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Can I use my cd player as a transport for 1212M?

post #1 of 37
1/30/05 at 8:51am
Thread Starter 
I would like to use my NAD C541i as a transport for my 1212M. I dont like using my cd-rom because it tends to scratch cd's, unfortunately. (any suggestions on a good cd-rom/writer to replace it?) Do I just need a digital cable? What kind of cable do I look for? Thanks.
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post #2 of 37
1/30/05 at 9:05am
If it's not too big of an effort, I suggest ripping all CDs to harddrive using lossless compression. This also eliminates any jitter that might occur from using a digital connection from the CDP to EMU.
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post #3 of 37
1/30/05 at 9:30am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by breez
If it's not too big of an effort, I suggest ripping all CDs to harddrive using lossless compression. This also eliminates any jitter that might occur from using a digital connection from the CDP to EMU.
I would like to try using it as a transport to see if I have a problem with jitter or not first. There are a few reasons I don't want to put my whole collection onto hard drives...
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post #4 of 37
1/30/05 at 11:57am
what is a transport? i never owned a source component before so I'm ignorant. I only know the Marantz 5400 has shaky transport according to many reviews
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post #5 of 37
1/30/05 at 12:42pm
If you do hook an external player up to your 1212, make sure to use the "external clock" option. IME, using the internal clock leads to pops in the music. That's on the 0404, I assume 1212 is the same deal.
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post #6 of 37
1/30/05 at 1:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asterix
I would like to try using it as a transport to see if I have a problem with jitter or not first. There are a few reasons I don't want to put my whole collection onto hard drives...
Rip a few tracks to lossless flac and compare to your nad when using as transport.
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post #7 of 37
1/30/05 at 1:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asmo
Rip a few tracks to lossless flac and compare to your nad when using as transport.
Do you have any idea of the amount of work and time, do you need to transfering let's say 1000 CDs into a hard drive??? And how many hard drives you may need at the end.
Some people do not like ot use the HD as a source becasue of that, my case for example, I do not want to spend the rest of my life transfering CDs to HDs...
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post #8 of 37
1/30/05 at 2:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sovkiller
Do you have any idea of the amount of work and time, do you need to transfering let's say 1000 CDs into a hard drive??? And how many hard drives you may need at the end.
Some people do not like ot use the HD as a source becasue of that, my case for example, I do not want to spend the rest of my life transfering CDs to HDs...
It usually takes 6 ~ 12 minutes to finish a good CD. If you are using a 250GB HD, you might just need two hard drives, one for play and one for back up.
In my case, I have around 800 CDs and it took me almost 3 month to finish all the work. I wasn't in a hurry and I did it when I am watching TV, posting in head-Fi....etc. It wasn't that hard.
One of the reasons is with a 800 CD collection, sometimes I just listen to the 200 CDs that are easier to reach for me. When they are all in my HD, I have my 800 CDs back again.
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post #9 of 37
1/30/05 at 2:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by J@ck
It usually takes 6 ~ 12 minutes to finish a good CD. If you are using a 250GB HD, you might just need two hard drives, one for play and one for back up.
In my case, I have around 800 CDs and it took me almost 3 month to finish all the work. I wasn't in a hurry and I did it when I am watching TV, posting in head-Fi....etc. It wasn't that hard.
One of the reasons is with a 800 CD collection, sometimes I just listen to the 200 CDs that are easier to reach for me. When they are all in my HD, I have my 800 CDs back again.
I agree, although I only own maybe 200 cds, I often only listened to maybe 50 on regular basis, now I have my entire library at my finger tips, I could never go back to changing cds.
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post #10 of 37
1/30/05 at 3:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by J@ck
It usually takes 6 ~ 12 minutes to finish a good CD. If you are using a 250GB HD, you might just need two hard drives, one for play and one for back up.
In my case, I have around 800 CDs and it took me almost 3 month to finish all the work. I wasn't in a hurry and I did it when I am watching TV, posting in head-Fi....etc. It wasn't that hard.
One of the reasons is with a 800 CD collection, sometimes I just listen to the 200 CDs that are easier to reach for me. When they are all in my HD, I have my 800 CDs back again.
I ahve all of them in the wall in a huge furniture and is easy for me to reach any of them, I listen all of them equally, just depending on the mood, today I'm listening jazz mainly...
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post #11 of 37
1/30/05 at 4:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asterix
I would like to use my NAD C541i as a transport for my 1212M. I dont like using my cd-rom because it tends to scratch cd's, unfortunately. (any suggestions on a good cd-rom/writer to replace it?) Do I just need a digital cable? What kind of cable do I look for? Thanks.
May I ask why you want to do this? It sounds pretty unusual to me.
Normally people want to avoid to do the Digital-to-Analog part in a computer because of the power, the noise...etc. The DAC chip on 1212M is pretty good, but it's not that good. If you want to have a better DAC, maybe get yourself a DAC is a easier and better way.
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post #12 of 37
1/30/05 at 6:11pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by J@ck
May I ask why you want to do this? It sounds pretty unusual to me.
Normally people want to avoid to do the Digital-to-Analog part in a computer because of the power, the noise...etc. The DAC chip on 1212M is pretty good, but it's not that good. If you want to have a better DAC, maybe get yourself a DAC is a easier and better way.
I want to try it. I just got the fiber optic cable. I cannot get any sound. How do I set this up?

Edit: I got it, and it sounds great. I have tried it side by side with direct through the NAD cd player, and I may prefer the 1212M. It's brighter and livelier, at the expense of some of the warmth of the NAD. By the way I'm doing this because my cd-rom scratches cd's and is less accessable than my cd player.
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post #13 of 37
1/30/05 at 6:41pm
I'm confused here:

CDP - AMP - Headphone [Using 1 set of interconnects] [Changing CDs]

CDP - PC soundcard - Amp - Headphone [Using 2 set of Interconnects] [Still changing CDs]
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post #14 of 37
1/30/05 at 6:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wali
I'm confused here:

CDP - AMP - Headphone [Using 1 set of interconnects] [Changing CDs]

CDP - PC soundcard - Amp - Headphone [Using 2 set of Interconnects] [Still changing CDs]

The difference is that on the 2nd setup, the signal is bypassing the cd players internal DAC, and instead it goes to the sound card's DAC, which totally changes the sound without any degradation that I can hear. Remember, one of the sets of interconnects is an optical cable, which I would imagine would have little or no signal loss/modification compared with an an analog cable. (correct me if im wrong please.)
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post #15 of 37
1/30/05 at 7:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asterix
The difference is that on the 2nd setup, the signal is bypassing the cd players internal DAC, and instead it goes to the sound card's DAC, which totally changes the sound without any degradation that I can hear. Remember, one of the sets of interconnects is an optical cable, which I would imagine would have little or no signal loss/modification compared with an an analog cable. (correct me if im wrong please.)
If you 'believe' that your soundcard’s DAC is far superior then your CDP then it's a perfectly good idea. OTHO, if your CDP has a comparable DAC to your soundcard, then you're basically adding an electronically active and noisy PC with another set of ICs (even if it’s optical) in the chain, which will most certainly degrade the signal.

But, if you have tested both setups and you feel that you like the soundcard as DAC route then it’s perfectly fine.

In your post you mentioned a "brighter and livelier" sound with soundcard as DAC, I suspect that is the low noise and distortion generated by your PC which has ‘colored’ the sound - just an assumption.
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