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I need help - Better DAC or NEW CD player?

I am in the middle of purchasing some components for my new system, unfortunately, reading posts on a rainy night on Audigon only makes my "upgradeatitis" syndrom more acute.

The problem is that some time ago, I bought a squeezebox Duet, to use as transport for lossless files. The idea obviously was to get a good DAC to go along with it.

The one I was almost set on was the Dacmagic, which gets very good reviews here and almost everywhere you look. But, on the other hand, I am willing to spend a little more......Now, the thing is my current CD player is a Rotel RCD 1072, and was wondering whether this Dacmagic would give me any improvements if I use the rotel as a transport for it.

Or, I could get for example a Wyred DAC or a Benchmark DAC1 and use the Rotel for transport, but I dont know the limits of the Rotel as transport alone, I dont want to spend 600 more bucks on a better DAC to be fed with 2 "not so good" transports (the Duet and the Rotel).

So I am kinda stuck!! On the other hand I am contemplating getting the Dacmagic to use only for the Duet, and getting a new better CD player altogether, which puts me into another doubt, I dont know if the little money I can for the rotel + lets say 1000 more will really give me any improvements in the system if I purchase a whole new CD player since the Rotel is said to be very capable.

FWIW my amp will be a W4S STI500 and speakers are B&W 803D.

Let me know what you think about this and your suggestions on what you would do.... thanks in advance for all your help!
demianm

Showing 1 response by almarg

almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
Kijanki and 4est,

The Benchmark DAC and the Wavelength/Ayre DACs are both asynchronous, and neither is "adaptive." Meaning that in both cases the d/a conversion process is accomplished with a clock that is independent of the computer's clock and that is not periodically "adapted" or re-synchronized to the computer's clock.

However the techniques used in the Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter (Benchmark) approach involve some very small degree of interpolation as part of the jitter elimination process, as mentioned on the first page of the datasheet Kijanki linked to, while the Asynchronous USB (Ayre/Wavelength) approach does not.

Charles Hansen's well-written white paper on the Ayre DAC addresses this further and provides some good additional background.

Under what circumstances and to what degree that interpolation may be audibly significant, I have no idea.

Best regards,
-- Al
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