Well, there's your problem - you're on an iPhone. That's the biggest problem as to why you can't find your files - iTunes is such a total PITA to work with. The worst it did to me was claim all FLAC files as associated files, not being able to play them didn't matter nor my orders to specifically bother with only its own folder and not the entire computer, while the association meant that no other player could play them either. Moving files into and out of an iDevice was such a complicated operation I wanted to tear my hair out.
By contrast my FLAC library is maintained and used as such:
1. Rip CD using MediaMonkey (or purchase FLAC online)
2. Input/clean up track tags as necessary
3. MM automatically stores each ripped disc into an artist folder and then album folders (multi-disc albums are stored as one long album, track numbers on succeeding discs are edited to continue where the previous disc stopped)
4. Easy to find in one giant folder on my home network; drag and drop (something that, through my interactions on Head-Fi, seems to be a total enigma to Apple users) from one folder to another (ie master folder to microSD card on explorer), reset device microSD card is on or have player app rescan the microSD card
5. Browse either all stored albums alphabetically or by artist folders
I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear or not, I'm sorry if that's the case. But I when I mentioned my iPhone, I mention it because I don't care about a portable system, and I do not want a system with playlists and screens, and software (necessarily), etc. I just want to put a CD into a player and listen to it with lossless/Flac quality, that is all. Also, I don't use iTunes. I download my music on my own computer and put it on Foobar2000, or I use Spotify (highest quality) for music on my phone. Don't need more than that.
More often than not you need to spend a little bit to "hear the music file as transparently for all it is" - a source with good channel separation, black background, and flat response, an amp with low distortion, noise, and good current and/or voltage delivery (and output impedance, but this isn't an issue on speaker amps), and a headphone or speaker with the widest range and smoothest response curve I can afford.
The problem then is that if you're not using the same monitors or the same home speaker test system used by the artist - one of my favorite bands uses Genelec monitors and B&W Speakers - you're still not hearing is as transparently for all it is as it was to the people who worked on it. Not exactly in a total sense of it anyway.
My PC has absolutely no discernible noise. Issues with my computer has nothing to do with why I want a CD player. It may not make sense, but I would just like to use CDs to listen to music, nothing more. My PC has been fantastic as a listening station, but it's not what I'm looking for.
As I stated before, my main headphones are my LCD-2f. Far from the worlds most revealing headphones, but they do still ruin badly mastered tracks. I've tried many headphones, including far more revealing ones, and still my computer has absolutely no noise and does things just fine. But once again, to make it clear, it's not what i'm looking for for this particular listening station.
It's about having a dedicated system for listening only, and when it comes to computers, having a source unit that doesn't add to the noise floor in the room. Some HDDs can be noisy, and even the most quiet computer is only more quiet than the noise in or from outside room that you can't block out (like some climate control equipment), but it still adds to it, since that computer is likely running on either restrictive cooling that needs to work harder (laptops) or has a higher performance that, even with a low noise, high capacity cooling system, still has to make enough of a racket (my idiot motherboard can't drop the intake and exhaust fans below 50%, and AMD's new software doesn't allow for manual Zero Fan mode if the graphics card doesn't have it).
I tried using a computer for a while after my frustrating experiences with CDPs. Like my old Onkyo conking out, then I bought a NAD C520 which conked out in months (it was part of a global recall, but I sold it after it got fixed), then finally my older CDP, a Marantz CD80, stopped reading CD-Rs and couldn't read CDs that had some PC content in it (which presumably is in the innermost ring and the idiot couldn't be bothered to check beyond that area before spitting it back out), and then the Sony transport I bought stopped reading CDs. Oh and I also had a Sony SACD player, which stopped reading SACDs after roughly one year.
Eventually I got tired of using CDs, got to realize I hate using my computer, and eventually I ended up with this.
Again, as I mentioned before, noise is not an issue with my computer. It is a dedicated listening station as I have my listening recliner right next to it. There is no problem there. However, I'm still looking to find out, simply, will my current CD player play back the CD files in lossless/FLAC quality, and if not, what are alternatives without breaking the bank.
I do completely agree that a dedicated listening station is nice though. Just the idea of it makes me appreciate each song a little more. This hobby, I think, is 30% physical, 70% psychological.
