[ASCTLC]

Sorry all if I'm choosing the incorrect circle to ask this but I don't recognize a better choice.

How much difference does one disc player over another make if the player's DAC is bypassed in favor of running through an external DAC?

I have the Schiit Gungnir DAC and run a cheap Blu Ray player through it.  That player is used for both movie and CDs.  I'm not very concerned about movie audio through it but wonder how my Redbook CDs would improve if I used an actual CD player or universal player like an Oppo to run through that external DAC.

The Sony Blu Ray player has benefits for us with certain video functions so it's not likely to hit the junk pile but when I want to sit down and simply enjoy my music I'm curious of Redbook playback improvements if I'm bypassing cheap internals to go through the Gungnir anyway.  As with some/many here, $ isn't exactly so abundant that I can just go throw $500 at a player only to find out the external DAC negates the player impact.  Not to mention where the hell am I gonna find room for another piece of equipment? But this latter is something only I can work out.

I appreciate any experience some of you can relate through your previous exploration of this!!

Thanks,
Andy

[Brettio]

Great question, looking forward to responses.  There's such a depth of knowledge here!

[S Clark]

When I got my first stand alone DAC, I experimented with a couple of cd players and a universal player.  I am sorry to inform you that each had different sounds as they went through the same dac.  So like everything in the hobby, everything in your system makes a difference.  Now, whether those differences are significant or to your liking are other questions. 

[rollo]

  Stand alone DAC's and transports each have their own sonic singnature. If the manf. of the DAC you own makes a dedicated transport that would be a good place to start. If not then the only way you are going to find out is to try several transports or DAC's.
  Just that simple. There are inexpensive transports and very expensive transports out there. all is relative to the existing system. Meaning if you have an average set up spending big bucks on a transport is a waste of money. I am a huge believer in the front end being the most critical component, then the speaker.
  The digital cable as well can make a big difference. My suggestion would be to keep your DVd player for now and purchase the iFi SPDIF filter. You may decide that the re-clocking of this device is all you need for your system.


charles

[artur9]

How do you connect your "cheap Blu Ray player" to the Gungnir?

BTW, just got a Gumby myself and wow, just wow.

[Elizabeth]

I have used several DAC, and a variety of CD players and changers, and one transport.
BAck when I bought a new Sony SCD777ES, I had already owned many Cd players, and still owned a Rotel transport, and a Adcom AD700 DAC.
When I used the Sony transport to the DAC, both Sony direct to its own internals was about as good as the Sony as transport to DAC. However either way it was far superior to the Rotel transport to DAC.
(I was actually embarrassed to sell that Rotel, but when I bought it, it did sound better than anther brand at the dealer.)
I bought a new DAC, and discovered it was no better than my old one, so I returned it for a refund.

I use a lot of five disc CD players, and have settled on one brand which really does sound better than some others when used a a transport. Used, since they are no longer being made.
(naturally I have not tried them all, and I will NOT say what brand I like, since this tends to make them all vanish from buyers sucking them up on advice LOL)
I have owned CD players since the first year. From a first gen discrete circuits toaster type, then the early second gen Sony (which was a POS) A Philipps 880(good), A Sony CD89ES (wonderful, wish I had twenty of them) Sony SCD333 SCD555, both had problems) (2) Sony 9ES not bad
( xxxxx yes I have eight of the mystery player stashed away.) SCD777ES (great CD player) And at one point some POS 100 disc ES Sony I returned because it sound so bad I could not stop laughing at it for being the poster child of crap sound.

So I would say absolutely some CD players make much better SOUNDING transports than others.

[Mike-48]

Years ago, I found the same thing reported here by others . . . that transports made a difference. This shouldn't be so with modern DACs, but probably it still is.

I wonder if it would be, if there were something like the Mutec MC-3+ USB reclocker between transport and DAC. Don't know.

[JLM]

Wow, this feels like a "blast from the past" topic.  Can't recall what all the issues were for mechanical transports anymore.   

