Good cd player and a great DAC or great cd player?

My husband and I are in a similar situation with the upgrade plan and limited cash flow.

We upgrading our source now. I had planned on getting a CD player, but I listed to a lot and only really liked the $3.5k Linn Ikemi. Instead, we are trying out a Bel Canto DAC 2 ($850 dealer demo) and building a PC based transport (my husband is a computer scientist, so this appeals to him). Parts are on their way, so I don't know the verdict yet.

Just a thought for you...

We had planned on buying an integrated amp until we discovered Outlaw Audio. We have their 950 pre-amp and 7 monoblocks. It cost us less than $3k and sounds a lot better that all the integrated amps we listed to in that price range. They only sell online (www.outlawaudio.com), and their prices are amazing for what you get.

Good luck!

Joy Elyse

Conscious,

We started off looking at receivers: the Marantz, the Onkyo, the Denon, and the Harmon Kardon...the high end of mass market stuff.

When we looked at separates, we looked at Adcom and Rotel...both of which are more expensive than the Outlaw Audio, but I didn't think sounded nearly as good. I read the reviews, and everyone said Outlaw was an amazing buy for the money. We wanted something with Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS, etc, and component switching that would still sound great with 2 channel audio. (The 950 has an analog bypass.) And with deal they were running, we were able to get the 7 monoblocks and biamp our tower speakers. We explored the idea of getting a used pre-amp, but still couldn't approach what we wanted in our price range.

What we didn't look at was the integrated amps from the high end companies. Audio Research makes an integrated amp for $3k, Linn makes a Linn Classik Movie System integrated DVD/CD/Tuner/Preamp/Processor/Power amp for $3k (which I can't believe can sound that good for the money, but I am a Linn fan), Musical Fidelity makes a few integrated amps, as does Moon, Krell makes a one for their KAV series. Actually, so does Outlaw Audio. There are a ton out there. I'm sure some of them might be better than the Outlaw, but I didn't do the comparisons. There are a ton on Audiogon for fairly cheap.

My Bel Canto should be arriving sometime early next week. I plan to compare it against the Linn Ikemi (borrowed), and also try the Ikemi as a transport to see how much of a difference it makes. I'll let you know how it sounds.

Bel Canto first thoughts: It arrived about 2 hours ago. I have it hooked up to JVC DVD player for initial impressions. (We'll begin all the transport switching later. I can't get to anything else. This I didn't need the husband for.) First impressions- I'm in the 10th row of the opera house with Puccini echoing around me; I didn't know that you could hear Tori Amos's piano key come back up; and let's dance. It's beautiful! It made me forget to eat. :)

I'm hoping to pick up the Ikemi tomorrow for the comparison. From memory, I may like the Ikemi a little more, but that might 1. not be true 2. be the more expensive amps (by far) at the dealers 3. be the $10,000 Wilson speakers at the dealers. As promised, I will compare the two and compare the Ikemi as transport vs. my Sony and my DVD player.

For what it's worth, I think that spending money on a source is the right thing to do. There are numerous examples of how a top quality source on a less than wonderful system sounds better than a crappy source on fabulous speakers. I listen to a lot of indie music. It's not going to go SACD or DVD Audio anytime soon, and even if I move to a new format at some point, I have 1000+ cd's...most of which I will not re-buy and will still want to listen to. A good CD player will part of my system for a long time to come. (BTW, there are about 4 album I own on vinyl, cassette and CD.)

OK, I can't resist sharing my updates as they come. We connected the sony carousel to the DAC2 using toslink and the DVD player using coax and used the switch on the unit to A/B (finally a use for the multiple copies of the cds we brought into this relationship). I switched while my husband listened and he switched while I listened. Multiple albums, multiple songs, no idea which transport was which and…we couldn’t tell the difference. At first I thought I heard something, but when I tried to repeat it, it was gone. Shocked me. Neither is a particularly high quality transport. I will let you know if the Ikemi makes a difference.

Bel Canto DAC2 vs. Ikemi
First we set off to decide which we preferred, the Ikemi or the Bel Canto DAC2. We started with Tori Amos’s “Under the Pick.” Our first thought was the Bel Canto kicks the Ikemi’s a**. Then we sat down for some serious listening. We used Diana Krall’s “Love Scenes,” Shawn Colvin’s “A Few Small Repairs” and a Puccini opera. We thought the Bel Canto was deeper, more transparent, and far more detailed. There was more air. The Ikemi was more intimate and smoother. With the Ikemi, it sounds like Diana Krall is playing in your living room, with the Bel Canto in a small club. Where the Bel Canto really stood out was in creating a sense of space. The cymbals rang out longer, the music echoed as if in a large space. The Ikemi was much flatter. If you haven’t figured it out already, we’re keeping the Bel Canto. At a third of the price, it’s an amazing deal.

Transport
The short of it is, the transport matters. We may not have been able to tell the difference between the DVD player and the carousel, but we had no problem telling the Ikemi from the DVD player. We used Tori Amos’s “Under the Pick” and Indigo Girls self titled album (two copies of each). Within just 2 or 3 A/B’s with each, the difference was easily apparent. The Ikemi was more full bodied and detailed. I was hoping it wouldn’t be the case. Now I have to shop for a transport. Any suggestions? We can’t afford the Ikemi for a transport. :)

Thanks for your thoughts.

The Ikemi is a dealer demo, which I have been assured is well broken in. And we used a sound level meter to make sure the volume was almost identical. I'd say it was a fair test.

As for the not being able to tell the differences between the DVD player and the CD player when used as a transport, as I understand it, what that says it that the clock slew on both was very similar. It seems obvious that the Ikemi did a far superior job of sending the clock information to the DAC. Otherwise, digital data is digital data. As I have been assured by a number of engineers, the difference between transports is mainly their mechanical engineering of the clock (a very difficult feat that accounts for a vast difference between transports). “Jitter” as described by most audiophiles is a slightly different concept in engineering.

I just thought I'd post my "final" system. I decided to go with the new Denon 5900 universal player as my transport. I just brought it home yesterday, and I am in love.

At a trusted adviser urging I tried the Sony DVD99ES first, and was totally unimpressed. The ways in which the 5900 is better the the 999 are innumerable. As a transport, the 999 was better than my a carousel, but the difference was subtle. As a DVD player, it was totally unremarkable. It has the chroma bug, and the picture is not what it should be for a flagship. I found SACD almost unlistenable.

Now the 5900: Audiowise, I'm a convert to SACD. I had never understood the fuss before. The Bel Canto DAC2 is wonderful, but it's not SACD. I think the differences are well documented, so I won't reiterate them here. The 5900 also makes a great transport. On a A/B test, it was immediately obvious how much better the Denon sounded than my Sony carousel. My DAC2 still sounds significantly better than the unit's internal DAC, but that is to be expected. I listened to every CD player in the Boston area under $6k before deciding on the DAC2. Memory is a funny thing, but I think the 5900 may even make a better transport than the Linn Ikemi, but I no longer have the Linn here to compare. We don't even plan to mod the unit and get the Superclock 2, because we are happy just as it is. We're afraid to screw it up.

And the picture, it's amazing. I've never seen anything like it. And for those of us who don't have HDTV's yet, the interlaced picture is superb.

No doubt the unit is pricey, going between $1600 and $2000, but I spent a total of $2550 for the Bel Canto and the Denon (both new), which is still $1000 less than a new Ikemi would have cost me, and I have a great DVD player too.

It took a lot of research and dealer trips, but I am now thrilled with my system exactly as it.

Joy Elyse