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Is it all imaginary? A brief comparison built-in vs standalone DACs

207.200.116.196

Posted by NewStevo on June 25, 2006 at 09:16:37

Ok, so this is NOT a comprehensive comparison. But it may nevertheless be interesting to some.

I was listening to all my CDs via 2 ganged Sony ES changers (CDP-M555ES) and I was pretty happy with the sound. The convenience of selecting any of up to 800 discs outweighed the supposedly ‘better’ sound of my Mac MVP-851 DVD/CD player, so I hardly used it and eventually sold it since I owned no DVD-A discs anyway.

A audiophile colleague visiting on a business trip spent some time listening to my system and encouraged me to consider getting a high-performance DAC to feed from the 555s. I thought that might be the way to have both convenience and performance. So I bit, and started looking for a DAC. Well, you know how things go…I ended up WAY over my original budget and ended up with an Esoteric P07/D07 combo, which had glowing reviews as a state-of-the-art CD playing system.

I also decided to improve the CD selection interface by adding an Escient E-40 changer ‘manager’ and a 3rd M555. Now I had a great video interface to catalog, find and select my CDs and a capacity of 1200 CDs. I ran changer optical to the Escient and from there via S/PDIF into the D07 DAC. I was also using a 4th M555 as a ‘staging’ unit for newly purchased CDs. This unit was routed directly via its analog output to my Mac preamp, with the Toslink output sent to the DAC.

After getting this all set up, I finally sat down to listen to all these options and make some comparisons of sound ‘quality’. What I heard (or didn’t ) really surprised me.

First, I matched all the levels from the different CD playing options using a pink noise disc using headphones (which I used for all comparisons). I find that headphones really let me concentrate on the music in its little nuances better than using my main speakers.

Soooo, here’s what I found…

1) M555 analog to PA vs M555 optical to DAC to PA

Indistinguishable from each other. Maybe the M555 transport was the limiting factor? Or the Toslink was canceling any improvement from the D07 DAC vs the Sony built-in DAC?

2) M555 optical to Escient S/PDIF to DAC to PA vs M555 analog to PA

Indistinguishable from each other. At least the Escient conversion of the optical input from the M555 to S/PDIF into the DAC didn’t affect the sound quality.

3) P07 transport via dual AES/EBU and clock sync to D07 DAC (upsampling at 176kHz plus word sync) to PA vs M555 analog to PA

Esoteric ‘better’ (music overtones, microdynamics and bass ‘fullness’), but I had to listen REAL hard to find this very small improvement. Over the loudspeakers, this subtlety was lost.

In a nutshell, I was pretty disappointed. I fully expected the Esoteric combo to ‘wipe the floor’ as many here often state about one piece of equipment or the other. So what do I do now? Sell the Esoteric and use the cash for other stuff? Get new ears? Maybe all the trash talk about Sony changer capabilities is just that….talk.

Ok, going back to sleep now.

Thanks for listening.

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