I owned three Compact Disc Players (CDPs) over the years that I hooked up to various DACs, but didn't bother trying to compare them with each other, but all sounded better with an external DAC, which of course depends on the quality of the CDP versus DAC.  The first two were from the Sony ES series (their good stuff) and the third was Oppo's original cheap universal player (an industry darling at time). 

Jitter is a real concern using an external DAC so make sure your DAC has good anti-jitter provisions.  And make sure the DAC you buy has the matching connections to the CDP.  For instance my last remaining CDP is a Sony and the only digital output is optical.

[bluemeanies]

Wanted to jump in here early morning. My setup a bit different but I thought worth mentioning. I have the Oppo 95. No TT. Rarely use a disc, I should say it is at this time not common for me to do since most of my listening is thru TIDAL. I have the Grace Design m920 dac pre-amp, high resolution monitoring system which is connected to the Oppo 95 bypassing the 95's internal dac. The m920 is a great value in Hi-end audio that has an ESS Sabre DAC with DSD decoding.
The combination of the m920, Bob Latinos mono tube amps and the B&W803 diamonds for me is eternal bliss while listening to my favorite piece of jazz, blues, classical, rock and R&R.
While not an external dac the Grace Design's dac seems to do it all in my favorite flavors.

[Bob2]

Bob Latino's mono tube amps

+1!

[bacobits1]

I can only tell you what I have done and the difference I have heard here. I have had some nice sounding high end CD spinners here too.
I primarily play PCM a la' CD's through a Yggdrasil.
First used my Marantz SA15S2 ltd as a transport not a shabby player into Yiggy. Then started thinking the Marantz used as a transport was a waste, a 2k+  @ 30lbs. machine So bought a Cambridge DXD Transport ($500) with return privileges if I did not like the comparison.
It killed my Marantz as a trans just an excellent sounding Transport!
Nothing fancy at 12lbs, just optical and Coax out but it just sings I mean really sings!
So yes, transports make a difference.

Woo Audio makes a neat Transport at $1100 but is a top loader which I can't use in my rack setup.
No need to go real expensive.

Last, don't forget the cable you are connecting to the DAC with makes a big difference too.

[wushuliu]

How do you connect your "cheap Blu Ray player" to the Gungnir?

Yes, we need to know how exactly the dac is connected. Regardless, differences in transport will IMO have roots in noise/jitter/signal integrity. By extension, the downstream component's ability to handle noise/jitter, etc. impacts the end results. So we are talking areas like source power supply and clocks used by both source and downstream. These are crucial elements from my experience.

One way to ensure optimal downstream regardless of source transport is something like the IFI iPurifier. Worth every penny and affordable at that.

[richidoo]

Every digital source has jitter time distortion. This is the main cause of the differences. Jitter cannot be reduced to zero, so there is always temporal distortion. The character of this distortion can vary, just like the character of harmonic distortion can vary and determines the sonic differences between amps. There are different types or flavors of jitter, each affect the SQ differently. CDP and Streamers and every digital source all use a clock to time the words streaming out to the DAC. Each work on CD is 16 bit long word, the words flow at 44,100 times per second. The distance in time between each word should be excatly equal. The variation in the length of time between each word is jitter. Jitter is added on the creation of the digital file and in the decoding back to analog.

In the old days the DAC would rely on the source clock for timing. Bad jitter source would be converted with high jitter. This is one of the reasons why early digital recordings can sound bad. People were jitter blind because it was perfect sound forever.

Now that jitter is a "thing" hifi mfgs endeavor to reduce it or at least market that they are reducing it. But there's many ways to go about it from cabling, regulators, clocks and their implementation, PS noise, RF etc.

Some products fit into the stream between digital source and DAC to clean up the stream by reducing jitter, by reclocking the words into more steady beat. Some DACs chips have their own internal jitter reducing technology, like ESS. I have found it is still sensitive to incoming jitter. When you compare digital sources with jitter specification getting down below 1pS or even down near 100fS, you find they all start to sound similarly good.

