Digital or analog out?

[@cdavidhord]

After two years of watching, Paul has reeled me in. I just ordered the Stellar Gain Cell and two M700s.

[@LuxAudio389]

We're you the one calling to order it during the video ?😂

[@stevebailey31]

Way to go Charles, I have the Gain Cell, and the M700's as well, than this past Christmas I added the BHK preamp, be careful Charles ,because once you have been bit by the audio bug , there is no turning back,

[@cdavidhord]

@@stevebailey31 I've been warned-Thanks!

[@Paulmcgowanpsaudio]

Awesome. Let us know how you like them!

[@ThinkingBetter]

Awesome, good choice.

[@mrpmj00]

I love my r2r dacs (Denafrips Ares II 12th and upgraded to Denafrips Pontus Ii 12th-1) with ddc Denafrips Iris 12th. Apple Music

[@matthewgaines10]

If I have such a question, instead of asking someone else's opinion about it, I would've tried it both ways to see If I could hear a qualitative difference and decide for myself.

[@jesusgavemeaids]

Ah, Morgantown WV. Used to live down the road from there. Live in southern WV. Beautiful place.

[@carlhilton4747]

You have to audition the equipment both ways and see which connection you like better. I've had cd players that I've used as a transport hooked to a dac, and I've had cd players where the internal dac sounded so good that I didn't bother. I'm currently running an Onkyo single drawer cd player and a Toshiba cd/DVD player, both of which are running analog, through Monster cables.

[@JioFreedOfOphan]

SPDIF is underrated, I think. It doesn't require drivers to use when I use a PC and output audio to my DAC vs using USB. I use the SPDIF out on my SACD player and my Xbox to my DAC as well. Either my DAC does all the magic or there really is something great about using SPDIF when it's available. The difference in dynamics is usually night and day.

[@musicman8270]

The SPDIF a disc player will not pass DSD, the DSD is converted to PCM first.. analog or HDMI is the only way to pass SACD signals.

[@andydelle4509]

What exactly is being "squeezed down" using SPDIF or AES interfaces? The data being transmitted is exactly the same. The only thing being done is the clock is embedded into the data stream. While this can induce clock jitter it does not in any way restrict or limit the audio data. And the clock jitter is easily corrected to the point if being inaudible. External I2S interfaces have their own problems too. First they are not standard. There is no official connector or electrical format to send these signals outside of boxes. Some use HDMI, some use RJ45, some use RS422, some use LVDS. So you are limited to using the same vendors products. Second at longer cable lengths we can have timing skew between the data and clocks. Unless this is compensated for you can have timing issues. And most I2S enabled audio chips do not have any timing correction. They don't expect to see any skew because I2S was never intended to go outside a product and down long cables.

[@kusgilb]

Thank you for pointing out the misconceptions presented in this video.

[@billwillard9410]

The DAC in the Gain Cell has been described as pretty good, so if you have one and bypass the DAC in your inexpensive CD player, you’ll probably get a better sound.

[@ilovecops6255]

The phone premap uses the RIAA equalization curve. Digital needss converters in the time domane. There is a huge diffrenmce.

[@ilovecops6255]

Hello mine frfends! PLese google 'time domain audio compression' ans follwo the links! WHat university did you get you electrical engineering degree from. Did you take the couse on digital logics or do you prefer op amps for an analog computers. THANKES YOUES! YOUYARE MINE NEWS FREMDS BTS i AM NOTa drunks I am diableds since 1960. thankes youes!

[@shuckylad]

Don’t worry about the connection and just enjoy the music. Seriously, you might (hear) a slight gain in quality connecting to an external dac but in all real world situations you won’t care once your used to the CD players output. DACs and hifi is a rabbit hole that’s not worth your sanity or money.

[@shuckylad]

Fat Rat I understand that, tho the finding and having access to a dac that is so much better than what you have in your CD player to test in your own set up is hard to do. I’m just speaking from experience.

[@shuckylad]

Fat Rat well said.

