Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners CD Players? Do they sound different?

Well, I have my M22ti's playing on an older 5 disc Sony CD changer of my fathers. I was wondering if different CD players would make better or worse sound. And if so, what would you say is a good CD player, thats not outrageous in price. I am looking at a Marantz CC4000 or CC3000 and am wondering if I would hear a difference better then the Sony, or even my Cheap $79 Toshiba 1810 DVD player? Any help with this would be great! Thanks, Oak

Oak,
once again you are asking a question that can only by answered by yourself.
"Will a cd player sound better or worse than xx?"

People here can tell you what they own and their opinions of their equipment but only you will know if you find the sound "better" or for that matter 'different' between one unit or another.

That being said, cd players that have relatively the same hardware (i.e. not a cd player from 10 years ago compared to one built in 2003) will most likely sound so much alike that you won't be able to tell the difference, and certainly not with the grade of equipment that most people on this forum own. Perhaps some pricey microphone and recording devices could detect some variances in the spectrums but Alan would be the best person to know that information.
If you are looking for a cd player in a certain price range, you can just about guarantee that 95% of the cd players in that price range will all sound virtually identical.
There are always some exceptions such as tube cd players or any other hardware modifications that could potentially change the audio signal. Generally speaking, a digital connection from any cd player will go into the receiver in exactly the same way and at that point, it would be the receiver DAC and not even the cd player which may modify the sound anyway.

Of course many people may disagree with my assessment, such as those who think $100/ft cables also makes a difference, but ultimately only your ears will tell you the truth.
Go to a store, bring a cd with you, try out several different cd players, hopefully on the same speakers and other equipment, and then decide for yourself.

As for myself, i have a Panasonic CV52 5 disc dvd player which doubles as my cd player. I use the analog connection for cd playback and the digital connection for dvds. Even between that, i don't hear any signficant difference.
I chose my player based mostly on its options. It sounded virtually identical to a Denon and a Hitachi that i also auditioned. I will note however, that all 3 of these sounded a bit different from my 10 year old Technics cd player but i certainly would not say the Technics sounded so awful that it lost some kind of war.

Once you get into mid-priced gear, you can hear differences in CD player performance. This is because past say, 500 bucks, better DACs are available, and companies may deliberately tweak the analog output stages to affect performance.

The differences, however, are much more subtle than reviewers might lead you to believe, and nothing like the difference you'll hear from two different speakers.

In budget gear, like Chesseroo said it's the age of the equipment more than anything that would account for performance difference.

Oak, I don't hear a difference and there's no technical reason why you should either, if you're listening at exactly the same level. In a CD or CD/DVD player give heavy weight to convenience, meaning a multi-disc or even mega-disc changer.

I have to agree with Chess. The average players will sound identical to the average person on average equipment. I have noticed a difference in DAC's but it was so minor that it took a sound meter and nearly an hour of listening to confirm it. Go with the options, value, and price you can afford.

If you think you will hear a difference you probably will.
If you think you won't hear a difference you probably won't.

Keep an open mind

Daniel

Oak,

So, how old is the CD changer you are currently using? Unless it is so old that a very primitive oversampling circuit is used, you might not hear any improvement from a brand new unit. The CD technology has been mature for a good while now, so that the actual bottleneck for sound quality is in the media format itself, not in the playback hardware.

Also, I would say that today's DVD players produce basically identical sound to a dedicated "high-end" CD player, even if you use the onboard DAC in the player. Of course, as chess said, it is identical, period, if you digitally connect it to your receiver/amp.

Spend money on a good receiver with decent DAC's.

Off load your CD player, you DVD player, etc, to that receiver's internals via SPDIF. That way, it all depends on the receiver's ability to convert to a decent analog signal.

We aren't talking about rocket science here.

I am considering the Marantz SR7200. What ya think?

I've got a very recent experience I can relate that I believe is relevant and seems to reinforce some of the views already expressed.

My 14 year old Kenwood CD player recently went on the fritz (single CD tray works, but servo that pulls the trays out of the cartridge went south). I got a great deal on a Denon DCM-380 and eagerly hooked it up to my current stereo system expecting great differences. My overall system is mostly 14 year old Kenwood components - mediocre at best, but it sounds good to me at modest volumes. Anyway, I get the new Denon hooked up with analog inputs (just like the old Kenwood) and guess what? I can't hear any difference.

