DACs impact on older vinyl

aramirez626 said:
My setup is in my sig:

Audio Research SP 9 Mark II
DENON POA 1500, Yamaha CDX 2020
Thorens TD 160, Nagatron 185 E Cartridge, Juicy Music Tercel II
Anthony Gallo Acoustics Nucleus Reference 3 (Ohm Walsh 2000 tall on order)
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Any digital device that can produce sound has a DAC built into it, your TV, Computer, Phone, CD player, AVR, iPad, iPod . Other than the CD player and AVR they also have their own speakers and or head phone jack.

If you have a head phone jack you can hook that device up to a analog 2ch system with this.
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The CD player and AVR will most likely already have RCA output that can hook to a 2ch system. But also my have the option to output a digital signal, bi-passing the internal DAC, with optical, coaxial. You will also have that option on the TV, Computer, Phone, iPad, iPod, with optical, USB.

In short, a digital device generally can bi-pass the internal DAC and use one further down the line, like a stand alone DAC your asking about. You don't or can't send your digital signal through 2 DACs.

Now does a stand alone DAC sound better than one built into a device?
Yes, No and Maybe

You may buy a stand alone DAC, and find your phone plugged directly into your preamp sounds better using the head phone jack.
 
If you already have a quality CD player, and that’s your only digital source, you would probably need to buy a pretty nice DAC to see (hear) a significant improvement. That said, if you had a decent DAC, maybe one that handles DSD, maybe with a few other nice features, like balanced outputs, stuff like that, then you would likely not only improve your CD player, you would also be 1 baby step away from adding computer audio high resolution digital files to your collection.

The key advantage to owning a DAC is for computer audio playback. Generally, the headphone out on most consumer grade devices is junk, especially if you have a nice, transparent system. You will hear excessive noise through most headphone outputs. A good DAC will give you audio from many digital sources with a really low noise floor and wide dynamic range. Also, the better the DAC, the more accurate the signal, and the more dense. I find that high res through a nice DAC tends to bring every sound, no matter how buried in the mix or soft, out into the light. It’s a different experience in terms of musicality and I get the impression that some people prefer to not hear stuff that way. It does change your impression of some things, and exposes flaws more, but if you’re in to getting real, a good DAC and good hi-res files are tough to beat, even with a nice vinyl setup.

in my opinion, a good DAC starts around $300/400. There are several options in the $400/600 range that punch above their weight class right now. I have SMSL M500 and I’m very impressed with it. Heads above my entry level Topping D10 and maybe a bit better than my SACD players. Also, it’s small and portable so it’s great for desktop system or audio room.

Also, a good DAC generally has its own power supply, never rely on USB for electricity, you are guaranteed to be disappointed with a legit good system. Best case, it has internal transformer and is designed to isolate noise. I think the newer ones also do better at the whole USB thing. Older DACs would sometimes need USB noise filter where newer ones correct for noise, jitter, clocking issues or whatever. The tech has come along a bit recently I think. Buy this years model, not the close out.
 
BTW, the manual for those speakers of yours touts them as specifically designed for high resolution digital playback such as DSD (SACD files). I’ve heard the smaller Gallos on a decent digital system and they sounded fantastic.
 
PianotunerNJ said:
If you already have a quality CD player, and that’s your only digital source, you would probably need to buy a pretty nice DAC to see (hear) a significant improvement. That said, if you had a decent DAC, maybe one that handles DSD, maybe with a few other nice features, like balanced outputs, stuff like that, then you would likely not only improve your CD player, you would also be 1 baby step away from adding computer audio high resolution digital files to your collection.

The key advantage to owning a DAC is for computer audio playback. Generally, the headphone out on most consumer grade devices is junk, especially if you have a nice, transparent system. You will hear excessive noise through most headphone outputs. A good DAC will give you audio from many digital sources with a really low noise floor and wide dynamic range. Also, the better the DAC, the more accurate the signal, and the more dense. I find that high res through a nice DAC tends to bring every sound, no matter how buried in the mix or soft, out into the light. It’s a different experience in terms of musicality and I get the impression that some people prefer to not hear stuff that way. It does change your impression of some things, and exposes flaws more, but if you’re in to getting real, a good DAC and good hi-res files are tough to beat, even with a nice vinyl setup.

in my opinion, a good DAC starts around $300/400. There are several options in the $400/600 range that punch above their weight class right now. I have SMSL M500 and I’m very impressed with it. Heads above my entry level Topping D10 and maybe a bit better than my SACD players. Also, it’s small and portable so it’s great for desktop system or audio room.