[@cnccnc1738]

This episode is just like for an order to my situation. 2 days ago I bought used musical fidelity V-dac one. I bought it for chromecast audio streamer. It's change sound drastically for good direction. But today morning i decide to connect my Marantz CD ( with TDA 1541 DAC build inside). I bypass this DAC by coaxial RCA cable to my new V- DAC with BURR BROWN components. I thought it will change something. It wasn't change anything. 40 years old Marantz CD has so beautifully sounding DAC. Bottom line. Buy old Marantz CD with TDA 1541 DAC inside if u need good sounding cd player. U don't need external DAC. If u are using chromecast audio 4 ex. Please add good external DAC. U will be shocked how it change the sound.

[@paulroth6783]

It's all about what has the better DAC, the CD player or the amplifier or receiver you're putting it through. Of course if you have an external DAC you love the sound of, put it through that... You can do a test all 3 ways (or 2 ways if you don't own an external DAC) and see what produces the most pleasing sound...

[@johnbartel5229]

Hi Paul, since it is possible, as you said, to put a decent DAC in a CD player and make it a little more expensive, it sounds like more of a marketing scheme to get the consumer to spend more on two separate units as well as an expensive digital cable. And yes, I use my CD player as a transport and have a separate external DAC via a $500 Transparent Brand digital cable. Just saying....

[@PrezidentHughes]

In my situation I was planning to use my TV's DAC connecting to a bookshelf 2.1 set up (in lieu of a soundbar) instead of optical as optical sometimes has syncing and other issues etc, plus I would be able to use my TV's volume control directly and the built in virtual surround DSP (instead of paying again for a 2.1 soundbar to do the same thing with their impossible "Atmos" effects), both of which wouldn't be possible using optical.

[@ThinkingBetter]

CD players run with their own clock and an external DAC has another clock. This means your data coming in is out of synch with your DAC running the conversion. To align the clocks, an external DAC has to sort of guess the clock of the CD player. With an internal DAC in the CD player you avoid this problem as everything is in complete synch. Better is to get rid of the CD player and use a DAC that pulls the data from a solid state storage or stream such that it runs the clock of the data in full control.

[@thorstenamesoder4803]

My internal wolfson DAC runs perfect. :)

[@Peter_S_]

Caveat to the above: If you deliver the individual clocks from the CD player to the DAC without having to go though intermediary encoding and decoding with subsequent clock recovery, you gain the benefit of total synchronization as well as the benefits coming from an audiophile DAC implementation. I placed a digital tap in my Sony CDP-101 player to enable this functionality and make it more of just a transport.

[@ThinkingBetter]

Thorsten Amesöder Internal DACs in CDs are architecturally the right way due to synchronized single clock data flow control and only issue is when the engineers go cheap on the IC.

[@afrancois1968]

And you think that when a DAC pulls data from the external drive there isn’t another clock involved than the master DAC clock? Sorry but there is. Everything digital works entirely on clocks and flip flops. And let’s not forget that external drives are noisy. A good CD player with digital out will be far less noisy.

[@ThinkingBetter]

Alain François The best architecture is one where a single clock directly clocking the PCM data in the DAC is what determines the flow of data without any other clock pushing data from the source side. This means a data pull architecture. A CD player can work as clock master pushing data to the DAC if using I2S but the issue then is that the DAC is likely using PDM at a much higher frequency and thus needs a higher frequency to run at anyway causing the need for a separate out of synch clock. Of course you have oscillators in many places throughout a digital audio path involving music but it doesn’t matter for any jitter issue if the system is pulling the data. For example, there is no jitter introduced from the crystal oscillator in your WiFi router when an audio streaming player runs a media session over your WiFi router because it’s entirely based on a pulling data approach. A good DAC will include sufficient smart data buffering and some way of eliminating audible jitter without impacting the DACs own output clock.

[@samue1991]

Curiously my sony 400 cd changer has a very good internal dac and I get better sound using RCA out. It's pretty mindblowing how good the sound is

[@georgealvarez8967]

Hello Paul, love your content. Not sure you addressed the heart of the question. I like my CD players on board DAC, so RCA or digital ? You hinted at hdmi as preferred, perhaps the phone call thru you off. Thanks again.

