In reply to:
Nevertheless, an inexpensive DVD player will have very compromised DACs compared to a dedicated CD player, because there is so much more circuitry to put in.
Cooper, I would never make such a blanket statement. It really depends on each brand/model; until you find out exactly which DAC chips are used in each gear, you cannot even start any arguments. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a Panasonic DVD player uses better DAC chips than, say, a nice NAD CD player.
And I cannot stress this enough: Some smaller, niche-market, "audiophile" brands continue to use outdated (sometimes by as much as 3 years) DAC/ADC/DSP chips, apparently because they don't have enough R&D resources to quickly adopt the latest-and-greatest-but-no-pricier chips. In fact, so-called "mass-market" brands, which every audiophile hates, are much better in catching up with the rapidly progressing digital technologies. Sorry, but this is the sad reality.
In reply to:
There are differences in digital transports, though I have never done a comparison in this realm, and they are probably pretty subtle. The best quantitative reason I've heard is that word-clock jitter is introduced at the source; this basically means that ones and zeroes can occasionally be flip flopped because the clock is out of synch with the data signal.
Unfortunately, this is one of those typical marketing BS. Semi_On, who makes
ultra-high-precision clocking chips as day job, will tell you why this just doesn't happen. Clock jitters introduced at the digital readout, if any, are COMPLETELY absorbed by the data buffer upstream of DAC (now, jitter introduced within the DAC circuitry is a totally different matter). Digital readouts are IDENTICAL from $50 and $5000 transports, period, unless one is overtly mis-tracking the platter -- and in my experience, mis-tracking tolerance is in fact often better in cheaper, mass-produced transports.
