|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
87.166.55.188
In Reply to: RE: Wow - I actually found a new Blu-ray player with analog outs for less than $100 posted by ppopp on July 19, 2015 at 14:01:10
My BDP150 does CD, DVD, Bluray, and SACD, and has a network input for Internet or network content. Not bad for €75; even if the sound is nothing special, it works.
Follow Ups:
nt
Hi i have a question.
I see your system ... have you compared the BDP 150 and the laptop with the Dynavox 307 DAC, reading maybe the same files from a NAS ?
big difference ?
I have the feeling that some BR players can be excellent network streamers when their digital outs are used.
The 2nd market is flooded with them. They cost like one cd !
Thanks.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 07/21/15 07/21/15
...I had never tried the network input with a digital out to the DAC.
I just tried it after reading your question.Honestly, I cannot tell any real difference between the sound of the BD player playing a CD directly into the coax digital input the DAC, compared to the same track on my PC hard drive, played through the network. It would be impossible to detect the difference blind. If anything (and I may be imagining things here), there is a slight 'thinning' of the sound through the network, a tad less bass and body. I find this to be true in general...whether over USB or network, the sound tends to be a tad thinner, which I think leads people to believe it is more 'resolved' or detailed.
Overall, I still find no advantage to PC/USB/Network audio soundwise. For archiving and playing back there are some convenience advantages, if you want to spend time ripping.
Now, I'm not using the MOST resolving amplification and perhaps my DAC is only mid-level (cost only €200 new), but detecting differences in digital to me, is a ticket to insanity. At most the output levels of different DACs are slightly different, making one or the other sound a bit louder. But much different? Not really.
I recently compared my Dynavox to a Musical Fidelity M1DAC which cost €700 new, and there was NO difference over USB or coax. No difference! Except the MF had a 2.2v (as against 2.0 volts) output, making it louder. Apart from that, none.
I have also listened to SACD on the Pioneer BDP150 player. I am not impressed with SACD playback here. It sound bass light and phasey to me...no meat on the bones.
Overall I find a CD player from the 90s operating at 16/44 to be perfectly adequate. The Marantz CD63SE for example. Anyone who says DACs today sound much better than they did 15 years ago has just swallowed the kool aid, IMO.
Edits: 07/22/15
Hi and thanks a lot for the very valuable advice.
I asked because as i said the market is literally flooded by 2nd br players at very nice price.
However i saw pictures of your dac. It looks quite well built indeed.
Thanks a lot again.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 07/21/15
I always hope people look at the system used to evaluate, and then make statements about kool-aid.There have been many improvements in dac chips in the last 15 years. The way they use those chips, is key to improvements. A great chip with a poorly excuted analog output stage, whether using one of the newer op-amps or fully discrete will mask those improvements.
A good dac will have full attention to every detail including the power supply. Then there is synergy with your system.
I have read posts from people who I respect that prefer older dacs, and that may make sense in their system, or their personal taste.
I need to update my system in my "Inmate Systems" but I just went through a dac change. It was a horizontal move. My Camelot was replaced for input options as well as sound. Over the years I have found that the transport and digital cable can have a bigger effect on sound then some believe. More then I had believed, until I heard it in my own system.
Making statements about kool-aid, based on a single comparison, in a system that may sound quite nice, but does not have the ability to expose low level details, is misleading to the less informed. And I did see "IMO". So in my opinion there are way too many variables to make a blanket statement about modern dacs.
Edits: 07/21/15 07/21/15
There have been many changes in product design, mostly to accommodate the changes in the industry: different sampling rates, the move to single bit as opposed to multibit, move towards PC audio, network, and streaming, and then towards sampling everything to DSD. There is no question, also, that the whole computer market (and CD players are also computers) has moved to ever greater efficiency, multifunctionality, miniaturizations, etc.
The result, however, has not necessarily improved. I agree totally that the implementation is key, however, at the same price levels, an outboard dac from today won't necessarily sound better than an outboard dac from 15-20 years ago, and that is partly because the market is even more fragmented than it was, and there is less agreement about which direction to go.
You are right that the entire system, transport, cable, etc. is important, but the turn key solutions that really sound better are, now as 15 years ago, much more expensive, and then the sound is only really 5% better than the midpriced stuff. That's diminishing returns, everybody agrees that principle hasn't changed.
I maintain that if everyone had stuck with optimizing the redbook standard, the market would be less fragemented, but we would have better products at lower prices today. Instead we have manufacturers going in five different directions to satisfy a split up market....USB implementation, upsampling to every possible sample rate, digital inputs in CD players...the net effect is a loss of concentration on maximizing the implementation of any given technology (playing a disc, or playing a format). in other words, the goal posts keep moving, but whether this goal post moving is leading to improvements in the sound quality at a given price, is debateable.
I still think that a well made CD player from the late 90s will play CDs every bit as well as a similarly priced CD player from now.
The DAC chip alone, as you say, is only a small part of the story. The implementation is indeed key. What I am saying is that there is so little agreement about which chip, which implementation, and which transfer technology is best, that getting good sounding digital (for the consumer and the designers) is just as challenging and difficult now as it was back then.
Also, I think that USB and PC and network audio solutions do not sound on the whole, all other things being equal, better, but different, and getting those solutions to sound as good as they can, requires lots of R&D and the ones that really do sound very good (again, not necessarily better but different), are really expensive.
Ah, that makes more sense. When I saw look-aid, it made it seem as if nothing had even the potential to be better.
I agree with your clarification. I'm just starting to explore PC audio, and the options can make you crazy.
Lately I have been messing around with a HDMI de-embedder. I paid more for .6m of HDMI cable than I did for the little box. So far it has been a frustrating experience. Now, for my pleasure my Oppo 83SE is developing transport problems. I have too much invested in it, not to get it repaired. Luckily I have a CD transport that was built like a tank, other than the transport plastic gearing. It now opens manually.
I'm thinking about returning the HDMI cable and the de-embedder, as I'm finding out that while HDMI may output higher res and DSD, you need a device that has the matching "handshake"[?] to activate it. I have maybe a dozen SACDs and only one DVD-A, it isn't worth screwing around.
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: