The benefits of DAC's

Morning Guys,

I have just been reading a thread over on the HFC forum regarding DAC's. One of the comments made was that a budget cd player, for example a marantz cd6000 ose sound good, but couple it with £300 - £400 DAC and you have the sound quality of a £1000 + player.

Two questions

1 What is a DAC, how does it work, and how is it connected to CD player/amp/speakers ect.

2 Is it true that it will improve sound to such a great extent.? I have the aforementioned player connected via Cambridge audio pacific to a nad 350 amp with qed silver anniversary biwire to mordaunt short ms902 signature speakers. If I invested in a £300 - £400 DAC ( second hand) would it improve the sound far better than buying a Roksan Kandy MK III CD player £500.

( actually that's 5 questions really)

Thanks
Greg

 

i'll probably get lynched for saying this but... a DAC isn't a universal panacaea for all of digitals ill. one of the biggest problems is that of jitter or timing errors. jitter is present in all cd players however with a seperate transport and dac you agravate the problem thanks to squirting the signal down a bit of wire exposing it to rfi and other nastyness and running the transport and converters from seperate 'clocks'. there are a variety of solutions to this problem however they are usually either expensive or proprietory tying you to one make of dac / transport combo.
usually though a dac will improve a cheap cdp due to the better power supply and better components used in the filters and analogue output stage.
personally i'm not convinced by seperate dacs thinking that it's better to buy something that you like in the first place but many are in love with them so i guess the bottom line is try one and see what you think.
cheers


julian