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In my experience, any CDP will sound good if you connect the digital out to a good DAC.
I would rather use the phrase "a large numbers of CDP". Some CD lasers that now come fitted to the ever increasing cheaper players from China are of lower quality than the even the equivalent laser from say Japan or South Korea. Their beam strength and the quality of the laser focusing lens assembly is not geared up for high quality accuracy. Instead the CDP relies heavily on the various methods of error correction in order to reproduce a recognizable sound. In the budget end of the market a DVD player is surprisingly a far better choice for higher accuracy CD playback.
Unless a DAC design is very poor, just about any DAC could easily outperform a budget CDP or DVDP inbuilt DAC/audio output stage.
The looks and the sound. I don't know about you guys but a nice and usable tray is a must. The DAC must be the most important piece, following by transport and its clock signal to reduce jitter.
And in my opinion a good CD player turns to a great one when it has digital inputs so it can function as a standalone DAC.
__________________ "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather.
Not screaming in terror like his passengers."
Its not necessarily the transport a lasers are commodities. Its not necessarily the DAC because I have heard expensive codecs (PCM1749) sound lousy and cheap codecs (TDA145) sound great.
It is the filtering and related circuitry around the codec that makes the difference. Hence, all CD players can and do sound different as they are the whims of circuit designers, not chip stampers.
Some are congested and constrict the midrange. Snare drums, for example, sound like tambourines. Some are wide and open - yet manage to lack dynamics. Curious. Some image impeccably and let you peer into the music - where you can sense the air between the singer and his/her band.
Viva la difference.
__________________
All the best,
Vic
P.S. I am on staff at the Pacific Valve & Electric CO. Take my comments for what they are worth.
And click on the 7 links under Digital Playback heading on the lower lfet corner of the page.
A lot to read but this may give you some appreciation for a few of the issues involved in how a CD player works.
I think there is a misconception about CD play back. Much more of the process of reading information off of a disc and converting it into an analog waveform is analog (rather than digital) than you may think.
The hardest thing for me to find in a CD player is a remote that doesn't have a million tiny buttons that I don't need. It's amazing how little thought goes into the design of the part of the unit that we actually interact with.
__________________ nor_spoon
"Stupidity got us into this mess - and stupidity will get us out." - Homer SOURCE Ontech Monster Dual Mono AMP Eddie Current Zana Deux HEADPHONES Sennheiser HD650 w/SAA Equinox, Grado RS-1, Victor/JVC HP-DX1000 CABLES Zu Gede, Zu Firemine Feedback:ebay
The transport + laser pickup, vibration dampening, dac, power supply
Also... how important is the clock on a cdp..? I don't really understand this jitter thing. Is it supposed to just "re-adjust" to micro-skips, low end jitter, and all that during D to A conversion?
So this component is super important when talking high end?
__________________
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