Apr 16, 2017 at 11:18 PM Post #21 of 34 ProtegeManiac
Headphoneus Supremus
No I thought your CD player system has its own headphone output and you plugged it there (ie, why I said, "you plug your headphones into that," not "amp"). I never mentioned volume, I mentioned "output impedance," which has to do with damping factor and not volume, something affected by gain and power.
No I was just sharing how
1) A smartphone can work as a desktop system
2) iTunes is just a horrible choice for organizing music for people who aren't wired to like how Apple software works
I mention it because my PC when gaming is virtually silent, to the point that I've left it to download games and for far longer because I forget it was running (I accidentally left it running for three days, and by this point I just put LED illuminated fans that are even quieter, but with the library door open I can at least see a blue glow to remind me that it's running). And yet, when listening, once sitting down next to, once the music goes into a quiet passage, and I hear the hum of the fan.
People have gone to such lengths as use a large all-aluminum chassis with fins that come with copper pipes to connect the CPU to that chassis, the entirety of which serves as the heatsink, just to eliminate fans altogether. Many don't realize that when they can't hear bass for example it has a lot less to do with the bass response and more with ambient noise.
It will play CDs in WAV, not FLAC. It will be lossless in terms of your CDP not converting it to a lossy format. As to how the analogue output stage handles the signal (or if you care about how dedicated CDPs tend to have independent L and R DAC chips), that's where the good CDPs are better.
I'd put that at 40% "physical," ie, hardware, 20% psychological, and 40% environmental. That last part is just as important for headphone systems, just not the same way as with speaker systems. So while there's no need to worry about reflections (alignment to the ear canals however still count for something like toe in), there's still environmental noise. It's just a tendency for those with dedicated listening rooms to live in quieter neighborhoods, have a more solid house, or have acoustically isolated that room.
In my case, environmental factors means that listening at 7pm is a lot different from 10pm, as the noise floor is a heck of a lot lower in the neighborhood (closed window forces me to use the A/C, which just puts a distinct noise source right noise source right in the room). The bass response that I hear (not what the does) is just very dependent on ambient noise.
First off, what you're "pretty simple...asking about" can branch out to different problems or alternate solutions.
Second, and this time it's my turn to repeat what's been explained here and even at the start of this post, a CDP will not play FLAC nor convert CD WAV to any other format but WAV. Even conversion to an SPDIF output signal does not change that.
Third, assuming the PC isn't running some kind of problematic software or setting and both the PC and CDP are using SPDIF output (since USB could have its own issues), then yes, the sound is for the most part identical. I could get into some other problems, but I've already mentioned those and discussing them again would just compel to repeat yourself for not getting a direct and simplistic answer to a narrow part of the issue at hand.Apr 17, 2017 at 12:14 AM Post #22 of 34 Bubblejuice
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2016
- Posts
- 644
- Likes
- 85
No I thought your CD player system has its own headphone output and you plugged it there (ie, why I said, "you plug your headphones into that," not "amp"). I never mentioned volume, I mentioned "output impedance," which has to do with damping factor and not volume, something affected by gain and power.
No I was just sharing how
1) A smartphone can work as a desktop system
2) iTunes is just a horrible choice for organizing music for people who aren't wired to like how Apple software works
I mention it because my PC when gaming is virtually silent, to the point that I've left it to download games and for far longer because I forget it was running (I accidentally left it running for three days, and by this point I just put LED illuminated fans that are even quieter, but with the library door open I can at least see a blue glow to remind me that it's running). And yet, when listening, once sitting down next to, once the music goes into a quiet passage, and I hear the hum of the fan.
People have gone to such lengths as use a large all-aluminum chassis with fins that come with copper pipes to connect the CPU to that chassis, the entirety of which serves as the heatsink, just to eliminate fans altogether. Many don't realize that when they can't hear bass for example it has a lot less to do with the bass response and more with ambient noise.
It will play CDs in WAV, not FLAC. It will be lossless in terms of your CDP not converting it to a lossy format. As to how the analogue output stage handles the signal (or if you care about how dedicated CDPs tend to have independent L and R DAC chips), that's where the good CDPs are better.
I'd put that at 40% "physical," ie, hardware, 20% psychological, and 40% environmental. That last part is just as important for headphone systems, just not the same way as with speaker systems. So while there's no need to worry about reflections (alignment to the ear canals however still count for something like toe in), there's still environmental noise. It's just a tendency for those with dedicated listening rooms to live in quieter neighborhoods, have a more solid house, or have acoustically isolated that room.
