this has a déjà-vu (or déjà-lu) feel....

 

I'm not sure I follow you, here...

 

digital co-ax and optical cable are for transporting digital... unless your amp will be doing the D to A conversion (instead of of your Cd deck), they're no use to you... or am i missing something??

 

the only digital coax and optical (i have both) I use is between my Cd deck and my hi-fi CD graver/burner, for best engraving result.

 

Whether you use the DAC on your CD player and make an analogue connection to the receiver or make a digital connection to the DAC on your Receiver is purely a matter of personal preference to what they sound like. Now-a-days all Sigma-Delta DAC chips sound the same because they essentially are the same, it's the quality of audio filtering/amplifying electronics after the digital conversion that you are listening to, and that is entirely subjective.

 

Dean wrote: stonebeard wrote: Analog, obviously. I removed the passenger seat from my car and installed a Denon DP-A100 player with a Yamaha AS2000 stereo. I'm running Monster wire connections and have a surge protector rigged through 4 cigarette lighters in my car. Needless to say, I had to upgrade the car's battery, but that was only $350 more. I had to tear apart the whole passenger quarter of the car to add the proper acoustic treatment to keep the whole thing from vibrating, which Auralex did for only $3,000. Naturally my Saturn's sound system is sh*t, so I have a pair of Sony R10s that I wear at all times while driving. Really, anything less and you might as well pack it in. Why use 4 cigarette lighters? It's just as easy & a lot neater to run 12 gauge wire (+ve and earth) directly from the battery (following the existing wiring loom through the bulkheads where necessary) and put your surge protection, power switch and reservoir caps in the cab close to your 110v inverter - of course you could use a portable Honda generator in the boot (trunk?) but that would require extra sound-proofing. Also, I hope you upgraded your alternator as well as the battery, otherwise you have to recharge the battery every night to keep it topped-up. Following Oliver's advice on vibration I also suggest filling your shock absorbers with concrete, and perhaps your tyres too.

 

 

Dean wrote: Whether you use co-ax or optical to carry the digital data stream it makes no difference to the sound at all (ever) - in theory the optical TOSLINK connectors are more reliable than the RCA connectors used on the co-ax cable, but in practice I've not know that to cause any problems.   Whether you use the DAC on your CD player and make an analogue connection to the receiver or make a digital connection to the DAC on your Receiver is purely a matter of personal preference to what they sound like. Now-a-days all Sigma-Delta DAC chips sound the same because they essentially are the same, it's the quality of audio filtering/amplifying electronics after the digital conversion that you are listening to, and that is entirely subjective.

The thing I meant is why go through the trouble of buying digital coax or optical link (unless already provided with the separate elements) if unnecessary...  

-------------
let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter
keep our sand-castle virtues
content to be a doer
as well as a thinker,
prefer lifting our pen
rather than un-sheath our sword

Digital receivers have in-built DACs to decode digital radio - so making the input available for external sources is "free" from the designer/manufacturer point of view and adds another tick-box to the spec sheet.

 

Of course

 

How silly of me

As always, Dean is the only one actually answering my question. Thanks.  

And I'm using digital out of the CD5004 because the analog I will be using to connect to the headphone amp. I could connect via analog and the connect the headphone amp to the pre-out in the actual receiver but I've been reading that pre-outs mess with the signal more because it has more interaction with the circuitry vs line-outs (like the one in the cd player) which come out as more "pure". 

Yes, I bought it even as we were talking in that other thread (actually, my girlfriend bought it for me so I didn't have much time to think about your suggestion ). I've compared: the denon out has a lot of noise and through the HD650 it sounds horrible. It's like the HD380 was masking the horrible sound or something. The HD650 reveals the debacle. The marantz CD5004 out connected directly to the HD650 gives positive results but the volume is quite low (it has a dedicated mini-knob next to the output). Through the v-can, the results are amazing. These headphones are the best I've ever had (well, obviously). So much more detail, balance, clarity. Amazing. Now I guess with an even better head-amp the results would be even more outstanding but I assume the law of diminishing returs would start to apply... For now until I get somehow wealthier, I'll stay with this setup. 

When you have more than 2200 cds, and when you don't like collecting music in a hard drive, things are different. 

