Marantz CD6004 questions...

[deniall83]

I'm looking at getting a Marantz CD6004 CD player and I have a few questions that hopefully you guys can help me with.
 
The CD6004 has a USB and iPod capability. Does this mean that if I plug my iPod into the CD6004 that it will bypass the iPods DAC and use the DAC in the CD6004 similar to what a Wadia 170i does?
 
If I decide to use an external DAC in the future will it bypas the CD6004's DAC?
 
This is my first CD player so i'm a bit confused.

 

[felixkrull6]

You can use the CD6004 as a transport to pair with a different dac in the future. It looks like it has two digital outs (coaxial and optical) just for this purpose.

I don't own an iPod or any apple product but I would assume that if the connection is via USB then you're using the dac of CD6004. It would make sense given that you can also play music directly from a USB drive that would definitely not have a dac. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

1) The CD6004 has a USB and iPod capability. Does this mean that if I plug my iPod into the CD6004 that it will bypass the iPods DAC and use the DAC in the CD6004 similar to what a Wadia 170i does?
 
2) If I decide to use an external DAC in the future will it bypas the CD6004's DAC?
 

 
1) Most likely, since it uses USB as opposed to line-in (as was most common on amps/receivers, with a 3.5mm input on the front). Note, however, that most players with auxilliary iPod USB or generic USB inputs from what I remember when I was checking them out don't seem to support lossless. Check and make sure you get correct info on the files the player supports; even some who can read MP3 CDs usually can't read ALAC and FLAC. If you just want to be able to use 320kbps on more casual than critical listening without putting wear on the transport, though, then that won't be a problem.
 
2) Yes - the DAC is the digital to analogue converter, meaning you only really need to do the process once. From my own experience though unless you have a really good DAC vs a cheap CDP, or very different separate DAC (ie, oversampling CDP and a NOS DAC), usually there won't be much difference, and the CD transport usually conks out before its DAC gets drastically outdated. Thenice thing about the Marantz (vs, say, the NAD C545BEE) is that it has a headphone amp, so you can actually use it as a DAC-Amp with the compatible iDevice. I'm not sure what chip they use in the headphone amps now but they used to have the Philips headphone amp chip, the same one that Teclast put in the S:Flo and Fiio put in the E9. My CD80's amp0 before wasn't too far behind the LD MkII I had on the HD600; if anything the midrange was more forward, most likely the stock tubes were softening up the sound too much.