Also, a good DAC generally has its own power supply, never rely on USB for electricity, you are guaranteed to be disappointed with a legit good system. Best case, it has internal transformer and is designed to isolate noise. I think the newer ones also do better at the whole USB thing. Older DACs would sometimes need USB noise filter where newer ones correct for noise, jitter, clocking issues or whatever. The tech has come along a bit recently I think. Buy this years model, not the close out.
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Not disagreeing with your opinion, just giving some personal experiences from a lot of "testing" to justify getting rid of my CD's to go all streaming with digital.

After trying a SMSL-M8a ($240) and a Modi 2 ($99) in 5 different systems (mine in my signature is not even close to the others) that had various old and new "highend" disk players (ES, Elite, different Oppo's, etc) one friend even has the OP's CDP and it was tested. The majority of people involved preferred the players as transports with the inexpensive external DACs. I agree the higher up the food chain you go should/will improve your results, I just added a Bifrost for a very noticeable improvement, still not sure yet if its worth the $$ difference over the Modi 2 in my system if I had played full price.

Like everything in this hobby YMMV in your system and room.
Still amazes me the number of people that do nothing with their rooms :dunno: but that is another thread.

:beerchug:
 
I agree completely. Always about the right combination. I also agree that dealing with room acoustics and speaker position is key, as well as equalization and or room correction systems.
My anecdotal experience is that my $100 DAC was not a significant improvement over my Oppo DVD player or Sony ES, both with SACD playback, however, the newer and much better M500 takes a leap forward in sound quality. My 2nd best DAC is my Sony receiver via HDMI. It’s not incredible but it’s generally better and cleaner than the D10 which is quiet on my desktop but picks up a ton of noise on my laptop USB.
 
GChief said:
Not disagreeing with your opinion, just giving some personal experiences from a lot of "testing" to justify getting rid of my CD's to go all streaming with digital.

After trying a SMSL-M8a ($240) and a Modi 2 ($99) in 5 different systems (mine in my signature is not even close to the others) that had various old and new "highend" disk players (ES, Elite, different Oppo's, etc) one friend even has the OP's CDP and it was tested. The majority of people involved preferred the players as transports with the inexpensive external DACs. I agree the higher up the food chain you go should/will improve your results, I just added a Bifrost for a very noticeable improvement, still not sure yet if its worth the $$ difference over the Modi 2 in my system if I had played full price.

Like everything in this hobby YMMV in your system and room.
Still amazes me the number of people that do nothing with their rooms :dunno: but that is another thread.

:beerchug:
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If an external DAC is used, is there some internal rewriting or hacking that must be done to the CD player?
 
spark1 said:
Have you read the responses provided above? It seems not.

Your CD player has both analog and digital ouputs. Use the digtal outputs to connect to an external DAC.
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I have, but might have missed that part. This is very new to me, and just trying to understand how it works and if it is really needed. Thank you everyone for the responses, they have been helpful.
 
aramirez626 said:
If an external DAC is used, is there some internal rewriting or hacking that must be done to the CD player?
Click to expand...
No the CD player remains as-is. Once you get into using your computer to listen to hi res audio files beyond the standard CD 16b/44kbps (bit depth/sample rate in kbps) limit there are additional USB DAC considerations due to your computer platform of choice. Windows and Mac can process audio up to 24/96. Above that Windows requires drivers where Macs process up to 24/192 without additional drivers. So if you run Windows and don't want to deal with drivers don't acquire audio files above 24/96.
 
aramirez626 said:
I have, but might have missed that part. This is very new to me, and just trying to understand how it works and if it is really needed. Thank you everyone for the responses, they have been helpful.
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If you want to listen to music that is in digital form, then yes, a DAC is required. Your speakers can't do anything with ones and zeros. Something has to convert those ones and zeros into an analog waveform. This is what DACs do.