I thought perhaps the rest of my system was too crappy for any differences to shine so I packed up the Denon and Kenwood and called an audiophile friend of mine to see if he would let me put them into his system to check for differences. Now I have to tell you that while I generally like this guy as a person, I do not frequently talk to him about home audio because he is (to put it kindly) a condescending full fanatic freak about it. I fully support folks having hobbies and doing with their hard earned dough what they please, but anytime I ask this guy for advice, he turns his nose up at anything that costs less than $1000. And yes, he does have cables that cost $100/ft or whatever. Well, to my surprise, he said yes and that it was a good time to do it since he had several of his components out for an upgrade. Okay, so I get over there and we patch both players into his system (using his cables, btw). I can't begin to tell you what all he's got in his setup. His speakers are about 6' tall (I think he said they were "Mission") and they are apparently expensive (also heavy). Anyway, you get the picture.

Alright, so now comes the moment of truth. We slap the CD into the Kenwood and listen. He says, "harsh". I think it sounds like a million bucks, but I guess $50k in equipment should sound good. Next comes the Denon. It also sounds great to me - no differences. He says, "not as harsh, but still harsh". I ask him if we can listen to his CD player (It was this giant black hunk of metal - bigger than both my players put together. Brand was something like Wadel or Wada or something) and he enthusiastically agreed. We dropped the CD into the tray, cued up my favorite song and.....I couldn't hear a darn bit of difference from either of the other players. He was smiling from ear to ear and said, "now that's how it was meant to be heard". I politely told him that, yeah, it was night and day, thanked him for the use of his setup, packed up my stuff and went home to put my new Denon into my component rack.

I'm sure my non-audiophile trained ears were part of the problem for not discerning a difference, but overall any difference I couldn't hear is extremely small. Happy listening!

That's a pretty typical story jdm.

Next time you try something similar with your buddy, put all the components on his rack, have him sit in the chair and then switch the cables b/w the different units when he's not looking (if that's possible and you would obviously need multiple cds of the same songs if you were comparing cd players).

I would love to see the results of such a somewhat 'blind' test.
I have a strong feeling your buddy's self-professed golden ears would be put to shame.

Maybe, if you get the chance again, you can actually ask him to do a blind test with you and you could setup the same simple experiment in his listening area. Just place a drop cloth over the components so he cannot see which ones are in use at any one time. Try switching interconnect cables on him while you are at it. Then have him score which item sounds 'best' each time he hears it. My guess is that the results will be random.

jdm,

Did you have them connected via a digital cable of analog outputs?

I had them connected via analog. My Kenwood reciever doesn't have digital inputs. I had my friend patch the Denon and Kenwood into his system on analog as well, although I believe his CD player was connected via toslink.

- Jeff

chesseroo, I believe you are right! The problem is he is so obstinate on the subject of audio, I generally avoid the subject unless I really need his help. I've tried playing ignorant and just asking him to educate me on some aspect of his hobby, but he gets kind of impatient with "dumb" questions. He's a real live electrical engineer (as opposed to me, the aerospace engineer "rocket scientist" - haha), and he's not much of an educator. He overwhelmed me with spark chaser technobabble when I asked him about cables/interconnects. I'm intelligent, but I only had a few credit hours of EM theory - and that was 15 years ago. I don't use that stuff on a daily basis so the knowledge is mostly gone now. You know, it's really a very strange thing because he is quite the awesome engineer (specializes in microwave antenna design), but he has very strong subjective (non-scientific) opinions about his hobby. Oh well, I mostly just play tennis with him during warm weather and he is a good natured opponent. Like I said before, he really is a fairly nice person, just not on the subject of audio, so I don't want to be hard on him. I thought the story I related about the CD player was amusing (and somewhat relevant to the thread at hand) and thought you all would enjoy it.

you could buy a Krell CD player for 10,000$ or you could use that for a down payment on a house.

Buy a player with decent price. Stay away from something that's $100 because it's probably not durable. A Panasonic DVD player will give you excellent video quality and will send 1's and 0's for audio no better than an exotic player to your receiver. Use a decent fiber optic, if not, a good coax cable, and you're set.

