CD Sound vs Streaming

[Jimbo]

Those are the short cabinet, the active 100 towers are £20,670

Need to sell the car!

[allthingsanalogue]

Just my 2 pennies worth so I’m sure it's possibly not reflected elsewhere but I sold all my streaming kit, Melco, PSU, Bryston Dac, routers, cables etc. and bought a cd player.

One day I decided to try my cheap 20 year old dvd player into the Dac and found that the exact same cd's that we’re ripped onto the Melco in Wav format sounded better from the actual cd, not magnitudes better but better which was perplexing as the dvd player was £100 in 2022 and the Melco ran into thousands. I then bought a cd transport from Moon and the difference was off the scale and most certainly magnitudes better. Unfortunately it developed a fault within two weeks and the dealer wanted to repair but I refused and received a refund.

This left me in a hole as the superb audio quality of the MOON left me shocked but unhappy with the support, so I bit the bullet and sold the DAC and bought the Denon DCD-A110 cd player and it's easily better again.

For me the quality of the transport makes a big difference and in some cases more than the DAC, A PC drive doesn’t cut it despite what all the comments about the perfect rip.

[Gazjam]

Better than the Moon transport into your Dac?

[allthingsanalogue]

Better than the Moon transport into your Dac?

Oh yeah, easily! It’s the best cd replay I’ve ever had. It has an incredibly low noise floor and the sound is so detailed without being in your face. The Bryston sounded very good but a bit studio sounding, technically good but lacking that all out engagement. It was the same for the two Chord Dacs I owned. I think part of what makes a good cd player over a transport is the transport being in the same box as the Dac, allowing the designer to really tune to the two to work together.

I never really looked at Denon seriously over the years but maybe I should have. The build quality is exceptional and probably better than any other brand I’ve owned, including from all the British players. If the Denon cd player was built by a British company it would easily cost at least twice as much. It's also built in Japan which that puts a smile in my face every time.

I still have my Tag McLaren DAC20 that I bought from the WAM and had completely recapped by Kevin Green last year and that also sounds wonderful, actually my favourite ever standalone DAC. I owned one years ago and regretted selling it so when I spotted an immaculate boxed one for £200 I snapped it up, although the recap cost another £200! It's handy as it does HDCD and also indicates cd's with pre-emphasis. A side note, the Bryston Dac couldn’t decode pre-emphasis cd's but the Denon does.

Of course it’s my opinion so others will no doubt think differently.

[Gazjam]

Interesting!

Had half an eye on the Moon as an upgrade over my Audiolab 6000CDT.

What Dac did you have the Moon hooked up to?
Denon looks fine, only snag (for me) is lack of Balanced analogue outputs, and no AES digital out.
Shame 'dat.

[kirstysdad]

To throw more cats into the pigeon flock, in the 90's Audio Technica (?) sold disc stabilising hoops that fitted around the edge of a CD, adding a little mass and allegedly absorbing reflected laser light.
I bough a new but old pack of 5 recently, and they really do make a perceptible difference.
I still have a CD with an adhesive hoop that is on the top surface of the disc that is even better as it adds more stabilising mass.
If I can find stuff I'll post photos.
Best transport I ever had was a Meridian 206 that was built like the proverbial sturdy outhouse! Massively overengineered. Brilliant. Still have the scars from when it trapped my finger!

[kirstysdad]

Interesting!

Had half an eye on the Moon as an upgrade over my Audiolab 6000CDT.

What Dac did you have the Moon hooked up to?
Denon looks fine, only snag (for me) is lack of Balanced analogue outputs, and no AES digital out.
Shame 'dat.

Had a chance on a MOON at an auction last year, massively undervalued, let it go due to insufficient funds... Still hurts!

[allthingsanalogue]

Interesting!

Had half an eye on the Moon as an upgrade over my Audiolab 6000CDT.

What Dac did you have the Moon hooked up to?
Denon looks fine, only snag (for me) is lack of Balanced analogue outputs, and no AES digital out.
Shame 'dat.

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.

[allthingsanalogue]

To throw more cats into the pigeon flock, in the 90's Audio Technica (?) sold disc stabilising hoops that fitted around the edge of a CD, adding a little mass and allegedly absorbing reflected laser light.
I bough a new but old pack of 5 recently, and they really do make a perceptible difference.
I still have a CD with an adhesive hoop that is on the top surface of the disc that is even better as it adds more stabilising mass.
If I can find stuff I'll post photos.
Best transport I ever had was a Meridian 206 that was built like the proverbial sturdy outhouse! Massively overengineered. Brilliant. Still have the scars from when it trapped my finger!

As I still have my Tag DAC connected up I’m still on the lookout for Meridian to go with it and I know someone who has brand new CDM9 laser mech's!

[Macca]

There's certainly a lack of good transports.

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.