Unbelievable!

[Younglochinvar]

I bought a Bluray DVD player today. A cheap Sony model costing all of £109, and it plays video very well. I have read a lot about digital outputs sounding the same (a digit is a digit after all) so before wiring the player up to the telly, I connected the digital audio output to the second input of my Meridian DSP speakers which have their own internal DAC and compared the sound with the digital output from my very expensive audiophile brand CD player. This goes into the primary input of the speakers. I have two copies of a sampler disk, so I was able to A-B test the two players with the same recording of different types of music almost instantaneously. And guess what? I couldn't tell the difference. From time to time my wife and I thought we could detect that one was "harsher" or "not so good in the treble" or "better on piano" but when we checked, we couldn't reproduce the effects we thought we were hearing. We ended up listening with just as much satisfaction to music from the ultra cheap player as we normally do from the expensive player. My conclusion from this limited comparison is that digital outputs really DO sound the same. Please note that I am not claiming that all CD players sound the same - only their digital stages. Does anyone disagree? Have I missed something?

 

[misterpete]

sshh!....keep it quiet.

 

[meninblack]

No, you are right. The people that believe transports sound different have rubbish DACs, or are mentalists.

 

[dinkydave]

I've got a cheap Sony Bluray player, and very nice it is for playing DVDs . Never tried playing CDs through it though because the amount of 'background' noise it produces would make it horrible to listen to anything unless it was blasting the sound out. When my CDXtSE is spinning you would never know it was on if the volume was down; totally silent. The Sony Bluray player, you can almost hear it spinning in the next room :doh: .

 

[Younglochinvar]

Yes I, agree that as a package the cheap Bluray is not nearly as nice as my CD player which has a smooth, almost noiseless drawer, silent running, informative display and is a pleasure to use. Put like that it sounds quite sexy! Almost as much fun as when I used to have a precision engineered tone arm exactly in the right place on a spinning vinyl disk. The Sony mechanism does make a noise and clearly the Sony DAC is going to be nowhere near acceptable as an audiophile component. But I was just commenting on the digital output as an digital output. I haven't even bothered to listen to the analogue output from the "audio out" sockets. I have tried that previously with other cheap players and it was always rubbish. In that respect you do get what you pay for.

 

[arturo]

£10 Philips cdp - digital out - no difference to a £1500 cdp in my system.

 

[Jezzer]

It is obvious that none of you have the ears to detect sonic differences in cd players. Also the rest of your components are rubbish. As such, you should all donate your systems to me. Especially those Meridian active speakers which are especially rubbish. Ta.

 

[Cable Monkey]

It may well be that what you hear is identical because you just happen to have two players that, despite their price difference are identical. That is great, however there might be other reasons to go for the more expensive player. Is the transport as quiet? Is the remote as good? Does it look as nice? I came to a conclusion a long time ago. Many of those who argue the 'bits are bits' mantra still very often own and use very nice players and transports. I don't see too many practising what they preach and actually using a bargain basement £20 DVD player because it is just as good. Quite clearly it isn't but the things that are not as good don't have to be the digital output, but can quite often be just about everything else about the player!

I think that makes some sense... ;-)

 

[karlinamillion]

I bought a Bluray DVD player today. A cheap Sony model costing all of £109, and it plays video very well. I have read a lot about digital outputs sounding the same (a digit is a digit after all) so before wiring the player up to the telly, I connected the digital audio output to the second input of my Meridian DSP speakers which have their own internal DAC and compared the sound with the digital output from my very expensive audiophile brand CD player. This goes into the primary input of the speakers. I have two copies of a sampler disk, so I was able to A-B test the two players with the same recording of different types of music almost instantaneously. And guess what? I couldn't tell the difference. From time to time my wife and I thought we could detect that one was "harsher" or "not so good in the treble" or "better on piano" but when we checked, we couldn't reproduce the effects we thought we were hearing. We ended up listening with just as much satisfaction to music from the ultra cheap player as we normally do from the expensive player. My conclusion from this limited comparison is that digital outputs really DO sound the same. Please note that I am not claiming that all CD players sound the same - only their digital stages. Does anyone disagree? Have I missed something?

The only time 2 'transports' will sound different is when theres something wrong with one of them.

Really, the best transport, that is one that puts the least stress on the DAC algorithms, would be a buffered computer drive that reads & re-reads the disc till it's getting consistant answers & buffers that.

 

[barnacle bill]

Really, the best transport, that is one that puts the least stress on the DAC algorithms, would be a buffered computer drive that reads & re-reads the disc till it's getting consistant answers & buffers that.

Do you mean low jitter output? :roll:

 

[karlinamillion]

Do you mean low jitter output? :roll:

Broadly a stream with no errors and solid timing.

 

[arturo]

It may well be that what you hear is identical because you just happen to have two players that, despite their price difference are identical. That is great, however there might be other reasons to go for the more expensive player. Is the transport as quiet? Is the remote as good? Does it look as nice? I came to a conclusion a long time ago. Many of those who argue the 'bits are bits' mantra still very often own and use very nice players and transports. I don't see too many practising what they preach and actually using a bargain basement £20 DVD player because it is just as good. Quite clearly it isn't but the things that are not as good don't have to be the digital output, but can quite often be just about everything else about the player! I think that makes some sense... ;-)

Well, I'm practising what I preach, really, there is NO difference when using the digital coax output, & also no difference to my streamed flacs. I guess if you've invested £££s in a super transport you will hear a difference, because you've invested all those £££s. For me, not playing cds hardly at all, it just made sense to recover £600 for my MF A5 & still be able to play the odd cd the gf brings into the house. I'd imagine my set up is capable of displaying differences, & of course you can't hear the cd transport when music is playing, the old Philips is actually very quiet anyway.