In my case, environmental factors means that listening at 7pm is a lot different from 10pm, as the noise floor is a heck of a lot lower in the neighborhood (closed window forces me to use the A/C, which just puts a distinct noise source right noise source right in the room). The bass response that I hear (not what the does) is just very dependent on ambient noise.
First off, what you're "pretty simple...asking about" can branch out to different problems or alternate solutions.
Second, and this time it's my turn to repeat what's been explained here and even at the start of this post, a CDP will not play FLAC nor convert CD WAV to any other format but WAV. Even conversion to an SPDIF output signal does not change that.
Third, assuming the PC isn't running some kind of problematic software or setting and both the PC and CDP are using SPDIF output (since USB could have its own issues), then yes, the sound is for the most part identical. I could get into some other problems, but I've already mentioned those and discussing them again would just compel to repeat yourself for not getting a direct and simplistic answer to a narrow part of the issue at hand.
Oh, sorry, I'm not sure I know the difference between volume/power/impedance. The system has it's own headphone out, it's a 3.5mm plug. Which is what I plug my O2 into. Or my headphones if it's not my LCD-2.
Oh, yeah for sure. I get that. I have a portable set of headphones and my Dragonfly + my iphone when I'm on the go, but at home i'd rather use my PC or CDs. And yes, as much as I like Apple products (or at least what they used to be), the layout for music is terrible.
I get that. My case is a large and aluminum, and I do have a heatsink with a fan. My PC is actually pretty quiet itself, but again, there's not discernible noise. What I mean by that is when I have my headphones on, and I have no sound coming through them, everything sounds dead silent. Silent parts in music also sound dead silent. It's a pretty good case, and my audio interfaces DAC is pretty good.
Oh ok! So, how do those differences translate to the listening experience (L & R DAC chips)? It has a left and right output for the speakers, and then it has a headphone out port.
That's actually a much better description. I totally forgot about environmental. At night the room where I listen is ideal for me. It's never going to be dead silent. But my acoustic foam helps a bit I think. I'm not looking for the worlds best set up, but it does sound much different during the day since I live close to a freeway.
I think I may be using the wrong terms to explain myself. I just assume FLAC/Lossless means that it's not compressed, or that there's not much of the original recording, if any, missing from what I'm hearing. So the actual format doesn't matter, just what it sounds like. If WAV from my CD player sounds like Lossless on my PC, then that's exactly what I'm looking for.
However, if my CD player for any reason alters that, meaning that it somehow doesn't deliver all the Data (sound) to my headphones that my PC would (barring other indirect factors like noise), then why would a better CD player not alter the sound?
Sorry if I seemed like I was bothered or something, I definitely appreciate the time you're taking to help me understand this. The simple ideas concerning PC noise, environmental noise, and general hardware stuff I think I know enough about to see that they are not the problem with my system. I just had a simple question (or so I thought), but I suck at explaining myself as I'm still learning the terms of this hobby. But again (lol), I really do appreciate it!
Apr 17, 2017 at 2:23 AM Post #23 of 34 ProtegeManiac
Headphoneus Supremus
Volume is measured in deciBels, which is how loud the system is. This is affected by the gain and power of the amp as well as the sensitivity/efficiency (effectively
Power in watts or fractions of it in headphone audio (mW), which is how much power it produces to drive the speaker/headphone.
Impedance in ohms is a little difficult to explain but in audio specifically it can affect power delivery by the amp. Generally unless we're talking about a really low voltage source or extremely high impedance, the sensitivity of the headphone makes up for the how the amp is affected by impedance. Also, it isn't just the load, but also the output impedance of the amp - not enough of a gap and you end up with lower damping factor (ie lower control of the drivers).
As good as it can with a fan. Over here even with the PC and A/C not running I can still get 30dB of ambient noise, effectively as loud as one PC, just that the noise source is indistinct. Try a dB meter and see how loud that room is, although with the flat response of the LCD-2 this isn't as big of a problem.
Everything designed for stereo playback has left and right output, including the headphone port. Stereo by definition means two - stereophonic is left and right ear as much as left and right speaker. Your eyes are also stereo, which is why a cyclops would make an ineffective predator.
CDPs and DACs that use dual chips use them to increase channel separation so that the analogue paths will be separated more, but whether or not this has any real effect apart from the quality of the analogue output stage circuit.
In the end good quality DAC chips have good enough channel separation and what really matters past that is the analogue output circuit. This is what determines how different some CDPs sound, whether they're flatter or, in some cases, even the more expensive ones can sound a bit dubious.
