Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo CD Players

There seems to be a lot of level headed thinking in this forum, so I'd like to pose a question. Im thinking of buying a CD player to compliment my new M80's. The consumer brands tend to be disapearing in favor of dvd/cd/mp3 players. I guess this is alright. But what I'd like is a single disc player, not a changer. The prices seem to go from about $29 for the sale paper stuff to several thousand dollars.
Now here's my question. How much difference can there be in the sound?
Obviously, with speakers, there are so many variables and it is generally true that you can expect to get what you pay for.
But with digital music, the optical reader is reading +'s and -'s. There isn't room for the physical effect that used to occur with tonearms, drive systems and cartridges in the old record albums.
So when I read descriptions like "slamming bass, greater detail, greater depth of soundstage, etc, I wonder, how can this be?
The digital information is all there, how can one deliver "slamming bass" that another cannot?
I'm wondering if this is in the same category as speaker cables, one of which I was reading after on Ebay today. It claimed, "extended bass", "tubelike" response, "detailed highs" etc. I use a tube amp for my guitar. If I could purchase a speaker wire that produced tube response, I would go for it!
I'm ready to be educated. I was curious about an NAD CD player that runs about $500. It is well spoken of. But then someone compared an expensive player (cant remember which one) to a $50 Toshiba!
Thanks for any responses, especially from those who have personal experience comparing the expensive models with the cheaper ones.

Dan

Dan, I have several different megachangers which certainly are identical in "sound". Any well-engineered player, regardless of cost, reads the digital 1s and 0s on the CDs perfectly. A more expensive player may be more sturdy and have a longer service life, but there's no way that its 1s and 0s will sound better. The perceived differences which you've seen described in players(or even pieces of wire)are largely nonsense; one difference that does exist is that different players can differ slightly in their output levels. When comparing players the volume has to be equalized(within about 0.1dB),otherwise a difference in loudness too small to be perceived as such can be instead characterized as better "bass", "detail" etc.

Get a player with the features that you want at the best price that you can find, but don't worry about "sound".

I should also add that I am using a Technics CD player from about 1986-7, one of the first generation players. It still works fine, although it seems to want to skip more than it used to. Would a newer player have any practical improvements in reading through scratches etc?

CD source does make a huge difference.

It is correct that CD carries only 1s and 0s. However, the laser head MUST BE good enough to pick up the value CORRECTLY when the disc is being read in real time. There are different grades of laser head and prices vary of course. A good CD transport may cost thousands of dollars.

On top of that, DAC (digital-analog convertor) is a very very important component in a CD player which converts digital signal into analog waveform. It is the compoent that reveals the "extended bass" or any other quality in the recordings. If any of these quality is lost during the convertion, the rest of your system (speaker/amp) can never recover it. A DAC may cost several bucks to thousands of bucks depending on the quality.

You cannot expect the same performance from the $50 toshiba player and the NAD cd player which received positive reviews from many magazines/websites. And without a good CD source, you can never tell the performance of the rest of your system.

So what you're saying is that if you capture the digital bitstream coming from the digital output of a $50 toshiba player and capture the bitstream coming from an expensiveWadia transport (to name one), and then compare the data bit for bit, there would be significant differences?

Has anyone ever done such an experiment? If not, it should definitely be done.

I'm curious as to why everyone assumes that a digital out is always used. Call me old school but I thought most people used analog connections unless their CD player was absolute crap.

In my opinion, I wouldn't spend upwards of a $1000 on a cd player but I would definitely spend more than $50 for a Toshiba. Price rarely equates to performance in a linear relationship. I've said it before and I will say it again, my 14yr old Sony 5 disc changer sounds better than:

MY Sony DVP755V $249
Sony DE595 $199
Denon 884 $499(?)

Something about the changer is just inexplicably musical. Call it the placebo effect if you will but I went into the comparisons thinking that newer technology is better and that my 755V would mop the floor with everything else but the old changer still comes out on top. I think there are more factors than DAC quality, but I can't get too technical as I'm not a EE just a guy who knows what he likes.

This is an interesting article which happens to explain some differences between cheap cd players and better ones.

http://www.republika.pl/mparvi/digital.htm

Unfortunately "musicality" cannot be measured by any scientific mean. It may be hard to accept by those people who believe in science rather their ears.

No offense. I believe in both science and my ears.

Well, not every laser will read 0's and 1's 100% correctly. Even on new CD's there may be some read errors (and definetly on scratched discs) that player will try to 'correct'. A bad player will just skip without even a try.
If you use digital (coax or optical) output then thats all. What your player read that it will (should ) send to amplifier/reciever.
But if you use analog line-out's, then there is one more step - digital to analog conversion. DAC's really make a big difference in sound. Good quality 24 bit DAC's are not so expensive, but manufacturs still prefer cheap dacs to reduce product price. Bad . And there is no (legal) way to transfer SACD streams to digital out - you must use analog outputs, so DAC quality is even more important.

If you want a player that also play's MP3's chek how it handles bitrates >128kbps, does it allow random play. Some players have terrible loading times and big pauses between tracks, others cut songs at the end etc etc.

Some players have noisy cd-transports other skips after a year or two because laser diode life is very limited /actually all laser diodes have a limiter life-time, i don't understand how 20 year old players still play /.

You get what you pay for.

p.s. pardon my English

Johnk;

Where do you live? I would like to take my Musical Fidelity player over to your place and get a couple of other ears. I want you to show me its all in my head. I must be hallucinating everytime I listen to music. I'll bring a SPL to make sure loudness on all players are the same.
I'm not kidding. I can fly to any place in North America for only taxes.

Regards;