CD Transport & Dac/Cambridge AXC35

To some extent it depends on when the record or CD was produced. Starting in the late 1970’s record and CD producers discovered that “processing” could attract a larger audience. The processing resulted in easier listening in difficult environments, such as autos. As more and more aggressive processing was used, sales increased. While the processing increased enjoyment in difficult environments, home listeners in a good environment, using high quality equipment, were disappointed, claiming that the music sounds bland. A few companies began to release premium records and CD’s in formats that skipped or reduced this processing. Old records, produced prior to the aggressive processing technology was available often sound better than the current mass released versions. The same recording session can sound very different when produced by different companies for different markets in different timeframes. In some cases it is difficult to accept that they all started from the same studio session.

You’ll find that certain companies and groups consistently release better sounding music. You’ll need to learn which companies release higher quality. We are currently on a “Hi Res” kick where the session is supposedly released without the the typical mass market processing. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.. While a premium company will go back to a session tape and carefully process it for release, some less reputable companies simply release the mass market processed version as “Hi Res” and charge a premium price.

With respect to records vs digital media, there is characteristic noise and distortion with records. It’s part of the physics. It has been my observation that some listeners are very used to this and when it is absent in the digital release, there is a claim that the sound has been downgraded by the digital. In the dawn of digital for the consumer market, about 1980, relatively few engineers fully understood digital. As a result,  the equipment and digital music released at that time was second class at best. We are beyond that at this point, but there is still a group of high end types claiming that digital sounds bad.

In the end only you know what sounds “best” (to you).

It depends on what you want.

If you like the background noise that comes with vinyl, some unavoidable, some only avoidable at expensive prices, then you will be happiest with it.

If you like the background noise, different than vinyl, that comes from tape, cassette or reel, you'll miss it when it is gone.

If you like as little extraneous noise as possible, close to the studio master copy, digital is the best option. As long as you are using a lossless format there is no difference in sound quality. However the studio may release different mixes in different formats.

Personally I stick with optical or coaxial connections and don't add extra A/D conversions as they reduce quality.

I am just wondering if anyone has experience with a CD Player and a DAC, either one that is combines in a CD Player or if you use separates with a Transport and separate DAC. I have many CD’s from the 80’s and 90’s that I collected back then and hate how flat they sound compared to how our Vinyl sounds. I would be connecting it through the sonos AMP via an audio switch box.

So if you use a CD Player with a built in DAC or the separates does it make a difference playing over the sonos system?

 I used both vinyl, CD player and CD transport with a DAC.  For the last several years I have exclusively used file playback or streaming.  Much more convenient & Atmos kicks butt.

 One of the reasons vinyl can sound better than digital is vinyl only has a dynamic range of around 70 dB.  Red Book CD ( 16/44.1 ) has a dynamic range of around 96 dB.  Because vinyl has a 70 dB dynamic range you hear more of what makes a recording sound real.  You hear decay & the room better.  With digital CD at 96 dB some of that low level information will be buried under the noise floor of the listening room making the music sound “flat”.  Modern recordings have addressed that issue to a degree.

 I love classical orchestral music so vinyl is a no-go for me.  I’m not flipping the record over after the first two movements so I can hear the last two movements.  Feeling is gone at that point.

 I no longer have a CD transport & DAC.  If I did have those two devices I would not use them with Sonos speakers.  The transport I had was very expensive and the DAC was as well.  The rest of the system had to match the value of the transport-DAC combo or I was not going to hear the subtle increases in sound quality offered by a front end of that quality.  I got tired of looking for a particular CD so I ripped them all to hard drives and now the files reside in a NAS which is indexed by Sonos & also used in a server-renderer system that is more detailed than the Sonos system.

 I also use streaming services like Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited to stream Dolby Atmos music to the Sonos surround setup.  Orchestral music in Dolby Atmos from either Apple or Amazon sounds best played on the Sonos surround setup rather than in stereo on the more expensive two channel system.  On the other hand the stereo files in my NAS sound better on the higher end two channel system than they do on any Sonos speakers I have.  Of course I don’t have the Sonos Five pair to compare to the other two channel system.

For the “flat” sounding CD’s you are a victim of the processing applied as the master CD was created. There are two sides to the potential benefits of processing.  A recording, regardless of media, designed to sound great in a quiet home environment, can be unlistenable in an auto. Once the producers noticed that most of their listeners were playing in compromised environments, the benefits of processing were obvious, resulting in greatly increased sales. Purist type producers who abstained from processing were left in the dust. Only a few audiophiles bought unprocessed music.

i don’t recall the exact date, approximately 1980 (a guess), when processing boxes became available for radio stations. A box company would come to town and offer one music station a great deal on a box. Within days there was measurable shift in the audience — toward the station using the box. The competing stations were then begging to buy a box.

I am not against processing because it can be very beneficial when dealing with difficult playback environments. However, in my opinion the processing should be done at playback, not recording. There are a few issues with this. One is increased cost of the playback equipment, but with modern technology this cost would be unnoticeable. A second issue would be the audiophiles stomping on any unit that contains processing — claiming that the processing degrades the music. Finally, there would need to be a button on the player that could adjust the processing to suit the current environment. This would force the player to be thrown into the “complicated’ bin. In the current environment “complicated” doesn’t sell.

This contains a nice discussion of the studio decisions on recording quality and processing along with a bit of interesting reading.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-191393229

Let’s start with a basic principle of modern production. Depending on the target audience—especially if the goal is to reach as many listeners as possible—music is often “flattened” so that the difference between listening on basic headphones and on a sophisticated system is minimized. If the target is audiophiles, the recording, production, and mastering will emphasize a wide dynamic range—both the bass and the cymbals, so to speak. Of course, this assumes that the music itself lends itself to such treatment.