Which CD player to buy?

[Darrenmc]

Okay I had a chance to hear the NAD C525bee, NAD C542, Arcam CD73T, and the Cambridge Audio Azur 640C cd players yesterday. They were tested through the NAD C732 integrated amp and Monitor Audio BR1 speakers with all the same cable and at the same volume. There was a notable difference between the NAD C525bee($450CDN) and the NAD C542($700CDN). I could not really notice a big difference between the NAD C542 and the Arcam CD73T ($960.00CDN) cd players though. Last was the Cambridge Audio Azur 640C which I really didn't care for at all, it sounded bland to me.
So with that said the dealer recommended me to go with the Arcam CD73T, obviously the most expensive one, even with using my current Onkyo SR701 a/v receiver which he said was comparable to the NAD C732 Integrated amp. He said it's the source going in (cd player)and not the receiver that would make a big difference, garbage in, garbage out. He recommended not to upgrade the receiver a little bit and go with a cheaper cd player but get a better cd player which would be fine with my receiver. i don't know if I can justify the extra $260 for the Arcam when the NADC542 sounded equal to me? I could use he extra $260 to spend on a better receiver. Any thoughts on this????

 

[nav]

If you use the digital out (either the coaxial or the TOSLINK) from the CD player to your receiver, the CD player makes absolutely no difference as far as sound quality goes (the receiver is fed the PCM straight off the disc and the receiver does all the work). So, my recommendation would be the opposite of your dealer's: buy an inexpensive though decent CD player (or DVD or universal), use the money saved for whatever receiver you'd like, and connect the CD player to the receiver through a digital out.

 

[Nick250]

I think nav's response is right on the money.

Nick

 

[Seth=L]

What about the exclusive DACs in the CD players? Is it possible for them to better better integrated than a receiver's DACs?

My personal experience with Onkyo would only be useful with a digital connection anyway. I had an Onkyo TX-DS787 that refused to co-exist with my ex-Pioneer Elite PD-65 CD player. It present distortion, probably due to clipping within the low-level input section of the receiver. I used the same CD player with a Rotel Preamp and had no problems. The output from the CD players you listed may be lower than the Pioneer and Onkyo receivers may no longer have this problem (could have been isolated to my unit). These are just things to consider when purchasing.

If you must get one of the players you listed I would not purchase the ARCAM because the dealer told you it was better, of course they are going to tell you it is better because it costs more. If you see no difference between the two then the choice there would be obvious.

In any case I would just to what was recommended before, use your DVD player or a decent CD player for less than $200 that has a digital output.

What speakers do you have? Fronts, surrounds, center, sub? Have you done acoustical treatments? These are the most effective ways to achieve improved sound.

 

[tbewick]

Okay I had a chance to hear the NAD C525bee, NAD C542, Arcam CD73T, and the Cambridge Audio Azur 640C cd players yesterday. They were tested through the NAD C732 integrated amp and Monitor Audio BR1 speakers with all the same cable and at the same volume. There was a notable difference between the NAD C525bee($450CDN) and the NAD C542($700CDN). I could not really notice a big difference between the NAD C542 and the Arcam CD73T ($960.00CDN) cd players though. Last was the Cambridge Audio Azur 640C which I really didn't care for at all, it sounded bland to me.

If you're only interested in sound quality, you should know that reliably distinguishing subtle differences between equipment requires double-blind testing and very closely matched volume levels (apparently around 0.1 dB).

The 1970 BBC R&D report 'Pulse Code Modulation for High Quality Sound Distribution: Quantizing Distortion at Very Low Signal Levels', by M.G. Croll, showed that you need 14 bits to reduce granular distortion to inaudible levels. My guess would be that all of those players, plus your Onyko receiver, would probably meet or exceed this level of performance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1970-18.pdf

What about the exclusive DACs in the CD players? Is it possible for them to better better integrated than a receiver's DACs?

