Q: Any old transport + nice used DAC OK?

Ok,

I have a DVD player which was one of the cheapest ones around when I bought
it (mid 2001 - it's a Yelo DVD800).

If I buy a 2nd-hand DAC, is that going to give me a good sound, as opposed
to buying a CD player for the same money as the DAC? I'm talking low budget
here?

Cheers,

J

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 16:35:59 +0000 (UTC)
Jay wrote:

If I buy a 2nd-hand DAC, is that going to give me a good sound, as opposed
to buying a CD player for the same money as the DAC? I'm talking low budget
here?

Probably makes very little difference - a CD player mechanism is dirt cheap these days (like, sub 5UKP probably). All the rest of the money is divided between markup and the digital-analogue electronics.

The question is what do you want it for?

If you just want a better CD source, give your cheapie to someone who hasnt got one or something, and buy a new CD player.

If you want to get nice digital sound from a PC or have multiple digital sources, buy a DAC.

Be warned though that only a very few companies produce good DACs (ie. that outperform the ones in CD players).

My ARCAM Delta Black Box 3 sounds good to me, although I suspect the high end modern DACs in expensive CD players beat it.

Meridian appears to be 'the' name in DACs currently, and their design (to all intents and purposes) eliminates jitter (which the cheaper DACs dont generally do so well. Their output filtering is apparently good as well.

--
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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with ketchup.

Ian Molton wrote in
:

Probably makes very little difference - a CD player mechanism is dirt
cheap these days (like, sub 5UKP probably). All the rest of the money
is divided between markup and the digital-analogue electronics.

The question is what do you want it for?

If you just want a better CD source, give your cheapie to someone who
hasnt got one or something, and buy a new CD player.

If you want to get nice digital sound from a PC or have multiple
digital sources, buy a DAC.

Be warned though that only a very few companies produce good DACs (ie.
that outperform the ones in CD players).

My ARCAM Delta Black Box 3 sounds good to me, although I suspect the
high end modern DACs in expensive CD players beat it.

Meridian appears to be 'the' name in DACs currently, and their design
(to all intents and purposes) eliminates jitter (which the cheaper
DACs dont generally do so well. Their output filtering is apparently
good as well.


Ah, I see.

Well, I'm going to keep my DVD player, and was wondering if I could get
an old DAC for £100 - £200 whether it would ourperform a CD player for
the same money.

either way, I'll keep the DVD player.

But you reckon that it would be just as good getting a CD player?

cool. I'll look into it.

j

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 16:58:44 +0000 (UTC)
Jay wrote:

Ah, I see.

Well, I'm going to keep my DVD player, and was wondering if I could get
an old DAC for _100 - _200 whether it would ourperform a CD player for
the same money.

either way, I'll keep the DVD player.

But you reckon that it would be just as good getting a CD player?

Only if you are going to feed your DVD player into it as well (DVDP tend to have crap DACs). then you'd probably want a DAC with AC3 , surround, and all that.

cool. I'll look into it.

DONT get a cheapie - it WILL sound like a cheapie (by all accounts here so far). either buy a new good one (5-800ukp to START - rediculous priceS) or hunt ebay for a good 2nd hand one.

Im very happy with my ARCAM DBB3 and Meridians 203 is well liked by Jim Lesurf who is a very knowledgeable chap in these matters. the 203 (IIRC) has only coax in though and no fancy decoder, just a DAC (the BB3 is also just a DAC).

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with ketchup.

"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 16:58:44 +0000 (UTC)
Jay wrote:


Im very happy with my ARCAM DBB3 and Meridians 203 is well liked by Jim
Lesurf who is a very knowledgeable chap in these matters. the 203 (IIRC)
has only coax in though and no fancy decoder, just a DAC (the BB3 is also
just a DAC).


The 203 has both optical and coax input and the manual recommends optical.
Superb dac with a cheap source.