Go out and buy these for pure digital hook-up. They are GREAT and you can not beat the price! I bought two for my DVD and PS2. Being all glass, be careful with them! But better then any at this price. You would have to spend $100's more to match them! Good Luck!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1499&item=3010129647

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I had my friend patch the Denon and Kenwood into his system on analog as well, although I believe his CD player was connected via toslink.

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Your friend is a fool. He paid that much money for a device that performs no different than any other CD player with a digital output.

When using a digital output, the player is basically no different than a CD-ROM in your computer. It's sole job is to spin up the disk, read the little pits, describe those pits as 1's or the lack there of as 0's and send it down the cord. Obviously, this isn't a complicated process.

The only signal that cable carries is either high level or low level. So long as the player and cable don't introduce so much jitter or skew into that signal as to make a high level look like a low level or to miss time them, the receiver will get the exact same signal.

Jitter and skew are so microscopic at the speeds that CMOS based products typically run that CMOS devices don't even spec them. We spec jitter and skew on our products because they run at 12GHz.

Anything that meets the JEDEC spec for SPDIF will be just as good at transfering those 1's and 0's as anything else. Using analog outputs is a different matter as there's the issue of converting the digital signal to an analog one, but a digital transfer is total dependent upon whatever finally decodes the signal into an analog source. In the case of your spend happy friend, that's his pre-amp.

Semi-on writes:

"Your friend is a fool." I used to find this site a friendly place to hang out and discuss Axiom speakers and other sound equipment. You and Chess are changing the tone of this site pretty dramatically. Personally, I find it offensive and don't post here as often as before. Being rude doesn't make you sound any wiser.

Lighten up.

Were his friend here, I'd certainly be kinder to the individual and explain his error to him in a nice manner. However, he's not here so I don't see a reason to concern myself with his feelings. The last time you whined like this, it was the same situation.

There's no reason jdm can't be made aware of his friend's foolishness.

This "friend" acted like a jackass, trying to dismiss jdm's hardware in favor of his obviously superior and significantly more expensive gear. The idiot did so while using it in a purely digital mode completely nullifying whatever difference may have been there. I don't like people that attempt to use their material possessions to demonstrate their superiority and I'm sure as hell not going to baby them when they make completely ridiculous and ignorant statements, especially when they're doing so to put down others.

I wholly agree with 2x6spds. Not so long ago neither posters here nor their "friends" were whiners, idiots, fools, jackasses, ridiculously ignorant, or in need of babying.

I'm an opinionated American that calls people on their stupidity and I have no interest in changing that fact. I suggest you grow a thicker skin as your delicate nature won't suit you well on the net. If someone is a jackass, I'm not going to lie about it. I'll call them on it.

However, I fail to see how this applies to Chess. While he's certainly ascertive with his thoughts, I can't recall him ever directly questioning an individual.

I have no problem with Chess and my feelings aren't hurt. I simply find it unfortunate that friendly folks are being driven away from a formerly friendly forum because you have no interest in being polite.

Then you don't "wholly agree with 2x6spds" as he accused Chess of the same thing.

I'm a bit disappointed that you find me unfriendly. To be sure, I'm direct as it's all just black letters on whit text to me, making human emotion a bit difficult to associate. I'm an engineer and my writing has been tempered with the direct and factual style that such an education requests.

Those to whom I'm closest are of the more aggressive sort. No body gets offended when you call them a jackass as none of us take each other's comments seriously. We're all close friends from very young and we all know the others would do absolutely anything for them. I'm not used to people getting bent out of shape over it and I find it a bit silly. It's just a message board after all.

Regardless, I'll try to be a bit more mindful of your sensitivities as my sole interest here is learning more about A/V and helping those I can.

Of course, this is something that could have been brought up politely over email, folks.

Hi Semi,

I agree with you that this could have been brought up politely over private email, but since you and others keep responding on the board, I would like to throw my own $.02 here, with due respect...

I am a scientist in my profession, and my writing, too, has been "tempered with the direct and factual style that such an education requests." Nevertheless, I do discern the difference between the statements:

"Your friend is a fool." and "Your friend is entirely incorrect."

I have to say that the latter style is far more objective, factual and technical than the former.

