CD Player - advice

[kermit_xc]

Am very new to this forum ... practiacally new to the topic aswell.
Recently I have completed my HT setup:

Receiver: used AVR 110
DVD: Toshiba (yr/2000)
TV: Westinghouse 32"
Speakers: SS-MF550H
Center Channel: SS-CN550H
Rear : some old philips speakers
cables: monoprice coax

While listening to 5.1 content (HDTV, DVD) The sound is pretty nice. The problem is when I am playing some redbook CD's (baroque msuic for example) using the Toshiba DVD player --- no good, far from impressing. Brandenburg concerto sounds like the whole orchestra would be squeezed together into one BLOB while recording ... bad bad bad :{

My father has an old Marantz 63 CD Player with some old Marantz receiver. The Bach Brandenburg concerto ... well, anything sounds very impressive on this system, specially the highs's are so clear.

Now I realised that the CD player and its DAC plays a huge role in the system, and am browsing for one ... but am far from being audiophile (cant efford it, reason for the sony speakers)

Question is what do you recommend? Is there a budget DVD universal payer that is going to do the job ... the OPPO perhaps ?

Should I look around for some old Marantz on ebay or is there anything cheaper that could get me a nice sound without paying more than for the new TV ?

Or is it that my system is just not capable of clear stereo reproduction, and getting even the $1000 CD player is not going to change anything.
AFAIK the AVR 110 has a seperate logic for the 2 channel setup --- should be good right?

Just help me please, cause I am getting very confused with all this.

-- kermit_xc

 

[Mort Corey]

If you're using the optical (or coaxal) output from the DVD player to the AVR then it is using the AVR's DAC's......maybe I'm missing something

Mort

 

[kermit_xc]

I've tried the analog RCA ... the same

 

[jcPanny]

Upgrade options

I think that you will get more benefit out of a speaker upgrade. Instead of buying the Oppo (for audio at least), consider spending the $200 on a pair of Onix X-LS bookshelf speaker and save for the matching center channel.

One of the oppo players would be a good option for upgrading the DVD video quality and scalling to the native resolution of your TV, but its D/A converters are not the greatest.

 

[tbewick]

I think that most hi-fi digital audio systems should be transparent. Using the digital input of the receiver should give you the best results. As I understand it, the only difference between DVD/CD players would be in the level of jitter through the interface. My guess would be that your current player and A/V receiver would have sufficiently good jitter performance. Very low jitter levels are necessary for true 24 bit performance, but even 14 bit accuracy will have excellent sound quality. In normal listening, sound quality of your system will probably be dominated by the quality of your speakers and room acoustics.

In assessing the quality of the digital output of the A/V receiver, it's probably easiest just to look at the signal-to-noise ratio. If this is good, then it is likely that the other aspects and measures of performance will be good as well. 80-90 dB and anything higher should be fine.