No really the Marantz CD out itself already provides good audio but at lower levels. 

And Dean actually DID recommend me a dedicated amp, just one made for higher-impedance cans... 

 

 

 

 

Screw you, buddy!!!

 

 

Next time, don't open a thread, just PM him, then!!!!

 

 

 

This answer has so little to do with my original question  yet it's still somewhat interesting 

Your reply was all around Mr. 

 

 

some damn fool somewhere wrote: Of course I don't have the circuit schematic of the DM38 so I don't know how the headphone socket is wired, but in principle it should be able to drive the HD650 to "typical" listening levels without any detremental affect to the "sound", but only listening will tell for sure.

I do hate it when people selective-quote me.

I don't know enough about Marantz AV receivers to be of much help here - on a normal amp I'd avoid the pre-outs as they are (as the name implies) the output of the pre-amplifier so have all the inherent filtering and tone controls in the signal-path as well as the pre-amplifier itself - this means that the signal is larger than the line-outs by a factor of 10 (at least) - this would overload the V-Can I/P (or at least render the volume control practically unusable). On a normal amp I would go for the tape-outs instead as these are at typical line-out voltage levels, but I assume the AV receiver won't have a tape-in/tape-out pairing, so your solutions appears to be the only viable one.

 

 

/edit: ...actually the V-Cans have a line-out, so you could go from CD-Player line-out to V-Can line in, then V-Can line-out to Marantz AV Receiver CD line-in. If you have an extra pair of RCA interconnects lying around that's a simple and easy solution that does not require buying a TOSLINK or Digital co-ax cable.

 ... I had to check that "interim" translates into French, and it does - "intérim" "intérimaires" "période temporaire"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can't say whether a better headphone amp would give any returns - if the V-Can gives "normal" listening levels with the volume control set somewhere between 1/4 and mid-way then any "improvement" you'll get from a more expensive amp, or one specifically designed for hi-z h/phones is purely subjective and in Oliver's domain, not mine. However if you need to wrack the volume up to 3/4 or max then certainly a "better" amp will give returns.

You obviously don't need a dedicated headphone amp when you have a device that has a headphone jack which is suitable for higher-impedance headphones.

Hopefully you'll really be absent from these threads for a while - it reduces the likelihood that naive users will be fooled into spending their hard earned money on useless gadgets.

My initial answer still stands: "Whether you use the DAC on your CD player and make an analogue connection to the receiver or make a digital connection to the DAC on your Receiver is purely a matter of personal preference to what they sound like."

 

 

If you do it right then it should not matter which you use, however logically a single toslink cable is going to be neater and more reliable than two pairs of RCA interconnects, and it's cheaper too - a $2 toslink is always going to be cheaper than $20 RCA cables.

 

Personally, I can say once again in this thread that I'd even recommend (modern) bluetooth cable free headphones. Yes, lossy compression is used, no, it doesn't negatively affect the listening experience.

 

I bought a http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/13/chumby-one-review/" rel="nofollow - Chumby One the other day (more for a laugh for than any other reason) - it's one of those "It's useless and I don't need it, but I want one" type gadgets (same description could apply to an iPad really)... basically a wifi connected desk clock running linux, it streams web content as well as FM and web radio, and streamed Ipod and Squeezebox from my PC. (Currently listening to http://www.morow.com/" rel="nofollow - Morow Prog Rock Radio through it [np: Steve Hackett ~ Emerald And Ash])

As for Archos vs iPhone/Android for listening: I really like the "one device less to carry around" argument, plus the "access to my entire collection via Audiogalaxy" that I made in the other thread. There's also the Napster app - it works quite well. And sooner or later we'll have Apple's iCloud/iMatch and competing, similar services from Amazon and whatnot.

 

I'm about as unexcited about the rebranding of the internet as the cloud (or the iNternet as the iCloud) as it is possible to get - as I've said before, this is the beginning of the end of owning the music you buy and that's a very bad thing.

Hard drive > clouds

physical format > hard drive

All I read everywhere points to equal performance from optical and digital coaxial, with advantages to coaxial in runs with bends (light won't bend) and advantages to optical in other areas. 

It's  http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=64142&PID=4119684#4119684" rel="nofollow - déjà vécu .