CD Sound vs Streaming

[Macca]

That's a bit of a rara avis. What make is it?

Sony.

http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-TA-E1000ESD.html

[allthingsanalogue]

Is there? When I was looking for a new one I was quite surprised at how many there are:

Audiolab
Roksan
Leak
Project
CEC
Cambridge
Jays Audio
Moon
Schitt
TEAC
Metronome
DCS
Cyrus
Primare
PS Audio

Plus all the CD players with digital outputs.

Okay some are ugly looking, some are bland looking and some cost silly money, but given that everyone has supposedly moved to streaming either external or local, it's amazing how many options there are for a format from the 1980s that's supposedly had its day.

Like you I cannot be bothered hooking up what is essentially a computer, with all its potential issues, to my system just to listen to a bit of music.

Computer types might enjoy faffing about with software updates and trawling round the internet looking for fixes for bugs, and good luck to them, but that's not for me.

I did look at several of them but at the time most of the offerings from anything with the IAG group had slot loaders and reading numerous reports about scratched discs, that I also have experience of I ruled them all out. Both the Primare offerings look almost the same bar the mechanics. The Cyrus machines are well known for mech faults etc and again slot loading.

I didn’t t like the look of anything form Pro-Ject either. I was very tempted by the Jay's but lack of UK support ruled it out and DCS/PS Audio were way out of my price range!

The TEAC was the best other option by put I’d already purchased the Denon by then!


Fussy buggar aren’t I!

[Macca]

I did look at several of them but at the time most of the offerings from anything with the IAG group had slot loaders and reading numerous reports about scratched discs, that I also have experience of I ruled them all out. Both the Primare offerings look almost the same bar the mechanics. The Cyrus machines are well known for mech faults etc and again slot loading.

I didn’t t like the look of anything form Pro-Ject either. I was very tempted by the Jay's but lack of UK support ruled it out and DCS/PS Audio were way out of my price range!

The TEAC was the best other option by put I’d already purchased the Denon by then!


Fussy buggar aren’t I!

Nope! I narrowed it down in very similar fashion.

I won't have a blue display so that cut a lot of them out. Some might see that as a being a bit fussy I suppose.

[Barry]

Blue displays seem to be fashionable. Most of my gear have a black facia and red dot matrix displays, save for my Teac DAC, which perversely has a silver facia and blue lens. ()

[allthingsanalogue]

Blue displays seem to be fashionable. Most of my gear have a black facia and red dot matrix displays, save for my Teac DAC, which perversely has a silver facia and blue lens. ()

OLED displays certainly are fashionable atm. I know why as they can be programmed for any such device but I do worry about the longevity of them, I’ve seen several Melco's with dim parts of the display or burn in. I always used mine with the display off. I’ve held off on buying an OLED tv over our LCD as my wife’s Samsung phone OLED is wrecked, with severe burn in although she always has it on maximum brightness!

The amber OLED in the TEAC is much nicer on the eyes!

[Pigmy Pony]

OLED displays certainly are fashionable atm. I know why as they can be programmed for any such device but I do worry about the longevity of them, I’ve seen several Melco's with dim parts of the display or burn in. I always used mine with the display off. I’ve held off on buying an OLED tv over our LCD as my wife’s Samsung phone OLED is wrecked, with severe burn in althiugh she always has it on maximum brightness!

The amber OLED in the TEAC is much nicer in the eyes!

I agree that the amber of the TEAC looks great, and imo the unit is only bettered looks-wise by Accuphase.

Not sure I agree about OLED tellies though - we bought our LG OLED before the lockdown, it was secondhand, it's on for many hours every day, and it's still good as new Might be a different story if used for gaming a lot.

[allthingsanalogue]

Not sure I agree about OLED tellies though - we bought our LG OLED before the lockdown, it was secondhand, it's on for many hours every day, and it's still good as new Might be a different story if used for gaming a lot.