I think it depends on how high quality the external or internal converters are. Some CD player internal converters suffer from EM interference from other components inside the player, like the disc reading mechanism, which can cause amplitude modulated noise. External DAC's can suffer from phase modulated noise because of jitter on the input signal. With good quality equipment, this sort of noise would probably be masked by the actual music, making it difficult to hear.

 

[Darrenmc]

If you must get one of the players you listed I would not purchase the ARCAM because the dealer told you it was better, of course they are going to tell you it is better because it costs more. If you see no difference between the two then the choice there would be obvious.

In any case I would just to what was recommended before, use your DVD player or a decent CD player for less than $200 that has a digital output.

What speakers do you have? Fronts, surrounds, center, sub? Have you done acoustical treatments? These are the most effective ways to achieve improved sound.

I have Angstrom Modular 4's for fronts, Modular 2's for surrounds, 6C for the center channel, and Modular 8's for the powered subs. What do you mean by acoustical treatments?

 

[Seth=L]

I have Angstrom Modular 4's for fronts, Modular 2's for surrounds, 6C for the center channel, and Modular 8's for the powered subs. What do you mean by acoustical treatments?

I don't know much about room acoustic treatments, someone else may be able to help you with that. I have not done it myself.

I would recomend getting a NAD receiver. I would imagine that your speakers swing low in impedance sometimes and that doesn't work well for most receivers. NAD is an audio driven company, they want the best SQ over the latest in gizmos and fashion. They have good DACs so putting a inexpensive disc spinner, even if it is just a DVD player, the SQ should be nothing short of great.

I strongly urge you to save money and skip the high-end CD players and get a really good receiver, you will thank yourself. You may want to wait just a little longer for HDMI to become part of NAD's receiver options, I believe their next line will have HDMI support, along with really good DACs.

 

[Nick250]

What do you mean by acoustical treatments?

Your room and your speakers combined are just one big loud speaker and as such sound quality will vary greatly from room to room. Room treatments help correct for this.

I recently got Tri Traps to control boomy bass. They fixed the problem completely.

http://www.gikacoustics.com/product_info.html

Also Audioholics has FAQs on room acoustics.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8119

Nick

 

[skizzerflake]

Here's an idea to kick around. I recently needed a replacement for a rarely used VCR, went to Best Buy and they had a stack of boxes for a Panasonic DVD recorder/VCR DME35SV for about $240. I connected it and started being extremely impressed. It seemed to be playing cds better than my much more expensive Sony SACD player. Coincidentally the magazine Sensible Sound had a reviewer who did the same thing. He had some sort of torture test disk for Cd players and found that this unit read more accurately than most expensive CD players and much better than cheap ones. If you are going to use a digital out, then the only sound difference between one player and another would be its ability to read discs accurately. I'm embarrassed to say that this low-fallutin DVD recorder has become my primary music CD player.

 

[tbewick]

Here's an idea to kick around. I recently needed a replacement for a rarely used VCR, went to Best Buy and they had a stack of boxes for a Panasonic DVD recorder/VCR DME35SV for about $240. I connected it and started being extremely impressed. It seemed to be playing cds better than my much more expensive Sony SACD player. Coincidentally the magazine Sensible Sound had a reviewer who did the same thing. He had some sort of torture test disk for Cd players and found that this unit read more accurately than most expensive CD players and much better than cheap ones. If you are going to use a digital out, then the only sound difference between one player and another would be its ability to read discs accurately. I'm embarrassed to say that this low-fallutin DVD recorder has become my primary music CD player.

What do you mean by 'more accurate'?

 

[Seth=L]

What do you mean by 'more accurate'?

I think he meant read with minimal error.

 

[tbewick]

I think he meant read with minimal error.

That's a bit confusing, because all CD players require error correction decoding. On a correctly functioning CD player, only a badly scratched or very dirty disc would cause audible deterioration i.e. clicking and skipping.

http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdpreprint.pdf
B. Vries, K.A.S. Immink, J.B. Nyboer, H. Hoeve, T.T. Doi, K. Odaka and H. Ogawa, 'The Compact Disc Digital Audio System: Modulation and Error correction', 67th AES Convention, no 1674, New York, Oct. 1980.

