Can I have my cake and eat it? re-posted in correct forum

Hello Zerogainers (great forum)

I've recently embarked upon my fairly infrequent upgrade cycle with the twin goals of rationalising boxes, having home cinema sound AND improving the quality of my (predominantly) stereo listening pleasure. Pre-upgrade, my kit consisted of Sony CDP-XE270, Cambridge Audio Dacmagic 2i, Marantz PM4200 & Mission 772's. Ancillary kit was/is a revolver 4 tray rack, Cambridge Pacific i/c's and QED Silver Anniversary biwire cables. (No prizes for guessing where almost all of it was sourced!)

So, I've acquired a Pioneer 464S DVD player, Monitor Audio Silver S1's (front) and Celestion AVP303's (rear/dialogue/sub) together with an Arcam AVR100 receiver (for a very tempting £250 ex dem.). The AVR100 had a pronounced buzzing on all 5 speakers and has been sent to Arcam for repair and the kind gentlemen at RS Chelsea have offered to simply exchange/refund if I'm not happy with it upon return. However, when it played music, it sounded simply wonderful so I'm more than happy to give it another chance as I'm under the distinct impression that it's fundamentally the same electronics as the AVR200 (selling for >2x what I paid for my AVR100) minus PLII etc.

My question, and I do have one, is would acquiring a better CD player to supplant the Sony/Dacmagic combo yield a noticeable improvement in sound quality and where should I begin to draw my shortlist for audition? I notice that there are a number of Arcam CD72(T) machines around for attractive money and these would fit cosmetically but that isn't my prime concern.

Any and all thoughts will be gratefully received...

 

I dare say AT may weigh in with some insight here...

I would suggest hanging onto the dacmagic 2i, and getting a better transport for it. The matching discmagic might be a good choice, and come up on occasion well under £100. Bargain for something with AES/EBU output. Spend another £50 on a trichord clock 2 (not really worth the extra for clock 4), and that should pretty comprehensively see off the sony.

What stands are you using for the speakers?

 

Hey Isaac,

That was the answer I was really hoping not to hear! From my reading, and that's by no means a good indicator of my level of technical knowledge, doesn't the choice of transport matter less compared to choice of DAC? The Sony was earmarked for relegation to the bedroom anyway but could you enlighten me as to why a relatively new transport would be holding the DAC back? I was planning on hanging on to it anyway as it's a good switch box for all my digital sources.

Russ

 

The design of the DACmagic is actually rather good. AT has recently bought a dacmagic 1, and prefers it (quite significantly) to the DACs in his Marantz CD6000 OSE. I expect that it will still beat off the CD72T as well. Myself, I use a £170 DAC with £130 of mods on it in preference to the built in DACs in my £1400 Marantz CD-16.

To actually beat the DACmagic would take quite an expensive player at new prices. The transport will be introducing some degree of jitter, and sonys traditionally only offer TOSlink optical connection, which is generally thought (DAC64 excepted) to be inferior to coaxial connection.

I believe that the DACmagic 2 also has an AES/EBU input, which the discmagic would allow you take advantage of if I remember correctly. This will win you more still over coax. Reclocking the transport will significantly lower jitter levels, and should move the game on further still.

 

Brilliant, thanks for the tip. I'll definitely have to check out the Coax/Optical outputs on my 464S when the AVR100 comes back from the menders! The 464S is supposed to have separte mechanisms for CD/DVD pickup so it may not be as foolish as it may initially appear. I output from my PowerBook to the DAC with a VXPocket v2, using Coax, and it sounds stunning. Perhaps that's why...

Do you (or does anyone) have any experience of the AVR100/Silver S1's in terms of stereo as this really is my priority. Bad man that I am, I'm looking at sticking a P75/80/90 on the end of it for stereo!

 

Hiya. I am have not been able to test my Sony CD530 with my DAC Magic as it only has optical out my DACMagic only has BNC inputs.

However a better CD player should improve things a lot as the transport would be a lot more stable hence much less jitter and more accurate delivery of those binary digits.