[@Peter_S_]

If you are using the onboard DAC built into the player, your output will be either analog voltage over RCA or analog voltage over XLR depending on your gear. If you are using an external DAC, that's the only time you would use a digital output, either S/PDIF over RCA cables or optical Toslink connections, both of which run digitally. The "issue" with S/PDIF is that the bit clock, word clock, and data stream are all mixed and encoded into a single stream for transmission over a single wire or optical connection. Decoding and reconstructing the mixture can result in degradation of the original components' signal integrity. Using an HDMI cable to deliver these individual signals in parallel without having to encode and mix them together results in maximum delivered signal integrity at the DAC and best possible conversion by the DAC. A poor signal can easily compromise an otherwise excellent DAC, so going HDMI cable for a physical data transport insures you won't experience one.

[@sansocie]

@@Peter_S_ thank you. Great post.

[@knobbshots]

I thought the same, huh?. Was also confused if you go out to an external DAC, hasn't the sound/data already gone through your internal DAC?

[@Peter_S_]

@@knobbshots picture the connections as the sound going out to the external DAC in lieu of going to the internal DAC. In reality if your player has both digital and analog outputs, the sound is coming from the transport as a digital I2S signal and then going to both the DAC chip and S/PDIF encoder chip in parallel after which each signal connects to the rear panel jacks through their individual duffer/driver stages. Both are probably always active and one just lies fallow.

[@andreassouth1523]

@@Peter_S_ But cd players do not have hdmi output?

[@FileFixer007]

Mediatek MT1389 SoC is perfect example with great integrated DAC in cheap equipment.

[@spacemissing]

I was dubious about audible differences between CD players until my Pioneer CLD-D702 (LaserDisc player) proved to sound better playing CDs than my Sony CDP-C70 did. I then started using the LD player for copying CDs to cassettes (this was a Long time ago). The best way I can describe what I heard is that the LD player sounded more "linear" and provided better high frequency response.

[@paulmetdebbie447]

Good video. I would organize the cables on the floor differently.

[@PaulGreeve]

You should have answered that - it was probably very important - 😀

[@rogerturner1881]

Is Coaxial better than RCA? from my cd player[Technics PG 4]. to amplifier.

[@LuxAudio389]

Thanks for breaking this down! I've always wondered what to do with 1 dedicated cd player Sony xa5400ES cd and I also have an Oppo UDP205. Now I just have to find a great DAC and there are too many to choose from🙁

[@MrRoberacer]

Interesting. So in consumer audio there is no real uncompressed (digital compression that is) signal transport between devices. Of course this begs the question is "AES3" an uncompressed format as it was the pro audio version of S/PDIF? It talks about it being a platform to be able to stream PCM audio directly which of course infers that it is untouched or rather uncompressed data.

[@Peter_S_]

The low-level protocol for data transmission in AES3 and S/PDIF is largely identical. Both are indeed composed of raw PCM data with no data compression.

[@MrRoberacer]

@@Peter_S_ Hmm. So if it is taking the exact data off of a compact disk and transmitting it to another device without actually altering it barring what the DAC's do how could the sound in fact change?

[@Peter_S_]

@@MrRoberacer Excellent question and it comes down to the signal integrity which ultimately determines the jitter at the DAC chip and the stability of the clock which has all kinds of propeller-head implications. The DAC chip gets its data as an I2S interface which has a data stream, bit clock, and word clock. These are mixed to transmit over single optical fibers or RCA cables and at the receiving end the three signals are reconstructed. The data stream and word clock are relatively trivial to send across but the bit clock is a very high precision signal and best not mixed with anything else. The mixed signals are variable enough that the bit clock needs to be reconstructed at the receiver by a local precision oscillator (sometimes only precision-ish) which is influenced by the received bit clock information. The receiver's oscillator will always have some amount of mismatch and some receiver designs will continuously adjust to track the data from the transport but not all devices deal with these mismatches with grace and jitter is awful stuff for digital audio. There are also other asynchronous designs that work via stretching or dropping bits strategically which do a better job but which receiver chips use which techniques, I couldn't tell you. By using an HDMI cable to send the data in parallel without mixing it, the bit clock from the transport can be simply used the way it is in a regular CD's internal DAC without having to reconstruct it and now your sound quality matches the best that the transport can provide from its clock.

