One box or Two?

Hello again and a big thankyou to all those that gave advice on my last post. Here's another conundrum - I've seen a Rega Jupiter CDP for sale along with a Rega Lo DAC (combined price when new = £1K). What benefits would a DAC give? Given that I'd need extra space to accomadate yet another box + the expense of an extra interconnect + the risk of interface problems wouldn't I be better off going for a single unit of a similar price?
Thanks in advance.

 

what cd player do you have mate?

I don't know the Lo (and have rarely heard the Jupiter), but maybe people can compare them to what you have now.

 

My current CDP is a Marantz PMD 321 (made for the Proaudio rather than the home consumer market and retailed for £350 in 2002). I bought it in the (probably mistaken) belief that £ for £ Proaudio gear was better than home consumer gear; plus I was attracted by the marketing blurb (32x oversampling and 4th order noise shaping - whatever that means!). I recently learned that it has a Class B laser, which I've interpreted as meaning being inferor to a Class A. I've got it connected to a Marantz CDR 630 CD Recorder, but the playback on the PMD 321 is a shade inferior compared to that of the CDR 630. I'm after a source that can do the CDR 630s recording capabilities better justice.

 

I originally went down the 2 box solution for the following reasons:

1. disc reading involves mechanics; d->a conversion is entirely electronic: best to keep separate to avoid interference

2. allowed me to upgrade one without the other

3. allowed me to creep up and gain confidence that what I really wanted/needed was a AS Dax Decade, which also gave me volume control in the digital domain and allowed me to do without a pre-amp, by feeding directly into a poweramp [another 1 or 2 box dilemma avoided]

I now realise a further reason:

4. I can feed the dac with other digital sources, from PC/Internet & from AV kit

There is counter argument that two boxes allows introduction of jitter. I'll leave others to take that up

 

just thought. perhaps you should just look about for a dac, and try feeding that from each of your two existing machines.

you can get a lot of dac for £1000 on the s/h market, but there are good ones around for less

 

A laser is a "Class B" instrument. CDPs are Class B as a result. Amps can be Class A, but the vast majority (including almost all those sold as Class A) are actually Class A/B.
I wouldn't worry about this; the vast majority of audio gear sold these days works fine (HT may be different, though).
You're instincts re pro gear are correct, so don't worry about that either. Most CDPs use pretty similar hardware irrespective of cost...

 

In my opinion the Rega will sound- or at least present it'self very differently to the Marntz any way, be it in one box or two. Given that it must be the Original Jupiter unless the price is very, very appealing, then you would probably be better comparing your current Marantz with the Newish Rega Apollo CD player any way.
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GLASS BUBBLER

 

The original Jupiter was a pure transport, and the DAC is Io (As in the innermost Galilean moon of Jupiter... not Lo).

 

Yep, Io not Lo! Meant to change it but you noticed it 1st.
dudywoxer - I love my rega P25 and was really tempted to go for an Apollo, but at £300 s/h I opted for the proaudio Marantz (£58 s/h) thinking that it would be in the same leaugue as the Rega CDP; wise? foolish?
Thanks ditton - I'll research the AS Dax Decade, but I might need a preamp eventually anyway for some Active speakers.
And thankyou Joel for clarifying the meanings of A class - B class ; what I still fail to understand is that if most CDPs have similar hardware why would somebody pay serious money for a player when a few hundred £ will do? Why not just couple a cheapish transport to an expensive DAC?

 

Dunkyboy (yeah, really) feeds his Dax Decade directly into active ARC speakers - awesome!

and yes, do spend the money on the dac

like the screenprint, btw

 

I have a P25 and neither the apollo or the Planet get close, the saturn does, but that is in a totally different price band. The thing with the planet, or the apollo is that they drag you into the music in such a way that you don't mind that it is a CD playing. Just in a musical involvement way as opposed to oooo listen to the Hi Fi.
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Hyde Park Residence 2 Pattaya

 

The Dax Decade is way out of my league price-wise (even s/h) but its useful to know that DACs can be fed directly into Active speakers - thanks for that.
BTW what is 'jitter' .. the CDP shakes and skips through tracks?

 

I have TacT RCS2.0 running with active speakers. As a dac/pre in by-pass mode it certainly sounds better than the Rega Planet I used to have, and it is better than the Cyrus DAC-X/Pre I replaced with it. It has five digital inputs and four or five analog. I can't really comment on the ADC quality as I only use that for my Playstation.

The room correction software also tidied up some bass issues for me nicely, without any negative impact on the sound. I am very satisfied with it.

Refurbs are available from TacT at the moment for $1500. I was going to buy one, but I joined the TacT group on Yahoo and got a 4-month old one for $1000 from a guy who decided to go for the new TacT 2.2 Mini. I've seen some other bargains offered at the group too. It's fantastic value for that kind of money, definitely the best component I've owned.

 

Not usually quite that dramatic. It's much more subtle clock drift, but rather than attempt to explain it myself and confuse everyone, here are a few links which hopefully will help.

http://www.edn.com/article/CA484488.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter

http://www.maxim-ic.com/appnotes.cfm/an_pk/3359

 

Right, so jitter is repetive samples (as shown by all those equations ) I like the idea of the software that corrects base for your listening environment and that you can incorporate a DAC and a preamp together. I'll check out the TacT Yahoo group - thanks