[BrianM]

Although...I would take issue with this:

As far as anyone of these or any CDPs or DACs being truly neutral – well that is impossible to tell. How the hell could you know what neutral or honest to the recording is? Answer; you can’t and never will. It’s subjective.

While there's always subjectivity involved in listening, I don't agree it's the hopeless situation you describe. There are good ways to tell how faithfully your equipment is rendering a recording relative to other equipment. For one thing, one can make or have participated in the recording being evaluated oneself, and compare what one heard in the process to what is being reproduced. For another, when judging recordings of undoctored acoustic instruments, it's certainly possible to judge how accurately a sound with which you are very familiar is being rendered.  If given benchmarks are satisfied in that respect you can be assured your equipment is doing the same thing to any recording it plays back.

I don't want to assert that AVA gear is "truly neutral," forever and amen. They certainly may not, for all I know or care, be the most neutral components one can buy, but it's still not unreasonable to call them uncolored, or "honest and unobtrusive" as I also put it.  And no, they don't (as far as I can tell) emphasize the "vocal range" as you said you were looking for.

[tfroncek]

Question?  Do Blu-Ray players allow a digital output compatible with an audio DAC on normal CD playback?  On normal DVD movie audio track output?  On Blu-Ray movie audio output?

I have not played with one of these yet and just would like to know.

Regards,

Frank Van Alstine

I believe all units will convert to Linear PCM for SACD and DVD-A. Generally they won’t output at their full res digitally, its mostly a copyright thing the music industry doesn’t want done. In a watered down generalized explanation.

Is this true?  I haven't jumped on the blu-ray bandwagon but I've noticed on many DVP which come with HDMI that for the PCM option of sending out the digital coax it is getting limited to 48K.  Sometimes this even gets limited to 16 bit instead of 24 bit.  This means that the you can't even get 96/24 from the DVD movie audio track in 2 channel mode unless you can get it from the HDMI somehow. I would expect this trend has carried over to blu-ray.

[turkey]

Is this true?  I haven't jumped on the blu-ray bandwagon but I've noticed on many DVP which come with HDMI that for the PCM option of sending out the digital coax it is getting limited to 48K.  Sometimes this even gets limited to 16 bit instead of 24 bit.  This means that the you can't even get 96/24 from the DVD movie audio track in 2 channel mode unless you can get it from the HDMI somehow. I would expect this trend has carried over to blu-ray.

I'm not convinced that I need 24 bit. 16 works just fine.

[turkey]

Reason I don’t bother with separate transports and DAC's is because I found that an all-in-one solution is more cost effective.

Until the transport dies and you have to buy a whole new unit. Mechanical equipment like a CD drive tends to wear out faster than electronic equipment. So I have to object to your "more cost effective" claim.

[boead]

Reason I don’t bother with separate transports and DAC's is because I found that an all-in-one solution is more cost effective.

Until the transport dies and you have to buy a whole new unit. Mechanical equipment like a CD drive tends to wear out faster than electronic equipment. So I have to object to your "more cost effective" claim.

I have a closet full of CD Players from the mid 80’s and 90’s. They all work fine and have thousands upon thousands of hours on them. I don’t think I ever had a CDP fail, then again I never bought a cheep ‘o from Cosco or RiteAid either. 

[oneinthepipe]

Reason I don’t bother with separate transports and DAC's is because I found that an all-in-one solution is more cost effective.

Until the transport dies and you have to buy a whole new unit. Mechanical equipment like a CD drive tends to wear out faster than electronic equipment. So I have to object to your "more cost effective" claim.

I have a closet full of CD Players from the mid 80’s and 90’s. They all work fine and have thousands upon thousands of hours on them. I don’t think I ever had a CDP fail, then again I never bought a cheep ‘o from Cosco or RiteAid either. 

Thirteen or fourteen years ago, to provide a signal for my office's "music on hold," I purchased a "B stock," refurbished or damaged packaging, etc., CDP from the since closed Philips/Magnavox outlet store in Kittery, ME, for approx. $80.00, which was a "rock bottom" price for a CDP back then.  The CDP ran 24/7/365 on a continuous repeat for ten years, except when the power went out or the one occasion when we swapped the CD, before the mechanism literally fell apart; pieces of the mechanism were rattling around in the case.  My wife complained that we should have purchased a better CDP.    

Initially, the CD was a Fleetwood Mac album, but the First Justice of a local court where we worked left me a message that she did not approve of the "hard rock" that was playing on our music on hold, and we changed the CD to Al Green's Greatest Hits Vol. 1, which she apparently found satisfactory.  We received many positive remarks about the music on hold, and occasionally a caller would be singing along with Rev. Green when my voice mail started recording.  The power of music.