[@MrRoberacer]

@@Peter_S_ Hmm. Thank you. That makes much more sense now and illuminates an important issue in other areas of audio.

[@Peter_S_]

​@@MrRoberacer You're welcome, Sir. I don't accept the word of the marketing folks until I have a scientific explanation as to why things are. Some of these topics are simply too complex to express in a marketing blurb so for the purpose of sales, we are presented with simplified views and these often lack the context with which to understand what's genuinely happening. Quite often, the simplified views present something that seems in conflict with what we know from more complex understandings. Added to this is the reality that every chip designer has "solved" these issues to varying degrees and in varying ways so it's impossible to make a great many blanket statements. While some solutions approach perfection, most are "good enough" to meet their specifications and price point. As consumers we have been presented with S/PDIF as an easy way interconnect things but as audiophiles, we're focused on the highest quality achievable and convenience is undesirable should it compromise the sound in even the slightest way. In electronics lab environments, it's quite common to have a seperate master clock (often a rubidium oscillator atomic clock) which is distributed to every piece of gear so that everything is perfectly synchronized by design; it's too bad that digital audio didn't evolve with a similar architecture but using HDMI cables gets us as close to that as we really need to be.

[@georgeshaffer4686]

Thanks Paul!

[@ilikevideos3099]

Should have answered the phone at 2:12 would have made a great letterman bit !

[@sudd3660]

ps audio.com in disc players said: No products were found matching your selection..... so no cd players?

[@billwillard9410]

sudd Nope, you have to go used for now. They’ve had issues with putting a cheesy transport in their past multi-thousand dollar players, so maybe the next model will be better.

[@billwillard9410]

Fat Rat I saw that they bought a bunch of ESOTERIC disc drives from a post in 2018, if I’m reading it right. People have been replacing their faulty transports with ASUS drives. Still why is Paul even mentioning them as something they make when they’re not, right now?

[@LuxAudio389]

Their transpirt/ drives used to be made by Oppo. When Oppo pulled the plug on their UHD/Blueray players, PS Audio was sadly left without a quality supplier, so they discontinued their cd transport units.

[@ilovecops6255]

Digital output is not a good things because it needs a preamp. A record player needs a AIAA preamp but it uses the RIAA equaklizer curve. Its the same thing but onew uses lasers and the other uses Pusel Code Mudulation, PCM or Firewite!

[@ilovecops6255]

Fat RatL JCM 900 has clipping diode in it. Why did you say Julius Futterman does not need a output transformer. It imdence from complex power. The use capacitor for the power factor and coordination study during a ground fault? IEEE 802.3 is not Ethernet. Please be carefule when you post things. Ethernet is analog signals over copper wire, it is not digital pulses. What university did you flunk out from? thanks you THUMBBSS UPS!

[@ilovecops6255]

Hello Mister Rats! plese google 'julius futterman no output transformer'. and floow th elkinkes. he made an amp with no poututs transfromers. Thakes youes you are a news frends! THUMS UPS!

[@musicman8270]

I just ordered a transport, only way to go, that way it never becomes obsolete, and you're right, CD player DACS cost what, fifty cents?

[@hxhdfjifzirstc894]

If you can't hear the difference, do you really need to ask the question?

[@Gabriel-of-YouTube]

You would be surprised to find out the things audiophiles think they can hear...

[@poserwannabe1]

@@Gabriel-of-KZbin ^^he gets it^^

[@Merlin-wo1kj]

I've never found a CD/SACD player (even Japanese reference models) that exceed the open full sound as even a modest 1500-2000 stand alone DAC.

[@hushpuppykl]

Merlin ... not even the Marantz SA10?

[@wa2368]

What's with the lousy cds still fellas? Can't you old toads wisen up a bit and run your flac files from a flash drive these days?

[@theovonskeletor3709]

2 stacks is modest lol

[@Merlin-wo1kj]

@@hushpuppykl I didn't find the SA10 to exceed the Benchmark DAC

[@Merlin-wo1kj]

@behexen250 Really, Japan has the most dominant CD,SACD market in the world right now...Marantz, Luxman, even some of the Denon, Sony are pretty hard to beat..

