[Gus B]

I have a wonderful, but perplexing problem. I purchased my first decent source (Denon 3910) and experienced a great improvement with my headphone listening, as I expected, with the 3910 connected to my Corda HA-1. My old source was a theater in the box Sony DAV-450 combo DVD player/amp. Unexpected was the following: For speaker listening, I connected the 3910 to the DAV-450, using the 450 just as an amp, using the digital out on the 3910 & a tos-link cord. As I understand it, this means that the Sony, not the 3910, converted the digital signals on the disk to analogue for output to the DAV-450 speakers. The quality of the sound through the same cheap theater in the box speakers was dramatically better. Not understanding how the same amp & speakers could be so much better using the same digital signal, I had several family members A/B the same CDs--everyone agreed that the CD played in the Denon sounded dramatically better. How can this be?? Is there that much more to a player than the DAC?

 

[recephasan]

How clean is the surface of your CD? If it has dirt/scratches, the transport in your Sony might not be doing as good a job in error correction as the Denon does.
This happens when I use my old Sony portable CDP, which ordinarily sounds better but does a terrible job with mildly scratched CD-Rs.

BTW: congrats on your purchase. it looks like a delicious player. drool drool

 

[jefemeister]

If you can tell the difference between the transports in the Sony unit and the Denon, I strongly suggest you go buy improved amps and speakers. You're only beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible. Also, is it possible to run the analog out from the Denon into the Sony's amp section? If so, I'd go that route as i'm sure the Denon's DAC is better.

 

[drminky]

Yes, as jefmeister mentioned, you are picking up on the difference in the quality of the transports. There is a certain temporal-based error that cd transports produce causing distortion that can be devastating to the sound. This is known as jitter and can be measured in picoseconds. If you look at the specs in your manuals or on the net you might see the measured jitter ratings for your respective players.

It is little surprise that you can hear the difference on your old cd with a better transport. Cheap cd transports are notoriously high in jitter (600 picoseconds or more) whereas any self-respecting top-end cd player should measure significantly less than 200. This is, perhaps even more so than the dac, the area of the cd player which will see some of the biggest improvement when moving from lo-fi to mid-fi cd players. The other big improvements will be in the quality of the output stage (how well the cd signal is amplified to line level), and the quality of the power supply (how well regulated the power source is). These tend to be less than adequate in lo-end players, adequate in mid-fi players, and massively overspecced in hi-end players.

 

[Gus B]

Thanks all for the very informative comments. Amazing though how a chain reaction can start in this area--all I wanted to was to upgrade my source on my headphone system, & now, I can see that it's only a matter of time (days, hours?) before I will not be able to resist getting a new amp & new speakers, which will no doubt cost me more than my $1300 player. Oh well...I do appreciate the input.