2. amps-preamps
  3. 1233125891

New amp or new cd player?

With which will i see a bigger improvement in my sound. I have a Mcintosh MA6450 integrated, Gallo 3.1 speakers, and an onkyo dv-sp404 dvd/cd player. Monster interconnects, and transparent music wave speaker cable.

Obviously my weakest link is the onkyo dvd player as a cd player. I was thinking about upgrading it to a naim cd 5i or classe cdp-102. However, I also know that my amp could be more powerful as it is 100wpc into 4ohms, but only 50/75? wpc in to my 8ohm gallo 3.1's.

My question is.. with which change will i see a greater improvemt? In my currently living sitatuon, the mcintosh easily powers my speakers louder than i can play them for an extended amount of time, but will more power equate to more bass? I was thinking about the Classe cap-2100, but will this result in more bass, and better imaging/soundstage/etc, or simply the ability to play louder, which i dont really need.

As for the cd player, I have a hard time believing a cd player can make THAT big of a difference (I am new to this high end audio stuff), although I know they must because all I have read on here and other places around the internet. Although I have also read that a decent cdp used as a transport, and a dac such as the bel canto dac 2, sound nearly as good as some of the very good cd players out there.

So.. long story short.. would i see a bigger improvement if i keep the onkyo as my cdp, and upgrade the amp, or if i keep the mac 6450 and upgrade the cdp?

James
farjamed

Showing 2 responses by johnnyb53

johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
I see the interconnects as your first weak link. You should do some swapping and breaking in. Those IC's could be choking the sound before your McIntosh even gets ahold of the signal. Try some Kimber Heroes or something from Transparent that's about the same or a little higher quality level than your WaveLengths.

Next, is it just me, or are high priced CD players a wrong-headed approach to digital sound? So much of the cost of an expensive CD player goes into getting a jitterless read off the polycarbonate disc, which itself is prone to built-in jitter plus the jitter that results from reading from a spinning piece of plastic. Why not go for a playback system that minimizes or eliminates jitter from the equation?

Examples:

Get a Lavry or Benchmark DAC. I'm not sure about the Lavry, but the Benchmark does its own re-clocking, so any jitter in the initially read data stream should largely be irrelevant. With that in mind you could continue to use your Onkyo as a transport. Or get an Oppo DV-980H for a whopping $169.

Get a Macintosh laptop and use it as a server. I think iTunes 8.0 or later on a MacBook (playing lossless digital music files) sounds better than a lot of CD players.

If you go with a computer-based solution, you can also improve the sound with a USB-based DAC such as the Benchmark DAC-1 USB or something (far more expensive) from Wavelength.

Get one or two iPod Classics to use as servers. Using ALC you could fit about 250 GB (420 hours) of lossless music on each one. Get a Wadia iTransport to extract the digital data stream and send it to a good DAC.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
Do one thing at a time. Put the new ICs in and give them at least 50 hours to run in before evaluating again. Otherwise, if you do a bunch of changes simultaneously, you may just get a mish-mash that still lacks synergy.

Instead of buying another CD player, look into getting a good DAC--a Lavry A10, Benchmark DAC-1, etc. A couple days ago I got an email from Audio Advisor offering the PS Audio Digital Link III on sale at $699, but they haven't updated the web page to corroborate that yet.
More to discover