Explanation Please...CD VS DVD Players

AsSiMiLaTeD

I know I ask alot of questions, but I'm learning...

What is the advantage of having a stand alone CD Player vs a DVD player that can also play CDs, in sound quality.

Say I've got a DVD player that costs around $150 and a CD player that costs that same amount. Will the CD player give me better sound? If so, why? I know that this will depend on the actual units themselves, your set up, etc...but I'm just looking for the general rule of thumb.

The more important question here is why? If you're looking at players of comparable price and you get better sound from the CD player, why????

If anyone can answer or point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

gatemplin

I would also like opinions on this topic because my DVD player is now making static-like popping noises on CDs but not DVDs. So I am thinking of either getting a new DVD player or CD player.

Frank Z

Excellent question, too bad there really isn't a clear cut answer. Some people believe that the additional circuitry needed to decode DVD-V/DVD-A/SACD takes away from the ability to reproduce the CD acurately. Other people just prefer having a dedicated player for CD's or DVD's I really think it boils down to personal preference more than anything else. I use a universal player that performs beautifully for Audio as well as Video.

Sound quality is very dependent on the DAC being used to convert the 1's and 0's to what you are actually hearing. Poor quality DAC's equal less than ideal music. If you are using a digital connection from your CD/DVD player to your receiver/preamp, chances are that you are using the DAC in your receiver/preamp and not the one in your CD/DVD player. Keep in mind that some recivers/preamps have a "Direct" mode that may allow you to use the DAC in the CD/DVD player and not add any coloration (Bass/Treble) to the music, you get whats on the disc, no more, no less.

With very few exceptions, if you are listening to a SACD or DVD-A then the DAC in the player is being used for all of the decoding. The analog signal is passed from the player to the receiver/preamp ready for your ears.

Make sense?...or is it all just goobly ****?;)

AsSiMiLaTeD

Originally posted by Frank Z
Excellent question, too bad there really isn't a clear cut answer. Some people believe that the additional circuitry needed to decode DVD-V/DVD-A/SACD takes away from the ability to reproduce the CD acurately. Other people just prefer having a dedicated player for CD's or DVD's I really think it boils down to personal preference more than anything else. I use a universal player that performs beautifully for Audio as well as Video.

Sound quality is very dependent on the DAC being used to convert the 1's and 0's to what you are actually hearing. Poor quality DAC's equal less than ideal music. If you are using a digital connection from your CD/DVD player to your receiver/preamp, chances are that you are using the DAC in your receiver/preamp and not the one in your CD/DVD player. Keep in mind that some recivers/preamps have a "Direct" mode that may allow you to use the DAC in the CD/DVD player and not add any coloration (Bass/Treble) to the music, you get whats on the disc, no more, no less.

With very few exceptions, if you are listening to a SACD or DVD-A then the DAC in the player is being used for all of the decoding. The analog signal is passed from the player to the receiver/preamp ready for your ears.

Make sense?...or is it all just goobly ****?;)

Clear as mud....two questions though...

Is there a way to tell if a DAC (I'm guessing digital-to-analog converter?) is good or not?

Also, do receivers or CD players typically have better DACs, assuming that they're in the same range (say mid range)??

Thanks

danger boy

in mid range components.. i don't think you'll hear that much difference between the DAC's in your receiver. or the ones in your CD/DVD player.. true there WILL BE differences... but probably subtle.

I say buy a stand alone CD player.. and not USE your DVD player for CD's. a stand alone player was designed to do that.. play CD's..and only CD's. the multiformat players... do everything so so.. and nothing really well.. (of course till you get into the higher end stuff) I had to quantify that.. or i'll be flamed.

typically the higher end component you have.. hopefully the better the DAC's are going to be in it. If you buy a $39 DVD player from Wal-Mart.. do you think it'll perform to the level of a $250 stand alone CD player? i don't think so.

John K.

PM, present CD/DVD players have dual lasers operating at the wavelengths(780nm for CDs, 650nm for DVDs)which are the optimum for playing each disc; a separate player therefore has no advantage in sound quality.

