On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 21:44:54 GMT, "Wally" wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

Not 'necessary', but it does help an outboard DAC to approach the
quality of a one-box player. generally, much better to buy a better
player than to use an outboard DAC for CD replay.

Judging by the prices that DACs are going for, I'm thinking that this would
be a good improvement over the existing setup for less than the cost of a
comparable player. My mate's £500 Arcam player has quickly established
itself as something of a benchmark - I'd like to approach, or improve on,
that sort of quality if feasible.

It's feasible, but only with a single-box player! :-)

Try the brilliant Sony NV-900, for instance, which should be available
very cheaply - and it plays DVDs, too!

My thinking is that, when my existing
player starts to bite the dust, I could look at getting a transport that can
take a timing signal from a DAC. Is it a standard signal for all (most?)
transports/DACs, or is it rather proprietary?

No, this is a very rare and always proprietary feature, and doesn't
always work too well (the Linn being a case in point).

I'm sure an oscilloscope is a much cheaper approach... ;-)

Actually, he's being coy. 'Better kit' in this case most certainly
does *not* include DACs which can't suppress jitter in the datastream,
but they certainly cost a lot of money, and they do sound bad! :-)

Do you mean DACs that use a sync signal to control jitter, as opposed to
those which can take a raw datastream and make the best (or better) of it?

No, I mean DAC which typically has dual PLLs, one wideband to ensure
viability with poor transports, and one narrow-band to ensure low
jitter with a good transport.

Would a DAC which has a sync output and a bunch of oversampling be the right
thing to go chasing after?

No, a single-box player will always be superior.

As noted, try Meridian DACs - they sound good and they do a good job
of suppressing jitter. I'm not sure that you'll notice much difference
between the original 203 and the later models, as they always had the
engineering pretty well spot on.

Duly noted.

I still have my trusty 203 in its original box if you're interested,
but I still recommend a new player.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering