.. That's up to you and not us..

 

[gpost3]

The new technology is mainly for convenience.. Having a million songs at your finger tip is cool but is it the best way to hear your favorite tunes?.. That's up to you and not us..

What you are missing out is that digital audio signal is read in form of 0s and 1s whether it is on a cd or harddrive or nand flash. CD infact is less robust due to Jitter issues but as one person pointed out, even a cheap cd player provides enough oversampling. The OP is not switching from vinyl audio to digital audio so there will be no difference if you read up on how audio is read in a CD vs hard drive. What does make a difference however is the DAC being used and some of those old clunkers do indeed come with a good DAC which makes one think that the CD player is the weakest link when infact the CD player is only a transport even in those clunker. It is all about the DAC. If plug in digital audio source somehow into that rotel clunker then it will sound exactly the same as compared to playing it in a cd inside the ROTEL.

CD player reads the audio by striking the laser beam, if there is refraction back into the lens, then its a 1. Otherwise, it's a 0. Hard drives do this job by flipping the bits using magnetic flux but when it reads them, it is exactly the same 0 or a 1. This CD vs Hard Drive debate is now long old and very boring and most people do know there is no difference between a media played back from a CD and Hard Drive. Some disagree (TLS) and that's ok but also keep in mind that most agree in this forum (check previous posts).