[@markgrunzweig6377]

Paul strikes me as one of the few, deep "specialists" that can can see the "tree", whilst being "lost" in a wonderful, concious way amongst the leaves? Like the mystic who is swiming blissfully in the sea of "mystery" (Myth) as opposed to those who have "cracked up", and gone inside like the fearful, afraid of everything outside (really inside). Those who demand a "debate" or just get angered & insist on a certain technical ideology, are just turining their inate fears into outer agression. They are called Bullies (really cowards at heart). Maybe if I smoked allot hash in the Army as he did, i'd be as melllow, but I need to practise mindfulness, instead. lol.

[@DrPhanster]

I love these videos, but I always wonder if Paul is stoned when he makes these. :)

[@jasonpaulwilson76]

Well now I know what the dad from different strokes is up to now. :)

[@rabit818]

Nice view.

[@barbecuetechtips6024]

I can't believe Paul woundn't pick up my phone call! :( Has Paul not heard of OPPO, SAMSUNG, Marantz, Pioneer flagship transport offerings? You get what you pay for!

[@QoraxAudio]

I have a Marantz and its laser is constantly clicking, sounding like a direction indicator light on the dashboard of a car. lol

[@QoraxAudio]

@Fat Rat Nah I've ordered a new laser assembly for it. Arrives within two weeks and should make the thing dead quiet again for the upcoming 15 years.

[@QoraxAudio]

@Fat Rat Jup a fresh laser assembly or laser mechanism is the solution most of the time. Lasers slowly rot away/deteriorate, just like cds themselves are subject to discrot.

[@rockman22]

Well at some point you have to use an analog output or you aint gonna hear shit.

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

The last time you talked about transports you said you weren't doing transports because your source for drives went away.

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

@Fat Rat Gosh FR it's almost like we know each other IRL but don't put the two and two together here. What quadrant of the planet do you frequent?

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

@Fat Rat OK, I am pretty much in the direction of your feet in The People's Republik of Kalifornia so I guess we don't know each other. I had forgotten about the PS Audio ad. Funny AF.

[@koreanwater]

That was me that was calling....

[@hifix-man319]

seriously that phone ring just really got on my nerves

[@QoraxAudio]

Basic answer: Use the best DAC Either the DAC in your CD player, external DAC or DAC in your integrated amp. Use the best DAC available in your system.

[@QoraxAudio]

More complex answer: It depends on what topology you prefer based on clock synchronization. The DAC synchronized with the CD transport where the DAC works as master is often considered best.

[@finscreenname]

Why do you all call things like this a "CD Transport"? It literally says on the front of my CD player, Sony Super Audio CD Player. Is a "transport" just a empty box with a laser and a way to spin the disc? I just watched a video on Nelson Pass and his Ion Cloud speakers. I think he hit audiophiles perfectly. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o6SoYmeZjLmqgas

[@Peter_S_]

Sort of yes, but the box isn't missing very much that you'll find in a typical CD player. The raw digital data from the laser still needs processing to decode the cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon coded data stream and perform the error detection and correction functions resulting in a bit clock, a word clock, and a data stream for a DAC. Another way to look at it is that a transport includes everything in a CD player except the all important DAC, analog power supplies, and analog output buffer for that DAC while those parts have been replaced by digital line drivers and in most models encoders for the digital output. In the end the amount of hardware is about the same. Another distinction is that in a device designed to deliver digital information rather than analog, special attention is paid to parameters like clock jitter and they'll put extra care into making sure the digital information is presented in the best possible form to the DAC. Can you have transport with a built-in utility DAC? Certainly, that could be a CD player as well.

