Do I need a DAC for my Marantz SA14

I love my Marantz SA-14!

I bought it to replace my older Krell/EAD combo CD source and be able to also play SACD's.

Since I placed it on the Nueance platform, it is the best CD playback unit that I have heard, at any price. I would buy the platform for under $200, and forget the external DAC.

You can contact the company at:
greaterranges@msn.com

Richard

The Musical Fidelity A3 24 is very marginally better, and personally I liked the MF better overall compared to the Bel Canto, Chord and MSB dacs, fwiw. I sold the MF dac when I bought the Marants SA-14 as I felt I needed 100 more cd/sacds more then I needed a minor, though apparent, improvement in redbook playback (I can give specifics if you like). If you have the loot for a top notch dac, sure, you can surpass the redbook of the Marantz. The SA-14 makes for a great transport as well.

However, before adding a dac I'd spend time with isolation devices, power cables and interconnects. This is a very tweaky player, especially in terms of isolation, which will change it's character dramatically, more so then the addition of any of the above mentioned dacs ever would.

Not necessarily upsampling, but you can improve on the SA-14 redbook. Yesterday I hooked up my headphone amp, which is normally connected to my Marantz SA-14, to my EMC-1 and the difference was dramatic. The EMC-1 was far better. You might check into the EDC-1 DAC which does in fact upsample.

Not neccessarily upsampling.
Upsampling only complicates the overall proccessing and increases the digital noise indeed. A good quality DAC may do the trick but you can get quite good one-box player for the descent price such as Cambridge D500SE demo used or new either one won't break a bank.