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A DAC to beat NAD C541i?

I've had NAD for about 6 years. It used to be a good one 6 years ago in my system, but now I think it is a bottle neck in my current system -- Tyler Taylo 7U, Linn AV5105 amp, Rogue Magnum 99 preamp.
My friend brought his Rega Apollo CD player and compared it with my NAD on my system, but I did not hear much difference, except Apollo sound a little bit more warm. But I liked NAD's more bright sound.
If Apollo is a real good one at $1000, I guess I need to spend over $2000 for a new CDP to for better sound.
Instead, if I want to go for DAC with NAD, which DAC (at $500~1000) would be best to beat both Apollo and NAD?
Which CD player (used at $500~1000) would be far better than Apollo or NAD?
Thx
128x128ihcho

Showing 4 responses by tobias

tobias
1,534 posts
 
The Apogee Mini-DAC.
tobias
1,534 posts
 
Apogee Mini-DAC in all probability far superior to GDA-700 but no HDCD.
tobias
1,534 posts
 
Toslink won't be better except perhaps if you use a glass (not plastic) one.

How long is your IXOS? If your digital cable is not 1.5m long you are not hearing all the DAC can do. Try again if you have not been using a 1.5m length.

If cable length is not a factor, your Paradisea may simply not be a big enough upgrade from the 541i's internal DAC. The 541i is a pretty good player. You may need to look for a DAC that is better yet.
tobias
1,534 posts
 
The extra half meter delays internal reflections just enough that they don't arrive at the DAC in time to cause jitter. Here's a quote from another thread to explain why.

[Almarg]If the input impedance of the dac and the impedance of the cable don't match precisely, a portion of the incident signal would be reflected back to the transport. A portion of that reflection would then re-reflect from the transport to the dac. The two-way reflection path, assuming propagation time of roughly 2 nanoseconds per foot, would be 12ns for the 1m cable, and 18ns for the 1.5m cable.

I don't know what the typical risetimes/edge rates are for transport outputs, but it does seem very conceivable that the extra 6ns could move the arrival time of the re-reflection sufficiently away from the middle area of the edge of the original incident waveform so that it would not be responded to by the digital receiver at the dac input.
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