If the digital output is used, the DACs(digital to analog converters)in the player are bypassed and conversion is done by the DACs in the receiver, so those player DACs aren't relevant in that case. DAC manufacture has progressed to the point that several companies(e.g. Analog Devices, Cirrus Logic, Texas Instruments(Burr-Brown Division) )make excellent DAC chips which are supplied in large quantities to equipment manufacturers for as little as $1 apiece. Although there are very small measurable differences between them, it's highly likely that they're beyond the limits of human audibility; therefore you shouldn't have any concern as to which DAC the equipment manufacturer selected.

Frank Z

I would think that a DAC is either working or it's not. Perhaps one of our more technically savy members can shed some light on the subject for us.

The only way to be certain is to look at the spec's for the equipment and compare the DAC's listed. Obviously you would need to have a reference to compare against, ie DAC A is better than DAC B, which is better than DAC C.......

Depending on how much time and effort you want to put into it, you could look at the higher end equipment and see what they use and compare your findings to what is installed in the less expensive equipment.

Wonderful hobby ain't it?

organ

Even though the specs can almost be identical for both the DVD and CD player for redbook playback. IMO, the CD player at the same price range should sound better. There was a big difference for me when I jumped from my LD player to a CD player. I also did a comparison of my CD player using the analog out and digital out to the Onkyo receiver when I still had it and the analog out was superior. The DAC in the Oink made the music sound like it was coming from a tin can.

Maurice

AsSiMiLaTeD

Well, when I get the new HT set up, I'll just do some 'blind' comparisons between my Oink CD and Tosh DVD and see what I come up with.

Right now, I can't hear a difference, but I'm only giving my front 70 WPC with the TXDS595 I'm using right now...

Steve@3dai

Say you have two players

1. DVD player, $299

2. CD player $299

The CD player is (in theorey) going to sound better because they do not have to pay for the decoding chip, royalties to Dolby, etc for DVD playback. Instead they can concentrate on the transport, DACs, etc.

DACs can differ from how many bits they use to do the conversion, what their best S/N is, but more importantly, how the layout of the board was done. It's just like laptop audio, sometimes on a poor layout, you can head the mouse noise, HD noise, etc, but I've also heard laptops that were about 92dB S/N, and that's measured on an Audio Precision box.

dcarlson

Do you use a 2in1 shampoo? Quick and easy.

Or do you use separate shampoo and conditioner? A little more work but each does a specific job.

bigsexy1

The very first generation Sony DVD player that came out in like '97 or '98, I think the model # was S7000, was and still is to this day very highly regarded as a stand alone CD player also. It's CD section was based on some very expensive Sony ES CD players out at the time.

That said, I'm sure DACs have done nothing but improve since then in even cheap CD players out new now.

therockman

Two questions that come to my mind as a newbie in this whole field. 1, Dosen't the actual transport (not just the DAC) make a difference because of jitter, less jitter equals less correction equals higher fidelity. Also, some CD players up convert the digital information from 16 bit/44.1khz to 24 bit/ 88khz or even 192khz. This internal upconversion is suppose to increase dynamic range and also smooth out digital compression that is present in the original digital information read from the CD. I would think that these two factors should have some bearing on the sound quality of a CD player.

John K.

Rocky, correcting jitter following the transport is a routine matter in any competently designed equipment and doesn't lower fdelity in any way.

Upconversion is essentially the same as the upsampling or oversampling which has been used in all players for years. It allows the use of a gentler filter, which reduces any artifacts which would be caused by an extremely steep filter, but of course these techniques can't add information which isn't on the disc to start with.

The CD format uses no compression.

therockman

I would like to respond to John K.'s post point by point. To begin with; jitter. To quote from a book called THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO HIGH END AUDIO by Robert Harley; "Transports will sound different depending on the processors they drive because all digital processors respond differently to transport jitter. Transport jitter is timing variations in the digital datastream output from the transport. The datastream jitter is either passed along to the digitall processor's clock (where it degrades the sound), or is rejected by the digital processor and thus is less sonically detremental. If you choose a digital processor that's relatively immune to transport jitter, you can spend less on a CD transport and still get great sound."