In my case when it's night the external noise sources are so low it just make the PC's low freq hum more distinct, so while the overall noise floor is lower, effectively I still hear something else (which can be worse, since I can hear the exact noise).
FLAC is lossless compression. If you rip a CD the WAV file ends up as a much smaller FLAC file. Think of it like sending a picture as a ZIP file. It gets small enough to attach a high resolution image in an email but the resolution isn't altered.
Now again here is where it gets tricky - comparing CD to PC. If you were outputting an SPDIF signal to a DAC or measuring equipment, those would be identical. If the PC can output a digital signal via USB, assuming there are no compatibility or driver issues, then they'd sound the same when you connect both to a DAC.
In both of those cases however they are using an outboard DAC, which not only does the digital to analogue conversion, but also the most significant part of the circuit that can affect the sound - the analogue output stage. Hook up the PC's or the shelf system CDP's analogue outputs to an amp or measuring equipment, and chances are there would be differences. Ultimately, the question is whether you can hear these differences.
They do not alter the data, at least not while it's in digital state. DAC chips aren't actually varying too far from each other's performance when doing the conversion. The problem lies more in how the circuit handles the analogue signal that come out of the DAC chip.
And a "better" CDP isn't always a guarantee that it won't alter the sound. Some of them are specifically designed to alter the data by upsampling or oversampling, or both. For the most part these won't audibly alter the sound, but in some cases, some CDPs were lauded for sounding "better" only for science to step in and they all realized the improvements was due to high frequency noise. Listeners couldn't hear it, but it affected driver movement I suppose. So now save for a few select cases where it would actually have a benefit (that takes a new discussion, but it has to do with digital volume control), CDPs and DACs no longer up- or oversample. They just have DACs capable of decodign high res so you can feed it a signal that is actually in that resolution and not need downsampling.Apr 20, 2017 at 8:49 AM Post #24 of 34 
obobskivich
Headphoneus Supremus
- Modern CD players, as have been pointed out, are really into the realm of niche item, and the prices get very wonky very quickly. Like zero-to-$500 kind of wonky, and you're not getting much but a heavier chassis (whoop-de-do) or some badge engineering or similar. By contrast, DVD players (and to be even more fair, HD-DVD and Blu-ray players) are really the commodity item these days, and you can get into some very serious hardware at $200 (especially if you're okay buying something used). Folks tend to dump these things off when they become incompatible with whatever latest video standard (e.g. there are some majorly nice HD-DVD players and pre-BD Live or pre-4K Blu-ray players out there, which are perfectly fine for playing DVDs or CDs (and whatever their "original" media was), but they're not as in-demand because they won't stream Netflix or play 4K UHD or whatever - that doesn't make the internal hardware any less fancy, some examples from the land of HD-DVD include: Integra DHS8.8, Toshiba HD-XA1 and XA2; from the land of Blu-ray include: Yamaha BD-S1900, Pioneer BDP-09; from the land of straight-up DVD players include: most of Denon's DVD-#### line, like the DVD-3800). You can also go look at used CD players from an era when they were actually more common (e.g. the 1980s and 1990s), and these are more likely to have the transport controls you want ++ headphone output, but whether or not that headphone output is up to the task of driving a planar magnetic is another question entirely (that having been said, don't buy into the "they're all afterthoughts" marketing spiel - some CD players had pretty nice headphone amps in them, but again that doesn't mean they're necessarily up to running hard to drive cans). If you want to buy something brand-new, the last holdout that I'm aware of are broadcast/professional players (some of them will also be CDRW systems), like TASCAM or Denon DJ, which are still built for reliability and quality, but you may pay a bit over $200 for that.
- I completely "get" your desire for the all-in-one box - its very simple and its very easy to use. That said, you will still probably want a headphone amplifier down-chain from it, just for the sake of guaranteeing compatibility and functionality with whatever cans you have. Especially if you go the DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray player route, because very few of those will have headphone jacks built-in. There's tons of options here, if you don't already own such an amplifier.
- The [whatever] player will have DACs built-in for whatever it needs to decode, if it has analog outputs. There is a separate (and very niche) genre of "CD transports" that are digital-output-only devices, and assume you've got an external DAC. Newer Blu-ray players are also going this route (for an entirely different reason - analog sunset as part of their HDMI licencing requirements), and this is just something to keep in mind. If it has analog audio jacks, it has DACs for whatever its setup to play. Some of the DVD/Blu-ray players will also do DVD Audio and SACD, for example, and HD-DVD and Blu-ray players can generally decode very high bitrate lossless audio for the HD discs. That's all moot for pure CD playback, but again something to think about as you shop.
