[pilotbiffster]

This may seem like a naive question, but is there a difference between sound quality of different CD players if they are both feeding the receiver with a digital (either coaxial or toslink) input. I have an Sony CD player, and a Philips 963SA DVD/SACD; I'm feeding my Denon Receiver with the digital output of each player, and it sure seems like the Philips sounds better (comparison is based on not upconverting the CD to 96Hz on the Philips). I would intuit that they should sound identical if they're both feeding "ones and zeros" to the receiver. The Denon's D/A convertor is doing the work for both players, so one would think they'd sound identical.


Anyone??

 

[Artisn]

There is no noticible difference in sound quality between digital coax and optical, regardless of the application. Use whatever is easiest and most available. One thing to consider would be to not use up all your connections. So if you have the choice, use one of each and leave the other one available in case you get another component that requires that audio input.


Good luck with this and welcome to the fourm.

 

[pilotbiffster]

I don't think I was very clear on my initial post; the issue I was asking about wasn't whether toslink or digital coaxial is better, but rather if (and why) one player inputting digital could sound better than a different manufacturer's player inputting digital. Sorry for any confusion.

 

[bpape]

If one will do upsampling and the other won't, yes.


The other difference that some poo-poo is jitter. Different players output 1's and 0's but how consistent is the clock, etc.

 

[JorgeLopez11]

IMO there are some factors that can have an influence on signals passed digitally from a player to a receiver/pre-pro, for instance:


a) Quality of the CD player's transport

b) Isolation of critical components inside the player.

c) Sampling technology used in the player. 8X oversamplig is great, but upsamplig techniques used in high end equipment are even better.

d) To some extent, conections may be also important. Jitter might be an issue as bpape already mentioned in his post.


I've tested my DVD 2900 against the 2200. To my ears, the 2900 sounds much better when playing CDs. I think the main difference is that the 2900 is robust and have a much better transport.


Just my 2 cents