Alan

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 20:22:11 +0000 (UTC)
"Alan Murphy" wrote:

The 203 has both optical and coax input and the manual recommends optical.
Superb dac with a cheap source.

optical too? darn, I musta misremembered. sorry about that.

--
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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with ketchup.

In article , Jay

wrote:
Ok,

I have a DVD player which was one of the cheapest ones around when I
bought it (mid 2001 - it's a Yelo DVD800).

If I buy a 2nd-hand DAC, is that going to give me a good sound, as
opposed to buying a CD player for the same money as the DAC? I'm
talking low budget here?

As Ian has said, the answer is really "depends"... :-)

The result will depend upon the DAC you choose.

It also depends on how well your player reads CDs. I use a DVD Video player
in the living room and play the output via a DAC. This works nicely with
DVDs, but the player does sometimes struggle with CDs as there are some
physical differences between a CD and a DVD. As a result, some players may
not read CDs well enough to avoid having to interpolate over uncorrected
errors at times.

Hence it comes down to, experiment and then decide. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
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Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article , Ian Molton
wrote:
On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 20:22:11 +0000 (UTC) "Alan Murphy"
wrote:

The 203 has both optical and coax input and the manual recommends
optical. Superb dac with a cheap source.

optical too? darn, I musta misremembered. sorry about that.

The DACs I use and prefer are the Meridian 263 (not 203) and 563. The 263 I
have only has a coax input.

However I think it may be the case that with both the 203 and 263 that
there is more than one version. I have read magazine reviews that made
confilcting statements about what inputs these units have. I should ask
Meridian, but there has been a failure to acquire the relevant round
tuit...

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004 16:58:44 +0000 (UTC), Jay wrote:

Ian Molton wrote in
:

Probably makes very little difference - a CD player mechanism is dirt
cheap these days (like, sub 5UKP probably). All the rest of the money
is divided between markup and the digital-analogue electronics.

The question is what do you want it for?

If you just want a better CD source, give your cheapie to someone who
hasnt got one or something, and buy a new CD player.

If you want to get nice digital sound from a PC or have multiple
digital sources, buy a DAC.

Be warned though that only a very few companies produce good DACs (ie.
that outperform the ones in CD players).

My ARCAM Delta Black Box 3 sounds good to me, although I suspect the
high end modern DACs in expensive CD players beat it.

Meridian appears to be 'the' name in DACs currently, and their design
(to all intents and purposes) eliminates jitter (which the cheaper
DACs dont generally do so well. Their output filtering is apparently
good as well.


Ah, I see.

Well, I'm going to keep my DVD player, and was wondering if I could get
an old DAC for £100 - £200 whether it would ourperform a CD player for
the same money.

either way, I'll keep the DVD player.

But you reckon that it would be just as good getting a CD player?

cool. I'll look into it.

j

If keeping the DVD player then I would recomend you spend as much
money as you can afford on a decent CD player. This will far
outperform all but the VERY expensive DVD players on CD replay.

I'd go with a decent second hand ARCAM CD player off eBay.

As for taking your DVD player into an external DAC for DD or DTS, its
going to make no difference in quality. Both formats are compressed
and error corrected so to lose quality, you'd have to have a VERY bad
transport. What's more important here is the transport of the DVD
player, not the DAC at the other end.

Ray.

On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 13:26:36 +0000
Nutter wrote:

As for taking your DVD player into an external DAC for DD or DTS, its
going to make no difference in quality.

'scuse me? WHAT? Have you completely lost the plot?

are you suggesting that a 35ukp DVDP is going to sound the same as you'd get if you piped the data into a high-end AV amp ?

the question isnt really about the quality of the source or connection (as established elsewhere) within reasonable limits. The whole point of using an external D-A conversion (and/or codec) is to allow one to spend money where it really counts - on the best quality converter available, as opposed to using the 20 pence codec chip that comes built into the source.

What's more important here is the transport of the DVD
player, not the DAC at the other end.

balls.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with ketchup.