- Portable players usually are "worse" and usually in an appreciable way, because they were generally designed to be as cheap as possible, and many of them also have very aggressive anti-skip/anti-error/etc features built-in to try and make CD playback more survivable in an abusive mobile environment (these things had to survive teenagers after all). I wouldn't generally bother with them, but there's some older Sony and Philips units that are "special" for collectors, and have fairly robust guts - expect to pay for that rarity though.
- As far as "sound differences between CD players" - this can get into really contentious territory with some folks insisting you need $100k players and $50k cables and on and on just to hear "the full potential" of some $300 speakers or headphones, and anything less is just a waste of time/money/etc to use and own, and you've never "really heard" anything until you've spent so much. On the flip side you've got folks that will insist literally every player device ever made at any price point, from $20 no-name DVD players up to the $100k+ stuff, sound exactly alike no matter what, and that anything beyond the $20 device is a total scam, ripoff, fraud, etc. Yeah, both of those are extreme characterizations of very polarized and extreme viewpoints, and as with most things, the reality lies a lot closer to the middle. Specifically, I would say there can be room for sonic differences especially if you're looking at very old and very cheap (as in, it was cheap when it was new) gear versus modern gear or higher end gear, because very old/cheap digital gear wasn't the greatest stuff (and is largely responsible for most of the myths about "digititis" and whatnot these days). There's also concerns about reliability and functionality with cheap gear in general - that isn't to say all cheap stuff is bad stuff, but usually "you get what you pay for" has some truth to it. That said, multi-thousand-dollar gear just doesn't make sense imho - you're well past the point of diminishing/non-existent returns IMHO. I think your specified budget is a comfortable place to be - it isn't into the realm of 20kg chassis encapsulating 5kg off-the-shelf player and marking it up 17000%, but it should get you out of the all-plastic-fall-apart stuff.
Overall my advice would be to look at a used DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray player (and used gear in general), and go with an outboard headphone amplifier to simplify your life there (so you can get whatever player you want and not have to be chained to "well it also needs a headphone jack that's pretty good").
As far as bringing the PC into this: if you have the CDs already, and your PC actually has a CD drive (and I really feel old that I'm not getting my head around completely ditching removable media 100% these days), you can just rip the CDs into a lossless format (like flac or WMAL or ALAC). I like ExactAudioCopy because its simple and fast (and free), but lots of people like other software that will do the exact same thing, some of it you pay for and some of it you don't, and you can probably find folks willing to fight and argue about "what's better" at creating the same output - just get something that works and move on.And yes, lossless rips will be 1:1 with whatever is coming off the disc, excepting if there's lots of errors (e.g. you bought used discs that have been used as hockey pucks). High bitrate lossy (e.g. 320k+ WMA/ m4a, mp3, etc) is also generally acceptably transparent, if you need to worry about space. I agree with iTunes being a pain to deal with - if you can ditch that and use something more straightforward that can dramatically improve the PC-based listening experience too.
Apr 20, 2017 at 9:50 AM Post #25 of 34 PETEBULL
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2017
- Posts
- 144
- Likes
- 32
Apr 20, 2017 at 10:17 AM Post #26 of 34 ProtegeManiac
Headphoneus Supremus
Forget old lasers, I had to deal with the C520 recall before there was a recall. Schiity local distro kept accusing us of using pirated CDs with these even after the recall was issued. NAD replaced them next year but that was close to my last straw with anything that spun a disc (the last ones being my SACD player suddenly losing the ability to read SACDs, only CDs).Apr 20, 2017 at 12:19 PM Post #27 of 34 
Slaphead
500+ Head-Fier
Yeah, tell me about it. I don't think I ever had a CD player last more than 3 years. The last dedicated CD player I bought was back in 2002. It was a TEAC, so a respectible brand by all accounts, but by the end of 2004 it was failing to read disks until it had warmed up for about 5 minutes.
And that's why I'd never consider anything other than a bargain basement DVD player plus external DAC for a dedicated CD playing rig.
