receiver dacs or cd? (1 Viewer)

[Mario D]

I tried analog out from my nakamichi mb8 cd player ( i was hook up optical out ) and notice an improvement : the sound is less bright and the bass is rounder and better. Does that mean that the dacs from the Nak are better than the one's in my 3803.

 

[Angelo.M]

Better? Not necessarily. Worse? Not necessarily. More pleasing to your ear? Seems like it.

 

[John Garcia]

If you say the Nak sounds better, leave it analog. Personally, I am not surprised the Nak sounds better.

 

[Rob Rodier]

neither am I


-rob

 

[Chris A H]

Using an external DAC always raises the problem of jitter in the bitstream, a problem avoided using the CD player's internal DACs.

Chris

 

[Chu Gai]

it's really difficult to answer your question without knowing if the levels going to the speakers was the same in both cases. if there were a level mismatch then different people would interpret that in different ways.

 

[Luis M]

Don't be surprised your cd sounds better with analog cables than using the receicer's DAC, I have a 15 year old SAE cd player that performs slightly better using analog cables than using a digital cable with the Marantz SR-8200.

 

[John Garcia]

While I believe cables themselves can influence a system's sound, I would suspect the DACs are more likely the reason for the difference in sound in this case.

When I say I am not surprised that the Nak sounds better, that is because they make some nice gear, and even not being familiar with this particular unit, I would STILL expect it to sound better than the 3803's DACs. I have not heard a 3803 yet, but the DACs in the 3802 did not impress me for music, which is why I chose not to purchase one.

 

[KyleGS]

I found the same thing although my CD player is NOT that grate and I consider my receiver to be at least mid-fi. My AVR120 sounds much more harsh, less rounded and has less bass output as compared to using the DAC's in my $90 entry level Sony carousel. Who knew...