I did however test my DAC with a budgetish DVD player and the my CD player makes a huge difference so the quality of the CD player does matter regardless of the DAC.

I also have a Marantz PM4000 used in my mums system while it sounds very smooth it does hold a lot of the music back so an amp upgrade may be worth while.

There may be stuff like damping you could do to the Sony to improve it as welll.

 

One step at a time.

I, and many others here, have learnt the hard way that it's all very well buying and adding more bits, but getting them properly set up, and tweaking room layout and positioning can gain you a great deal.

My system got to the point that I could swap all sorts of things, but it did not make much difference since the room interaction was having overall a much greater effect. By spending a little time (and £21 on speaker platforms) I've realised greater gains than swapping a £200 CD player to a £300 one would.

I also run my computer through my DAC, and it does sound very good. Worth playing with transports. I've tried my toshiba SD330 DVD player as a transport into my DAC, and to be honest it worked better than it had any right to at the £52 I paid for it. However, I have found the marantz to be better, and I haven't got around to clocking it (well, DOB to add an AES/EBU). However, the comparison of the 464 to the sony through the dacmagic is one that you can do for free, and that will tell you to your satisfaction whether or not you can tell a difference between transports (as it doesn't matter what I or anyone else hears. It's your system).

As I asked in first post, what stands are you using for the speakers?

 

Mine is just a cheap £50 compacks safeway multi region DVD player. Its all stacked up on top of a load of other stuff where as my CD payer as its own shelf so this probably hindered the DVD playback a little.

When i made my TNT flexy it seemed to sharpen the sound up a little but the biggest improvement that made was to my turntbale. Its now level

 

Isaac

One step at a time indeed. No, I didn't answer your question in all my excitement...

The stands are Goldring circa 1991, 3 legged, unknown model, spiked & Blu-Tacked!

One presumes that heavier, weighted stands would make a difference but I am not sure where I stand on the spike issue. An area to look into, thank you.

I had the Toshiba SD330 briefly but it was seriously dreadful and I returned it for the 464S. Do you like the picture on yours?

Your point is well taken that i/c's, stands, racks, positioning, mains leads, acoustics, furniture etc etc. have the "potential" to improve a system dramatically and that will take place when we have fully moved in to the new place.

It appears that my VXPocket can output SP/DIF (consumer) or AES/EBU (professional) signals so that may well be an interesting comparison although it may not be relevant when simply playing back a 44.1/16 AIFF. I had been under the impression that AES/EBU required using XLR'S, it appears not.

Amazingtrade

I agree totally, the Marantz is smooOoothness itself! I perhaps hadn't made myself clear but it has already been relegated to bedroom duties.

Unfortunate choice of words there...

 

The PM4000 is a god send on my mums system, if I come back at 2:00am with my mate we always end up playing music, because the Marantz is so smooth it kind of sounds less loud and distrubing, plus we can turn all the bass off etc. They work pefectly with them Sony's.

 

AES/EBU does require XLR connection. I was under the impression that the discmagic had an AES output, and made the potentially rash assumption that the DACmagic 2i would have a matching input for it. If not, then disregard my comments regarding AES.

For £52 new multi-region, there is absolutely nothing to complain about with the SD330. Yes, it's a bit over-saturated, too high contrast and gets some jagged edges, but it doesn't suffer green casts or significant motion jerking that a lot of cheap DVD players do. I would like to get myself a Denon 2900 sometime, in order to play SACDs and replace the SD330 on DVD duties. If performance is up to it, then it might even replace the marantz for CD duties as well. However, it's WAY down the priorities list...

Another thing you might wish to try that is easy and cheap as a support for your CD player is a partially inflated inner tube (14" or 16" bike tyre tubes) and a plinth of appropriate material (MDF, thick glass, marble, granite, etc). My rack is based around this idea (each shelf being ~18kg of granite) and improvements weren't subtle. Much of the effect of the seismic sink for a fraction of the price.