Typical jitter of a good mid fi quality player like SB3 or $100 CD player is about 300pS. They sound fine, but easily beat by high end digital systems. There is a lot of potential for improvement. Some DACs have temperature controlled clock chips built in. Some professional DACs have word clock input jack allowing a separate component clock to control the jitter and word timing for professional production. Some external component clocks use atomic clocks to reduce jitter to the lowest possible.

Things that can increase jitter are impedance changes in the conductors carrying the digital signal. BNC connectors are 75 ohms, same as the digital cable, so they are preferred, and the PCB traces must also be 75ohm. Our standard RCA coax digital cables add jitter. TOSLINK adds a lot of jitter. Noise from PS will affect the speed of the clock so highly regulated power supplies are used to power clocks on low jitter digital sources. The quality of crystal in the clock circuit also affects the minimum jitter it can achieve. There are hotrod clock crystals now too. When you're chasing femto seconds, even RF from adjacent traces on the PCB can affect jitter on a digital lead so circuit design and layout is critical. Only high end and professional digital products can justify the effort and price to attain fS jitter, because so few care enough to pay for very low jitter.

Get the jitter very low, add a quality discreet analog section and you have very good digital sound, imo. But that's only half the battle, since there's plenty of jitter in the recordings too.

[DSkip]

North Star Design just released a new transport that is quite unique - it upsamples redbook all the way to DSD using the i2s connection.  This is something that intrigued me and even though I haven't spent much time spinning CD's yet with it, it does do something quite nice to the music.  I was preferring this option to streaming Tidal once it got some time on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKRF9P5vjlA

NSD hasn't announced it on their website yet, but it is available now.


ANY transport will make a difference, regardless of it being a disc-spinner or streamer or anything else under the sun.  The better one is built, the lower the noise floor is.


I am a little surprised to hear the Marantz lost out to the Cambridge.  Perhaps better synergy or a lower noise floor since all you needed was the disc to be read?  Those Marantz players are damn nice, but I admittedly prefer their DAC sections over the CD player.

[ASCTLC]

Thanks for all the thoughts and experiences!  I think I'll start considering a dedicated disc player/transport for music if I can find one I can afford.  That Cambridge DXD catches my interest since all I really need to do is to spin my discs.

My Sony BDP to Gungnir connection is digital coax (Coax RCA SPDIF) using a Blue Jeans cable.

[*Scotty*]

Have you tried playing back Flac or WAV files ripped from CDs via a player such as jRiver. I gave up using transports over 6 years ago. My transport at the time was a Cambridge 740C CD player with digital output. I wound up settling on jRiver after trying a number different software players such as XBMC and PlayPcmWin. I use dBpoweramp as my CD ripper.
Scotty

[MtnHam]

There must be a reason why many like a high quality CDP like Esoteric. Quality transport, quality DAC, all in one. Stellar performance.

[srb]

There must be a reason why many like a high quality CDP like Esoteric. Quality transport, quality DAC, all in one. Stellar performance.

Direct internal I2S connection from transport to DAC, eliminating S/PDIF interfaces and S/PDIF cable.

[ASCTLC]

I don't have a good way of doing that Scotty.  I have WAV files ripped via Easy Audio Copy but to run them through my BDP is inconvenient as all hell because there's too little control.

Also running it through the BDP via my PC using Foobar is pretty inconvenient as my PC is in the office vs my stereo in the living room.  More control than a thumbdrive of WAVs plugged into the BDP but I suspect worse performance moving across WiFi from PC/router to the BDP.

I'll check that thumbdrive into BDP again and see if there's a better way to use it than run it.

eta: if thumbdrive WAV into BDP can work out that would justify some large thumbdrives to store some music folders for that purpose.

[bluemeanies]

+1!

Hello BROTHER!