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.