I judge that this difference is quite relevant here, especially under the situation in which, judging from his latest post, jdm80 is clearly aware of the dismally unscientific nature of his friend's opinions, and even trying to defend the friend as a person.

Yes, this is just a message board after all, yet I also realize that all kinds of people with differing cultural and educational background gather here under a common interest. And I, too, wish the board to keep attracting people with as diverse a background as it has been, because that will increase the information content of the board.

My sole interest here, too, is learning more about A/V and helping those I can. Because of that, I would try not to say something I do not have to in order to convey my technical points/questions. Let us try to maximize our chance of learning here...

Cheers!

In reply to:

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I am a scientist in my profession, and my writing, too, has been "tempered with the direct and factual style that such an education requests." Nevertheless, I do discern the difference between the statements:

"Your friend is a fool." and "Your friend is entirely incorrect."

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Agreed. That reference was focused at the problem 2x6 has with both Chess and myself in our direct posting. He's gone off on a similar slant before based solely on his own perception of some negative tone in my posts and I believe Chess's. The tone isn't intended at all.

The "fool comment" was the result of my growing frustration and anger towards a distinct elitism in the A/V world by which people dismiss those that haven't spent a fortune on their hardware. Now certainly, this sort of elitism exists everywhere, but it's especially distasteful to me because so much of it is focused on things that actually don't make a difference at all. An example would be those that spend a fortune on expensive bi-wire setups and then dismiss less expensive solutions, or at times even those that use such solutions as trivial and unworthy of their superior ears.

The individual in question dismissed jdm when in fact it would sound no different if wired the way the individual typically wires his own system. That irritates me.

Semi, you're right on the money. It is one thing to be critical of anothers' equipment but to be a conceited condescending jerk about it is another thing. This guy was the kind of guy that keeps people from truly enjoying not only this hobby but many, many others. Besides, it sounds to me like you're being nice to jdm. I would hardly call this guy a "friend." When I read the post about the player connected with a TOSlink cable I alomst laughed my butt off.

Daniel

Hi Folks,

Wow, one short story about my audiophile uptight friend and the hackles are up! Sorry to upset everyone - I really did think the story was amusing. It's hard to express that sometimes in writing. That's why I'm an engineer and not a writer. I know the guy sounds like an a#$hole, but he really is mostly a nice person - except when it comes to audio. I'm fairly picky about who I call a friend and while this fellow has a few warts on him, he is a good person. He went through a really painful divorce about 5 years ago and took up "audio appreciation" as he calls it as a compensation. I'd say it is shopping therapy, but who knows. I suspect that inside he is embarrassed by all the money he has spent, but I don't rub his face in it. I'm not offended by the harsh remarks from some of the folks here - I can understand the frustration. Semi you are right in that he does nothing to promote the hobby or encourage others to take it up. Actually I think he is very insecure to a fault in that regard.

Anyway, all of this is way too much bandwidth for one little story. My apologies to the assembled masses for the spent bits....

- Jeff

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That irritates me.

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It does me too, indeed!

And unfortunately, fueled by those people, this phenomenon seems pervasive in the higher-quality A/V industry. Triggered by the other recent thread, I visited Aperion's web site out of curiosity. I immediately dismissed the company, however, because they promote and sell Kimb$$ Kab$$ on the web site. Although their web site itself is not particularly pretentious or snobby, I just cannot let myself endorse a company that appears to promote "good quality and performance for low budget," while selling a 10-feet subwoofer interconnect for $130 and 3-feet component video cables for 3x$144. LOL

Cheers!

Hey Jeff,

Please do not apologize. Your story was very amusing to me at least, and I think nobody here is truly upset. Just that everybody loves this rather expensive hobby in one's own particular way.

Our collective apologies to Axiom for the wasted bandwidth and a hijacked thread... What were we talking about? LOL

Cheers!

What is Kimber cable?
And can I use it to hang up my Escher poster?
Should I have it hung 4 or 7 feet from the ground with the null pointed at listening level?
Any suggestions by the experts.....

No-no-no-no-no. BAD misspelling, Saturn!

It is Kable. They achieved a hugely audible improvement by replacing "C" with "K"! Don't you dare forget that...


Cheers!