Suggestion for budget DAC

S

soulman

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I listen to my turntable almost exclusively but have quite a lot of music only on cd. My cd player is totally uninvolving to listen too compared to the tt. Any suggestions for a budget excitement injection (better imaging, bass), has to be under £100

 

lordmortlock

Lordmortlock
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£100 budget may not improve your perception of cd replay much. Maybe try a NOS dac, something based on the tda1543 Philips chip. Thats often described as a more 'analogue' sound.

Theres a few second hand units for sale on the popular forum/sale sites at the moment that could suit.

 

julian2002

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Personally I'd put that £100 in a savings account and add to it whenever you can. Once you have something like £500 you'll be in a position to buy something that will lift your digital replay to the next level. At your current price range you'll sadly be robbing peter to pay paul, you'll get better imaging at the expense of bass, or vice versa or a sloppy midrange. There will be holes, you'll become dissatisfied and you'll have wasted that £100.

 

belloire

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next time i'm down your way i'll bring my meridian for a listen Des, more like £300 but.....

also, have a chat with Rick about his monarch :)

 
G

Guest

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I would suggest a mains cable, interconnect, CD mat or footer change:D.

 

hearingisbelieving

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Personally I'd put that £100 in a savings account and add to it whenever you can. Once you have something like £500 you'll be in a position to buy something that will lift your digital replay to the next level. At your current price range you'll sadly be robbing peter to pay paul, you'll get better imaging at the expense of bass, or vice versa or a sloppy midrange. There will be holes, you'll become dissatisfied and you'll have wasted that £100.
Sadly I would have to agree, I dont think you will see much of a difference which such a limited budget.

I dont think you need £500 though. You can pick up a s/h Audio Note DAC Zero for about £300 and I find this a very capable DAC and certainly sounds different to std onboard DACs found in most CDPs.

You can cheaply upgrade the DAC Zero too for even bigger improvements.

You could think about holding a bakeoff and ask people to bring their budget DACs for you to sample in your own system.

 

lazycat

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Fiio Taishan. £30 from Amazon.

If you dont like it someone will buy it.

 

rabski

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I don't agree with some here. IME, most mid-range players are extremely competent transports fitted with woefully poor analogue stages.

There are plenty of low-cost DACs, and particularly non-oversampling ones, that will provide a vastly different presentation for little money.

Again IME, until you get to the £1000 plus point, there is very little difference. Spend £100 or £500. Both are likely to better the on-board DAC in your player, but neither will sound that different.

 

SergeAuckland

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I don't agree with some here. IME, most mid-range players are extremely competent transports fitted with woefully poor analogue stages.There are plenty of low-cost DACs, and particularly non-oversampling ones, that will provide a vastly different presentation for little money.

Again IME, until you get to the £1000 plus point, there is very little difference. Spend £100 or £500. Both are likely to better the on-board DAC in your player, but neither will sound that different.
I wonder what is woefully inadequate in budget analogue stages. An NE5532 chip costs pennies and provides as good an analogue output as anyone could possibly need. It will drive low impedances and has vanishingly low distortion and low noise. With a 2v output level, I can't see what could be improved audibly. A valve output stage or a NOS unfiltered DAC will definitely sound different, but I would argue that was worse than the DACs in pretty much any budget or mid-price player of the last 20 years. Distortion will be higher and the unfiltered noise can upset the amplifier downstream, although should be filtered by the amplifier if that design was done well. I can understand with your choice of equipment that low distortion and a flat frequency response are not amongst your priorities, you clearly rate excitement above accuracy, but there's nothing inaccurate or inadequate in the internal DACs and analogue output stages of most CD players as the measurements clearly show.

S

 

narular

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meridian explorer does the job nicely, but as others have pointed out, it is closer to £250. Look at the 'wam for good s/h deals....

 
S

soulman

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So it wouldn't be worth getting the marantz cd6000ki on the forum for a £100 as an upgrade? Better save more money and then spend on a decent DAC? No consensus on cost of a reaonable upgrade looking at the answers so far. Am i better selling all my cds and replacing the ones I'd really miss with vinyl copies?

 
V

Voice_Coil

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So it wouldn't be worth getting the marantz cd6000ki on the forum for a £100 as an upgrade? Better save more money and then spend on a decent DAC? No consensus on cost of a reaonable upgrade looking at the answers so far. Am i better selling all my cds and replacing the ones I'd really miss with vinyl copies?
is that 100 quid burning a hole in your pocket ?

 
S

soulman

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No but I'm very disappointed every time I listen to CD compared to the RP3, this will only increase when the NAS space deck and space arm arrive at Pearce Towers this weekend….

 

cjr

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Cheap? Buy a £20-50 Mindisc Deck off eBay. Sony MDJB-920QS is a good bet. Use as a DAC. If you hear no difference stop worrying. I have tried many MD decks as DACs and they are perfectly capable devices to change the anlg output stage of any player. They are also up there with every DAC I have ever tried (quite a few) as DACs.

(You can then use the device with a Behringer UCA-202 for recording digitally onto MD off PC for Spotify etc if you wish, TV from Sky, Freveiew or Freesat HD)

 

Maverick

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I'd say do have a listen to Darren's Meridian

I am looking to replace my amp with a pre / power & as such we had a one man bake off at Andy's (Andy831) recently, all using one of his Garrards, plenty of vinyl and some of his range of amps. Why am I mentioning this? Well I have a reasonable CDP (bit old but in perfect condition and sounds fine) . . . but just before I left Andy put the CD versions of a couple of disks we had been using onto his 506.24 and I commented that I'd never heard a CD sound like vinyl before, he just smiled knowingly.

I am now in the process of buying a 506.24, the rest will have to wait :cs:

 

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