iPhone via USB on CD Player = no seperate DAC?

parksung

New Member
I have a silly question as my CD player is from the 80s and I haven't been keeping up with their technology.

I want to stream Spotify from my iPhone or Macbook Pro through my amp.

If my CD player has a good DAC and USB input, do I still want to get a separate DAC to achieve better sound from Spotify?

OR, is it best to run Spotify from my laptop via DAC to my amp to achieve better sound?

The DAC I'm considering is the Project Pre Box S2 if I need one. If I bought a new CD player, it'd probably be a Marantz CD6006. Either way, I'd be spending several hundred dollars, so I just need to figure out how to get the best audio quality from Spotify.


My system is:
Cyrus One (2017 era) amp
Rega RP1 turntable
B&W 602 speakers
Mission PCM II CD player
 
Marantz CD6006 doesn't have a USB input, what am I missing?

Edit: ok, it has a USB port to play from flash drivers and it seems to be able to play from iPhone, note that this is not the same as a general DAC USB input, for example you won't be able to connect a computer to it.

If you find a good CD player that has DAC inputs i.e. USB/optical/coax that's all you really need but having a separate external DAC may end up being more flexible in the long run.

The best cost-effective solution for streaming Spotify, and/or Tidal for that matter, at the moment is a Chromecast Audio device which is inconveniently being discontinued by Google, it has been on sale for $15 for a couple of months now but the availability wasn't too great lately after the announcement they will not be making it anymore. It has its own built-in DAC of an acceptable fidelity so you can connect it directly to your amp with a 3.5mm to RCA cable no need to spend hundreds on a separate DAC, or you can use a mini-toslink cable to connect it to a better DAC. One problem it doesn't support gapless playback, so if you're listening to a lot of Pink Floyd you may find the gaps it inserts between tracks annoying.
 
Last edited:
Edit: ok, it has a USB port to play from flash drivers and it seems to be able to play from iPhone

Sounds like it's a USB Host port, intended to read data from device, not a USB Slave port, to which data is sent, and is used by USB DACs.
 
Back
Top Bottom