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DA to pimp up a Linn Akurate CD-player

The Linn Akurate is a CD-SACD-DVD-Audio-Player, and I have use it not only to listen to CD and and SACD, but burn my few downloads from HD Tracks to DVD-Audio, as I am not yet willing to bother with changing my system. I also have a TW Akustik Raven two with a Graham Phantom and an Ortofon Vienna and listen a lot to vinyl, too.

The Linn is very good, but I wonder if I could get even better sound by using an external DAC with its digital output feeding my McIntosh C200 preamp.
One try with a CEC DA 1N DAC, however, did not bring the desired improvement: I could not hear any meaningful difference between the Linn and the CEC.
So my question is whether anybody has gone that road, and if so, what DAC brought an improvement over the usual CD-sound from the Akurate.
Regards
Florian Hassel
hassel
1 response Add your response
dhl93449
455 posts
 
I am a bit confused. Why would you use a DAC to feed "digital" to your MAC preamp?

Are you suggesting feeding the digital from the Linn to an external DAC, and the analog from the DAC to the MAC pre-amp?

Are you assuming an external DAC would sound better than the DAC inside the Linn?

I did something similar but I wanted a class A analog output stage from the CD player and I had to go to an external DAC to get it (the CD player used IC opamp output stages vs discrete transistor class A).

I suspect the "cd" sound you refer to is more than just the DAC output stages, but may be influenced by the transport and PCM sections as well.
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