[Stangs55]

Does it?

The reason I ask is because I just purchased Lavry DA10 DAC and I plan on using my computer as the optical input and a dvd/cd player as the digital coax input. Since I'll essentially be bypassing the DAC on the player, is there really going to be much of a difference between what i've got and a more expensive player hooked up in the same manner?

Thanks

 

[Purgatos]

I've been told that there is a difference due to the quality of the output and the quality of the transport, but that it won't be really bad.

 

[carlosgp]

It does not matter much.

 

[hciman77]

In theory not much, if the transport gets all the bits out in the right order and none are lost on the way to the DAC - the DAC will have a buffer and will clock the bits out at the right rate. It may be possible for the buffer to overrun but I would have thought that unlikely.

 

[regal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hciman77 In theory not much, if the transport gets all the bits out in the right order and none are lost on the way to the DAC - the DAC will have a buffer and will clock the bits out at the right rate. It may be possible for the buffer to overrun but I would have thought that unlikely.

Very few DAC's have a buffer. Lavry is one of them.

 

[tourmaline]

Quote:

Originally Posted by regal Very few DAC's have a buffer. Lavry is one of them.

And the new rega apollo and saturn have large buffers as well.

 

[BrianS]

put 1 and 1 together and what do you get

 

[Garbz]

The apollo and saturn are cdplayers not DACs, they do not have a buffer, and do not need one either.

The differences are slight, but when you get higher end slight becomes serious, and serious becomes comparining different transports to see how they sound with a DAC.

The Lavry DAC is however very unique in that it actually does a GOOD job of reducing jitter. Much unlike many other DACs that claim to reduce jitter. You may gain a small benefit from upgrading to a dedicated cdplayer though as dvd players are normally horrible on their digital outputs, but this is something you will need to test for yourself.

 

[PFKMan23]

I own the Lavry DA10 as well and between my 2 major transports/cdps (the Onix XCD88 and the Sony 555ES), in my belief and to my ears, the 555ES is a better transport.

 

[Loftprojection]

The transport can make a significant difference in my experience and yes an expensive CDP will have a significant difference as transport versus a cheap DVD player. People who claim that because it is digital it does not make any difference have obviously not performed testing with expensive equipment.

However, if I were you, I would certainly not use a DVD player as a transport when you already have a computer you can use. Invest in a good USB solution (there are a few for $500 to $1000) or something like a Squeezebox and you will get better sound quality then what you get with your DVD player or a relatively expensive CDP.

 

[stryker]

Ditto. There are a number of sources that cite that a USB connection is virtually jitter-free. How much it matters depends on your headphones, speakers and headphone amp.

DVD players have been held to be poor transports unless they have separate laser pickups for cd and dvd due to (I'm pretty sure but you might want to research it) the bad digital signal coming from a dvd master clock. I've heard amazing things from a transport with a jitter-free and robust digital signal but, like everything else, it's all a matter of degree.

 

[tourmaline]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Garbz The apollo and saturn are cdplayers not DACs, they do not have a buffer, and do not need one either. The differences are slight, but when you get higher end slight becomes serious, and serious becomes comparining different transports to see how they sound with a DAC. The Lavry DAC is however very unique in that it actually does a GOOD job of reducing jitter. Much unlike many other DACs that claim to reduce jitter. You may gain a small benefit from upgrading to a dedicated cdplayer though as dvd players are normally horrible on their digital outputs, but this is something you will need to test for yourself.

So, you think those players do not use dacs internal?

They use a buffer between reading and transporting the signal to the dac..hence no correction and much better sound.

Get your facts straight.

 

[hciman77]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tourmaline They use a buffer between reading and transporting the signal to the dac..hence no correction and much better sound. Get your facts straight.

I do not know of any CD players that do not have error correction

http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq02.html#S2-17

Get your facts straight

Back in the 80s several CD players came with a little error correction LED that would flash to show the error correction at work.

 

[DennyL]

CD players play Red Book shiny discs. The Red Book standard incorporates large amount of error correction so that the stream of numbers that is recovered has very few wrong numbers. They output 1411.2 kbits per second, with between about 0.4 and 4 errors per second. I imagine that the actual error rate must depend quite strongly on the condition of the CD. All CD players that are working properly conform to this specification. I can't understand how two transports can sound different if they both send out the same stream of numbers to a high degree of accuracy in conformance to the Red Book standard. An accurate number is an accurate number regardless of where it comes from. I can't imagine that roughly one erroneous bit per second can have much impact on sound quality.

The standard for CD ROMs (Yellow Book) has a higher standard of error correction because, obviously, computer data can't stand any erroneous bits.

 

[Don Quichotte]

Quote:

Originally Posted by regal Very few DAC's have a buffer. Lavry is one of them.

...and in my experience the buffer doesn't settle it. I've never heard the Lavry, but the Mini-Dac has a buffer too and transport, digital cable, CD versus CDR etc. still matter.