As digital gets more complex, and licensing more expensive, I'm sure we'll see even more of this kind of thing. TBH, although this is an extreme example, I've never been that convinced by most small audiophile company digital products for this very reason, most of the R&D involved in a lot of cases in finding nice casework to put a lot of quite cheap OEM components inside (there are exceptions, of course). -- Ian
I quote from the review "The CD player is essentially a CD-Rom drive with a quality analog stage added." So.. although it may use the cheap DAC it does have a decent analog output stage. Its not quite just a plain CD drive in a fancy box. In my opinion the output stage makes at least as big a difference if not more, than the DAC chip itself so I don't think what they are doing is too bad.
To a point. But why is it necessary for them to take this route when other manufacturers have no problem in not only creating a CD player from proper discrete components at this price, but also tweaking it up, eg the CD6000KI? I think that many other players in the price range will far out perform it.
My sisters Cambridge Audio uses a CD-ROM drive, however this is connnected to a seperate DAC and will also decode MP3s. It has a metal chasis, is very solidly built, sounds quite smooth but lacks in detail it costs a whole £50. You can get IDE CD-ROM drives for around £10 at any computer store now. CD-RW go for £20 and DVD units about £22. I am quite amazed it uses the internal DAC, I assume the output stage has some filter to take away the rough sound of the cheap dac. Though this filter will probably also take away detail with it.
From my demonstration at today's mini bakeoff, there's not a lot of detail to lose with the internal DACs of the cd-rom...
Well they do say the player is smooth and take away a lot of transients so.. you could be right there. The reason for using the drive is supposedly the size constraints, its a Cyrus sort of size if not smaller, but it does have a nice power supply. I'd still rather have a Cyrus system though. Especially the amps, mmmm.....
Haven't taken my NAD C521BEE to pieces and I have to say it's not something I intend to do, as it works superbly at the moment. AFAIK, NAD use Sanyo transports. Previous Sanyo transports used in NAD CDPs - such as the C520/540 and C521/541 series seem to suffer from an alignment problem, where after a while, the disc tray will open, then close instantly when the 'Open' button is pressed. However, if a disc is left in, the problem seems to go away. The solution seems to be to strip the entire tray down, re-lubricate it and re-assemble. Anyway, without going off on a tagent, it makes me wonder if those earlier players use some form of cheap CD-ROM mechanism that seems to have QA issues?
An update - take a look at: https://www.audio-forums.com/as-rediect/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4329 Damn CDP is being fussy about recognising and playing discs!
All manufacturers make compromises (except the ultra high end). Taking this approach means they could spend more money on the Analogue stage and power supply. They may have spent months experimenting to see how the best sound was produced at this proce point. Maybe money spent on the Output stage and power supply prduced better sound that a better DAC but worse Power and Output. Until you hear it it's a bit pointless critisizing.
