Help me to upsize gaining quality/performance (long and rather tedious - bit of a rant actually!)) - Andyman

Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

Help me to upsize gaining quality/performance (long and rather tedious - bit of a rant actually!))

This is now a double rant as I've just spent the last half hour composing a really erudite and amusing post only for it to disappear up my pc's arse!
I digress. I've been watching the asylum for a while now from the outside, as it were, with minimal input (one post actually.) Yet I now find myself in a predicament that I feel certain several of you might identify with, so let's see what happens...
I currently own a CD player which started life as a Pioneer PDS505 Precision and has been subsequently been modified by Tom Evans such that it is not a million miles away from his (Acoustic Precision) Eikos player. My problem is where on earth to go next?
Being a mere mortal, it is rather difficult to get to listen to even tens of players in order to ascertain where one resides within the digital hierachy and hence how best to move onwards and upwards. Several times in the past I've trundled off to some dealer or other with my li'l ole Pioneer in tow to looks of derision from the staff and instantaneous recommendations to upgrade to the latest Arcam or Musical Fidelity player (incedentally - I am UK based so words such as Cary or Jolida mean little to me and I'm yet to hear a Naim that doesn't make me wonder what all the fuss is about, to put it politely!) So I sit down and listen to their players, together with the foot tapping of the salesman when it's his favourite's turn. Eventually they deign to allow me to plug in mine; and guess what.....
The bottom line is what's around that would give me a significant improvement for a reasonable outlay? Indeed is there such a thing as a significant improvement? The stock Asylum advice seems to be to buy the latest 3072x asynchronous upsampling DAC (admittedly the Benchmark looks interesting but at Â£940 in England, roughly equivalent to $1700 it seems less of a bargain.) As far as I am aware the Pioneer transport, stable platter et al used to be highly regarded, and of course it has a clock upgrade together with Tom's propriety Lithos regulation. Or is this now off the pace? And so too the output stage (also upgraded) - would a reasonably priced DAC contain one so good. Perhaps, therefore, the limiting factor is the chip(s) in the middle (also open to debate, many seem to think current generation DAC chips are less musical) or is the Pioneer Legato Link algorithm not what it was cracked up to be? - not much I can do about these two.
So sort me out - that's what you're here for!
Thanks,
Andy
ps. I would feel really included if Todd Krieger could post a follow up mentioning RFI or Lanczos!!!

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Topic - Help me to upsize gaining quality/performance (long and rather tedious - bit of a rant actually!)) - Andyman 17:35:07 05/19/05 (1)

Re: Help me to upsize gaining quality/performance (long and rather tedious - bit of a rant actually!)) - Dave Billinge 01:55:43 05/24/05 (0)

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