[@finscreenname]

@@Peter_S_ So the goal is to take a DAT out of the CD player and replace it with an external DAT. Wouldn't a CD Player Maker put the DAT in the CD player that would work best with said CD player? In example, I really cant see someone making a quality Player and then says let's put that POS DAT in there to F_ it up in the very end. Not saying they would put their best in a average Player but at least as good as the rest of the stuff inside the player. Why waste money of good parts just for a crappy DAT? So if the rest of the stuff is only as good as the internal DAT then what is the point of a better external DAT? As for the "transports" … just sounds like another way of getting more money out of you while giving you less. The audiophile way imho. My CD player is about the only digital I listen to and I would rather listen to local FM radio then stream. Streaming to me is what you hear in the background at a store in a mall. Don't get me wrong, I was doing it by hot wiring my PC to my stereo back in the late 90's early 2000's just to listen to radio stations from where we used to live. Today I have a Fios feed and I'm sure most of you are "pulling down playlists from the cloud" and such like my kids do but I have let most of that just slide by. Just not into it for some reason. Guess I just getting old and there is none of DAT in my future.

[@Peter_S_]

​Very good questions, fin screenname. I'll try to make this ramble easier to follow with some hyphens... - As audiophiles, we generally like to achieve the best possible performance of every system component to result in the best sound. - The transport/DAC interface provides a perfect point of demarcation between subsystems and the reality is that all parts in a design have a cost. If you engineer a transport which is the best it can be and place all of the investment there without implementing the DAC, you have a best possible component for use in a larger overall system. - The DAC subsystem is composed of the DAC chip itself, the output buffer to drive the cable going to the amp, and a low noise analog power supply so it's not inconsequential by any means and it has a very real cost. Not including those pieces means that you still have to spend budget on the parts to transport the digital information, but a very good digital data transport costs less than an audiophile DAC chip and related support parts so you can instead invest more budget in the transport design and its decoder logic. - That allows for potentially providing better error response from a more complex and expensive decoder, as well as better mechanical parts used in the transport but on top of that, - separating the digital intensive processing and electrically noisy motor environment of the transport from the dead quiet analog world of the DAC chip and isolating them in different chassis with totally different power supplies allows the DAC to perform better with lower noise and who doesn't appreciate lower noise? Chips appreciate it too. - Once the data has been read, error corrected, decoded, and readied for the DAC, it becomes the universal I2S data format and this format is the same regardless of whether you're using using a cheap consumer DAC chip from a company like Wolfson, an audiophile level DAC chip form a company like ESS, or you're going all out and using an FPGA as PS Audio does in their highest end offerings. There's probably an order of magnitude cost differential between implementing each of those three. So.... - It's not that a company would use a "crappy" DAC, but rather that they would choose a DAC which is "good enough" to address the needs of their customers and for the price point of the player. "Good" comes from a number of perspectives and the transport has all kinds of mechanical aspects that the DAC does not. If you include the best possible everything, your products will cost $$$$$$ and you won't be in business long. As audiophiles we generally know that there are better potentials available than giant makers deliver so we have the benefit of comparatively smaller companies like PS Audio who will address these functions as separate sub-components and offer the ones they do in a best possible implementation. - Also consider that while the transport can be "perfect enough", the DAC is open to new territory and its performance can be upgraded as new techniques become available. - Again, not paying for an audiophile DAC in a transport doesn't mean you're getting any less for your money. Quite on the contrary it usually means that you're getting better engineering and components in what you are getting. It also means you get products from makers who are able to apply their unique talents to each subsystem. Integrateds are almost always a compromise, and sometimes they're multiple compromises. - The audiophile world encompasses a wide range of players, some of whom play to excess but at the same time there are good and decent players with some exceptionally high quality offerings delivering excellent price/performance ratios. From all that I've seen in the industry I'm very impressed with every aspect of the PS Audio gear I've looked at and listened to. - On streaming... You can't make such a blanket statement. If you stream CD quality data, you'll result in the same stream you get from a CD. I can certainly understand being dissatisfied with your computer's DAC and finding it useful only for background music. I don't go after anybody's playlist unless I find it by looking for something specific which it includes and I don't use any streaming service beyond KZbin, radio.garden for broadcast radio, and individual college stations via their websites. KZbin is an amazing resource for finding new things but once I've found them I like to have the CD for my own listening if its available. Much of the time its not.

[@KarlHamilton]

Shudda answered it and made them famous haha :)

[@progressiveguy9959]

ANSWER THE PHONE! lol