Do some cd players really sound better?

[Fishtails]

Hi people

This should open a can of worms:)

Anyway, there seems to be so many different cd players out there. Technics have MASH, others have multimsampling etc.

You can get a compomemt for $50 or $5000.

Can there really be that much diiferemce in the sound quality of a cd player?

what are your opinions and expereinces?

Thanks!!

[colver]

YEP... My old Marantz cd 67 died due to the lazer packing in (common with Marantz machines). Instead of replacing the lazer i decided to purchase a better second hand Marantz cd player. For £120 i got myself a Marantz cd 6000 ose Limited Edition in beautiful cosmetic condition and with original box. The sound compared to the 8 years older 67 was far better in every way. Thats a £400 cd player compared to a £230 cd player, imagine if we compared the cd 6000 to a top of the range Meridian?

[Dimal]

Yep, they sure can...

Mostly to do with superior jitter control and excellent DAC stage design. Best thing would be, to audition a few and form your own opinion about it. That's what I did several years ago, before buying our Harman Kardon HD-7725 and until recently (before it broke), I was very, very happy with the quality of audio produced.

Mal.

[Eoin]

Short answer is yes. I've got some recent experience of this.

I've listened to a lot of CD players and I've always though that give or take they sound similar. They all mostly had a 'CD' sound and while fine didn't really light my fire. Which is why I went to the hassle of going back to vinyl I guess.

I've got a good Sony CD player and a better Marantz CD63 K.I. Signature. I'd listened (when I was considering spending some money a few years ago) some expensive decks. I listened to Linn, an expensive Cyrus and a very expensive Musical Fidelity 'nuvista' one. None of them blew me away so I left it.

However I got a Meridian deck recently (free). It's a '500' series deck, technically a DVD player and it's called a 596 DVD. When I plugged that in the difference was huge and I mean massive. It gave a huge broad soundstage and none of the cold grey CD presentation. The music felt more 'liquid' with huge tight bass. The biggest difference, and now I know where the previous 'CD' sound came from, was the top end. This was absolutely without distortion. I've got a nice vocal CD of early music (Purcell) so basically choral music. On all other CD players the voices when they get loud they sound hard and almost shrill. On the new player they just rose up and up. Ultra smooth. I did find a review of either this player or the very similar CD only model know as the 588 which described the sound perfectly, I'll see if I can find it if you're interested.

But the point being in answer to your question, some CD players can sound vastly better but I think must are stuck in the mud. The technical details that (possibly) made this one better are that it would read the CD data off, 'buffer' it into memory which removes the jitter (errors in the timing of the data bits) the 44.1KHz 16 bit data is upscaled to 192Khz and 24 bit by the onboard computer chip and the actual DAC on it then does the digital to analogue stuff at 192/24. And it's very carefully made.

It's good enough that I'm right back into my CD collection and enjoying it hugely.

I can't really overstate how muh better this player is than others. Price wise you can get one in the UK fairly easily for about £500 or under. The identical CD only 588 player fetches £1000.

[Eoin]

And just to echo the points from others above, digital replay seems to have got a lot better across the board in the last few years maybe because the technical aspects are more widely understood but also because computing technogy has advanced and can cope with the problems that the older method of just having the laser going straight to a basic dac and then some sort of filter on the end.

[Mark E Smith's Dentist]

Yes there are vast differences in CD players just as there are in any other source component. I doubt this is a contentious statement. Not only this, they can be tuned by better isolation, improving their earthing and upgrading the mains cable.


JT

[jorgelopez11]

It is true you can find differences between different CD players and DACs, but they are are not vast at all.

Ten years ago the differences used to be vast. But generally speaking current DACs are very capable regardless of the price. Even the iPOD has a decent DAC!

So, now you can certainly listen to sonic differences but they tend to be subtle and in most cases are related to the digital filter scheme in the DAC, or you can find differences in CD players or DACs with tube outputs.

Otherwise, a properly conducted blind test would result in negative conclusions about differences between different players.

In any case it is reasonable to spend some money in CD players. Better transport, better isolation, better power supply unit...

I own a Marantz SA15S2 and it is the best CD player I've listened to. I liked the Wadia 861 a lot, but the Marantz is just as good and it costs less.

So IMO for the time being there's no point in spending more than perhaps 1000-1500 dollars in a CD player.

[Fishtails]

Hi

Thanks everyone for your input.
It is pretty interesteing reading.

I am going to do some sound tests between four cd players i own. Ranging from low end to high end.

I will let you know the results in a few days time.

I had alsomheard that some cd players had a volume check inside which could be removed somehow.

[Rob998]

My old Sony CDP XE900E (regarded as a very good player that punched way above it's price point in its day) died a few months back so I auditioned a good few in my price range (and a couple well above it, because it's nice to dream!) & there were obvious differences between them, whether one sounded better or worse than another is obviously subjective. FWIW I bought a Marantz CD6004 which I loved the sound of. I also loved the sound of the Audiolab 8200CD & the Arcam DiVa CD192, which were a step up in quality, but at double & triple my budget respectively they were out of the running!

All of the players I listened to were a vast improvement on the old Sony.

[jorgelopez11]

FWIW in the last ten years I've owned the following CD players

Harman-Kardon FL8395
Rotel RCD-1072 (modified)
Arcam FMJ CD33
Cary Audio CDP-1
Onkyo DX-7555
Marantz SA15S2

For some reason I was trying to decide whether the high end CD players were worth the price or not. For instance, I compared the Rotel and the H-K and the Rotel sounded better to my ears. Then I noticed the Rotel had a higher output voltage than the H-K (2.0V vs 1.2V)

So I made some more comparisons in sighted mode and level matched, and guess what... The apparent differences dissapeared!

In short. In most cases the differences are related to different output levels.

Now I have kept the Marantz in my main system due to its SACD reproduction features and the Onkyo is serving at my office. Nice player indeed and very cheap!

My opinion!

[Fishtails]

Hi
How did you level match them?

[jorgelopez11]

Hi
How did you level match them?

Hi Fishtails. Good question.

I simply used my Fluke multimeter connected to the speaker terminals where I measured the voltage. Of course you need a test tone disc. Then you throw a 1 kHz signal and correct the voltage output of the CD players using a CI Audio passive preamp.

BTW this CI Audio preamp is great! Playing a little bit with it I found that I liked it more than my Rotel RCD - 1068 in source direct mode!

This was before I finally bought my current PrimaLuna preamp. Now I don't care about sound differences between DACs, CD players, multimedia servers or my turntable. I don't have reproduction limitations and simply enjoy the music

[Zebbo]

Yes there are vast differences in CD players just as there are in any other source component. I doubt this is a contentious statement. Not only this, they can be tuned by better isolation, improving their earthing and upgrading the mains cable.


JT

Like it!

[Steerpike_jhb]

... The technical details that (possibly) made this one better are that it would read the CD data off, 'buffer' it into memory which removes the jitter

Every Compact Disc player ever made reads off-disc data into a buffer (RAM) for short term storage before passing it on to the digital filters and D/A converters.