Internal or External DAC?

[Electone]

After reading gushing reviews of how good the DAC's in the Yamaha RX-V2400 are, I hooked up my CD player's (Arcam Alpha 7) coax digital output directly to the Yamaha.

I also kept the analog connection hooked up so I could switch back and forth between the analog and digital inputs.

Well, the result was not even close - the Arcam's onboard DAC sent to the Yamaha analog inputs blows the doors off the receiver's internal DAC. All listening was done in "Direct" mode, only switching the input mode. The Arcam DAC is open, detailed, and tight. The receiver's DAC sounds much stuffier with less ambience. Perhaps a better coax cable would help. Right now I'm using a Radio Shack Performance Series composite video cable for the digital connection.

 

[mtrycrafts]

After reading gushing reviews of how good the DAC's in the Yamaha RX-V2400 are, I hooked up my CD player's (Arcam Alpha 7) coax digital output directly to the Yamaha.

I also kept the analog connection hooked up so I could switch back and forth between the analog and digital inputs.

Well, the result was not even close - the Arcam's onboard DAC sent to the Yamaha analog inputs blows the doors off the receiver's internal DAC. All listening was done in "Direct" mode, only switching the input mode. The Arcam DAC is open, detailed, and tight. The receiver's DAC sounds much stuffier with less ambience. Perhaps a better coax cable would help. Right now I'm using a Radio Shack Performance Series composite video cable for the digital connection.

Perhaps the analog out is louder? You may want to check that with a test CD and spl metter and see if the signal is louder. I am pretty sure it will be. Hence your observation but on apples and oranges.

If the levels are withing .1dB spl, hardly the case, you would need to compare it while your biases are controlled for. That would be a DBT listeing comparison. Otherwise, the results are unreliable.

'Better' coax cables will not help. That is just audio bs, urban legends.