The only difference between different players when using an external DAC would be in the amount of jitter the player sends to the DAC. The modulation noise resulting from this should be minimal on modern converter designs (that is unless you are using very long/poorly designed cables or are cascading lots of devices together without a common reference clock).

 

[Seth=L]

I have a few CD players, some are more prone to skip than others.

 

[tbewick]

I have a few CD players, some are more prone to skip than others.

Well, I do still find it rather confusing, because I've never thought of upgrading my DVD player to prevent skipping.

I thought it would be worth discussing what data is actually sent from the CD/DVD player to the external DAC. My guess is that the Sensible Sound article skizzerflake refers to used a Compact Disc with various signals designed to examine player performance. The paper 'The Numerically-Identical CD Mystery:. A Study in Perception versus Measurement', by Ian Dennis, Julian Dunn, and Doug Carson, used these sorts of test signals. The paper examined whether or not alleged audible differences between CD's from different pressing plants could be explained.

'The DSA-1 confidence test signal is a pseudo-random sequence that can be recognised by the Prism Sound DSA-1 analyzer. This signal was included to allow verification that no changes to the data had been made.

The last two tracks contain values that do not allow an EFM modulator to maintain a zero DC content. These 'awkward' values were intended to show differences between EFM modulator algorithms used in the manufacturing process, but also proved useful as a source of DC modulation.

...In examining the reliability of the various players in playing the 'awkward' EFM patterns, it was initially assumed that replay errors could be monitored using the 'VALID' flag in the digital output bitstream of the players. However, this was not the case with all players; among those which failed to reproduce the patterns reliably, some did not set the 'VALID' flag at all and others did so only sometimes. The following table shows how many of the 13 different discs in the set were NOT reliably playable on various players on the awkward EFM tracks, and which players flagged these errors on their 'VALID' bit:

Player / No of discs / Flags V=1?

Philips CD624 / 2 / Rarely
Philips CD930 / 1 / Never
Marantz CD-63 / 13 / Never
Technics SL-PS670A / 4 / Usually
Sony CDP-761E / 3 / Sometimes

The failure of some players to play the awkward EFM patterns reliably was interesting, but was felt not to be relevant in explaining sonic differences, since sustained awkward patterns do not occur frequently in real music, and occasional uncorrected errors (even if they did occur) would not correspond with the sort of continuous degradation in sound quality which had been described. However, it was disappointing that the 'VALID' flag could not be relied upon, since it necessitated checking all discs in all players using the DSA-1 confidence test in order to assure general data integrity for all disc/player combinations. This test was found to be reliable in all cases.'

http://www.prismsound.com/m_r_downloads/cdinvest.pdf

 

[Nick250]

I use a Panasonic DVD S1 to use in a headphone only system. Paid $69 if memory serves. It is connected via analog cables to the headphone amp and Senns HD580's. No noticeable audio problems so far.

Nick

 

[Seth=L]

I use a Panasonic DVD S1 to use in a headphone only system. Paid $69 if memory serves. It is connected via analog cables to the headphone amp and Senns HD580's. No noticeable audio problems so far.

Nick

I have an old Magnavox CDB 560 and 650, and I have no audio problems with them either. I have had them connected digitally and analog and notice minimal differences in audio. They are bullet proof, the play anything, the only thing out of place is appearances. These players are only beautiful in the eye of the beholder and I don't think the CDB 560 is an outwardly beautiful player. The inside is another story.

It could just be me, but CD players and DACs don't differ in leaps in bounds. I can't imagine anyone gasping for air when they upgrade their CD player to a higher model or better make, unless the player you had before was total crap.

 

[Bassman2]

I use a Panasonic DVD S1 to use in a headphone only system. Paid $69 if memory serves. It is connected via analog cables to the headphone amp and Senns HD580's. No noticeable audio problems so far.

Nick

Avoid the charges and dial direct huh?