That’s positive to hear. I often have the tv on in the background just with a news channel or something so I worried about logo's being burned in. Mind you most of my daily watching is YT or Netflix so most likely will be ok.

[Pigmy Pony]

That’s positive to hear. I often have the tv on in the background just with a news channel or something so I worried about logo's being burned in. Mind you most of my daily watching is YT or Netflix so most likely will be ok.

Yes ours spends a lot of the daytime tuned to Sky News (not my doing), without issues so far. And if for instance the programme watched is paused, the screen goes darker after about a minute, presumably to help guard against this 'screen burn'. Most modern tellies probably do this.

[Lawrence001]

I was using a Bryston BDA-2 from 2013. I’m not fussed about the lack of XLR but know some people require them. I’ve tried the coax out and it seems fine but again it’s not a requirement for me.

I’ve heard the Audiolab 9000cdt and it sounds extremely good.

There's certainly a lack of good transports. Don’t get me wrong, the Moon was superb, I still have some photos I’ll post, the problem was that it went wrong within 2 weeks they refused to replace it. After several emails back and forth I was very happy when I was told a replacement had been ordered and mine would be picked up. That was until Tuesday morning after the weekend when I was told this was 'not' the case at all and mine would still be repaired and he even apologised for his wife misleading me. In the end I had to tell them I’d sought legal advice, with that they refunded me immediately.

If it hadn’t had developed a fault I’d still probably have it. Just find a distributor who will honour the distance selling regs and faults within 30 days policy.

I sold the Bryston anyway as I preferred the Tag McLaren DAC20. However I absolutely love my new Denon!

I don’t have a vendetta against streaming as such, it's just as time marches on I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with anything that requires an app, firmware or software updates, internet connections etc. When I had my Melco it was a right pita, contrast firmware, Songkong updates that were always seemingly worse than the version it replaced. It also didn’t sound as good as the actual cd imo and left me cold emotionally as I like the pleasure of actual handling the disc, booklet etc. And yes, everything was ripped as WAV.

Melco's HD app was crap tbh, the Lumin app was much better but all of a sudden they broke compatibility so the basic functions, like play, stop, search stopped working, I mean, seriously? I asked around on the fb Melco group and it was reported by other N100 users that they had the same issue. I spoke to Melco, waste of time, they just palmed me off. I tried the Kazoo app by Linn but then they announced it would be discontinued and replaced with new Linn app but that wasn’t compatible with android! Don't even get me started on the myth that some apps sound better than others, I never heard the slightest difference, even when I turned off the tablet.

Then all of a sudden was informed that the more expensive Melco,'s still worked okay with Lumin so I thought, right I’ve had enough of this palaver and sold the lot. Lost a tonne of money on the Melco, almost couldn’t give it away. I guess streamers are like computers, pretty much worthless once you’ve bought them.

So for me, it's cd's and vinyl only. Luckily cd players are having a revival it seems.

Streaming gets a bad name at least partly because people are trying it with older dacs with early built in USB converters. The CD player goes straight to SPDIF using the coax and doesn't have that disadvantage, so it's an apples and pairs comparison.

I was in that camp until I bought a separate USB bridge and the improvement was massive.

The worst ones are the earlier 16/48 synchronous converters which are flat sounding and frankly unlistenable (rather like playing an MP3). The 24/96 and early 24/192 chips like XMOS that came next were better but still not quite there.

I looked up the Bryston and it has an early XMOS 24/192 converter. These can sound more lively than the older 16/48 chips but they are quite unrefined and have that "digital glare".

To make a fair comparison a recent bridge should be used. Singxer are very good for example. Done this way the difference is hard to hear for the same file, and you have the advantage of being able to stream hires files as well (but that's another debate I'll not get into here).



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[Macca]

I agree that poor USB implementation could be a reason for differences.

That assumes some basic level of control in the comparison - such as actually comparing the same mastering on CD and stream - which often hasn't even been considered, and so leads to an incorrect conclusion as to what is actually occurring.