However these days all my music is on SSDs and HDs. I still go CD crate digging occasionally, but they're ripped via a cheap USB optical drive, and then filed before I even listen to the music.Apr 20, 2017 at 12:58 PM Post #28 of 34 ProtegeManiac
Headphoneus Supremus
This is what I do now. Physical copies mostly as collectibles, especially if I can get them signed.Apr 21, 2017 at 5:39 AM Post #29 of 34 obobskivich
Headphoneus Supremus
Just to be another data point (and go ahead and flame me for disagreeing): I've had generally good luck with CD players of all stripes, going all the way back to players from the mid-1980s. Newer stuff has a tendency to be awfully cheap, regardless of what it says on the outside of the box, but more broadly - every brand, every product line, etc has a certain % of failures and one or two people's anecdotal experiences (one way or another) are not a fair indictment of "all [whatever]."
No, I'm not looking for a fight. Just reason.
I'll add that I completely agree with ripping music for my own usage, but that doesn't mean its the best answer for everyone else too.Apr 21, 2017 at 5:43 AM Post #30 of 34 Bubblejuice
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2016
- Posts
- 644
- Likes
- 85
Volume is measured in deciBels, which is how loud the system is. This is affected by the gain and power of the amp as well as the sensitivity/efficiency (effectively
Power in watts or fractions of it in headphone audio (mW), which is how much power it produces to drive the speaker/headphone.
Impedance in ohms is a little difficult to explain but in audio specifically it can affect power delivery by the amp. Generally unless we're talking about a really low voltage source or extremely high impedance, the sensitivity of the headphone makes up for the how the amp is affected by impedance. Also, it isn't just the load, but also the output impedance of the amp - not enough of a gap and you end up with lower damping factor (ie lower control of the drivers).
As good as it can with a fan. Over here even with the PC and A/C not running I can still get 30dB of ambient noise, effectively as loud as one PC, just that the noise source is indistinct. Try a dB meter and see how loud that room is, although with the flat response of the LCD-2 this isn't as big of a problem.
Everything designed for stereo playback has left and right output, including the headphone port. Stereo by definition means two - stereophonic is left and right ear as much as left and right speaker. Your eyes are also stereo, which is why a cyclops would make an ineffective predator.
CDPs and DACs that use dual chips use them to increase channel separation so that the analogue paths will be separated more, but whether or not this has any real effect apart from the quality of the analogue output stage circuit.
In the end good quality DAC chips have good enough channel separation and what really matters past that is the analogue output circuit. This is what determines how different some CDPs sound, whether they're flatter or, in some cases, even the more expensive ones can sound a bit dubious.
In my case when it's night the external noise sources are so low it just make the PC's low freq hum more distinct, so while the overall noise floor is lower, effectively I still hear something else (which can be worse, since I can hear the exact noise).
FLAC is lossless compression. If you rip a CD the WAV file ends up as a much smaller FLAC file. Think of it like sending a picture as a ZIP file. It gets small enough to attach a high resolution image in an email but the resolution isn't altered.
Now again here is where it gets tricky - comparing CD to PC. If you were outputting an SPDIF signal to a DAC or measuring equipment, those would be identical. If the PC can output a digital signal via USB, assuming there are no compatibility or driver issues, then they'd sound the same when you connect both to a DAC.
In both of those cases however they are using an outboard DAC, which not only does the digital to analogue conversion, but also the most significant part of the circuit that can affect the sound - the analogue output stage. Hook up the PC's or the shelf system CDP's analogue outputs to an amp or measuring equipment, and chances are there would be differences. Ultimately, the question is whether you can hear these differences.
They do not alter the data, at least not while it's in digital state. DAC chips aren't actually varying too far from each other's performance when doing the conversion. The problem lies more in how the circuit handles the analogue signal that come out of the DAC chip.
And a "better" CDP isn't always a guarantee that it won't alter the sound. Some of them are specifically designed to alter the data by upsampling or oversampling, or both. For the most part these won't audibly alter the sound, but in some cases, some CDPs were lauded for sounding "better" only for science to step in and they all realized the improvements was due to high frequency noise. Listeners couldn't hear it, but it affected driver movement I suppose. So now save for a few select cases where it would actually have a benefit (that takes a new discussion, but it has to do with digital volume control), CDPs and DACs no longer up- or oversample. They just have DACs capable of decodign high res so you can feed it a signal that is actually in that resolution and not need downsampling.
Thank you very much for all the detailed info!
This answers quite a bit for me!Users who are viewing this thread