This is one paragraph copied word for word from the chapter called THE DIGITAL FRONT END, page 268. For more information you can read all about transport jitter in a great book called PRINCIPLES OF DIGITAL AUDIO by Ken Pohlmann.
Upconversion to a different sampling rate is a relatively new technolgy, and is right now found only on a few high end CD players. For an excellent technical description of the upconversion (from 16 bit/44.1 khz redbook standard to 24 bit/192 khz DVD-A standard) read the review for the new digital to analog converter THETA DIGITAL GENERATION VIII D/A CONVERTER ($10,000) in the new issue of Stereophile magazine. It is important to remeber that all external DACs require a digital input, either a fiber optic toslink or a digital coax.


As for digital compression, don't get me started. It hurts my ears, and over 80% of all new CDs use this practice. It is gross distortion that you can read about here:


www.puredigitalaudio.org/digitalcompression/index.shtml

www.loudnessrace.net/


Please go to these sites and read about digital compression, it is the reason I have almost completely quite buying CDs. If you have any other questions about digital compression, please email me or respond to this thread.

therockman

Digital compression became a very serious issue to me back in 1997 when I first started buying the Jimi Hendrix remasters. These discs sounded so bad that I had to start learning about digital comression and the often times occapaning digital distortion called digital maximazation. Digital compression has destroyed so many decent recordings that it should be a crime. Thankfully I kept all of my old Hendrix CDs, the old Polydors and Warner Brothers, the ones before the Experience Hendrix Foundation started issueing distorted junk. The whole issue of digital compression came to a climax with NIRVANA'S GREATEST HITS. This disc sounded so bad that after I bought it, I couldn't even listen to it all the way through once. It hurt my ears so bad that I immeadiately emailed everyone involved with the production of this disc. Digital compression is so prevalent in the recording industry today, that over 80% of all new CDs employ this technolgy. It hurts me so badly, that I can't even listen to most new CDs.

therockman

I was reminded over at another thread that my opinions are simply that, my opinions. So I must appoligize about my ramblings about digital compression. The issue of digital compression is a personal one, possibly because I am old and I was raised in a strictly analog world where a sine wave was round and actually had a natural roll to it. Digital compression is prevalent in many new CDs, but that does not mean that this bothers everybody. For example, NRVANA'S GREATEST HITS is totally unlistenable to me, but my children enjoy listening to it. I have the original master recordings of every Nirvana disc, so I listen to my original master recordings without digitla compression, and I let my children borrow the Greatest Hits disc that is rampant with digital compression. The point to all this, if digital compression is not an issue to you, then you can choose a CD player that does not employ upsampling technology and save yourself a bundle of money. If your machine does not have a digital output, either toslink or coax, then you will never be able to take advantage of an outboard D/A converter.

Loud & Clear

rockman - you have original Nirvana masters? Are you talking about tapes? Sounds pretty cool, I'm curious to know more about these master recordings.

therockman

My Nirvana collection is all on CD, but NEVERMIND and IN UTERO are 24kt gold discs that were made by MFSL and they are labeled ORIGINAL MASTER RECORDINGS. My BLEACH is the original CD issue before it was digitally remastered, an ancient Sub Pop release that was taken from the original tapes and transferred straight to CD. The newer versions of BLEACH all say "digitally remastered" on the disc, and this version was done from a second generation tape and employs digital compression. My INCESTACIDE was pressed in Japan by a boutique pressing plant, they had the original master tapes loaned to them by Sub Pop, and no compression was employed in their mastering chain, just a straight, flat transfer from the original master tape, (under license from Sub Pop). My other discs are all just mass market, ON THE MUDDY BANKS and MTV LIVe. Obviously, I am a pretty big fan of Nirvana's, so I was very disappointed with the GREATEST HITS disc, but Bob Ludwig is a fine engineer and I am hoping for better with what ever releases we get in the future.

Loud & Clear

Wow, that's awesome. I only have Bleach, Nevermind, & In Utero, and I don't listen to them that much anymore, but at one time they were very important to me. The energy and power they had in the early nineties really blew me away; of course being 35 now, and roughly 20 at that time, that was an exciting period in my life. Bleach, I think, has held up the best for me over the years. Well-recorded music makes SUCH a big difference. Congrats on the cool disks.