As has been pointed out earlier, virtually all devices capable of playing digital music files have built-in DACs...CD/DVD players, smartphones, iPods and similar products, computers, etc etc.

If the device allows for digital output (bypassing its internal DAC), then that output can be connected to an external DAC. The primary purpose of using an external DAC is to improve upon the quality of the device's internal DAC. But as also pointed out several times in this thread, some internal DACs are "better" than some external DACs. In other words, an external DAC may or may not improve your sound quality.
 
lilwing said:
How would you connect an SACD player to a DAC?
I haven't been able to do it.
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The optical or coax digital out. But you will only get the CD layer. Every SACD player does this as far as I know. Something to do with what those outputs can handle.
 
GChief said:
The optical or coax digital out. But you will only get the CD layer. Every SACD player does this as far as I know. Something to do with what those outputs can handle.
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When I do that I get nuthin. I read in my Oppo manual that coax/optical can't be used for SACD because of copyright infringement. It suggests using the HDMI (of course the Emotiva pre/dac doesn't have this)... OR, analog connectors. (Mine are used to my amps.)
I had to start an SACD collection and buy this oppo to discover I couldn't do it. :wtf: Guess I'll just use it for 44.1khz CDs/Blurays.
This sort of means to me ( unless I'm missing something obvious) that SACDs are analog???? Or you need a surround sound system??? hell..IDK.
 
lilwing said:
When I do that I get nuthin. I read in my Oppo manual that coax/optical can't be used for SACD because of copyright infringement. It suggests using the HDMI (of course the Emotiva pre/dac doesn't have this)... OR, analog connectors. (Mine are used to my amps.)
I had to start an SACD collection and buy this oppo to discover I couldn't do it. :wtf: Guess I'll just use it for 44.1khz CDs/Blurays.
This sort of means to me ( unless I'm missing something obvious) that SACDs are analog???? Or you need a surround sound system??? hell..IDK.
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I do not have an Oppo but SACD should work with however you get 2ch analog out. That’s how the few SACD players I have used have worked anyway.

And are you changing the input source on the DAC, all of mine you need to manually switch.
 
GChief said:
The optical or coax digital out. But you will only get the CD layer. Every SACD player does this as far as I know. Something to do with what those outputs can handle.
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Nope. It's all Sony's lame approach to anti-pirating. It's meant to block unencrypted DSD output. That said some DVD/Blu-Ray players have permissions. My Yamaha BD-S677 Blu-Ray player sends 5.1 surround to my Yamaha RX-V475 AVR via HDMI so there's a handshake going on in there allowing use of an external DAC but still in a closed system. At least it does for DSOTM, the only SACD I own. I was an early adopter and went with the DTS High Definition Surround DVD format. The thing is S/PDIF can be pushed to 24/96 so you you want your DAC to have those inputs as well incase your PC's USB is dirty.
 
elcoholic said:
Nope. It's all Sony's lame approach to anti-pirating. It's meant to block unencrypted DSD output. That said some DVD/Blu-Ray players have permissions. My Yamaha BD-S677 Blu-Ray player sends 5.1 surround to my Yamaha RX-V475 AVR via HDMI so there's a handshake going on in there allowing use of an external DAC but still in a closed system. At least it does for DSOTM, the only SACD I own. I was an early adopter and went with the DTS High Definition Surround DVD format. The thing is S/PDIF can be pushed to 24/96 so you you want your DAC to have those inputs as well incase your PC's USB is dirty.
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Your talking about HDMI which his DAC doesn’t have. The only thing he will get to that DAC from the player is the CD layer.
 
GChief said:
Your talking about HDMI which his DAC doesn’t have. The only thing he will get to that DAC from the player is the CD layer.
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Yes as long as its a dual layer SACD. I guess the majority of SACDs are dual layer. I forgot and was thinking about the OP who may be buying his first one.
 
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