Topic: How much impact does a cd/dvd player have on sound quality?

[Nick's Picks]

Transport: I believe they do make a difference, but you have to get into uber transports to really hear it.  Case in point, Carls old belt driven transport was so damn smooth sounding comparred to the Philips 963sa deck that we also had on hand.  it was clearly evident.

overall though, for this discussion...
i recomend buying an outboard DAC.  For example...the lite DAC 60 w/rolled tubes that i'm about to post for sale.

its mint.  basicaly new.  Very smooth sounding comparred to the analog outputs of my Toshiba SD9200, which aint no slouch.

[nickgregory]

I think the single most important area of upgrade is getting your space acoustically treated. It made a huge difference to me..so much of a difference in fact, that recordings I loved prior to the treatment , sounded like ass, and the same with the monitors I was using.  wouldnt it make sense to get the room squared away before spending more bucks on playback gear?? Would the differences in transports be immediately noticeable in a bad room?(they are subtle, no?)

Curious.

I dont have a bad room currently.  Obviously it could use room treatments, but given the home is on the market, I wont be doing that until after I get into my new home.

As I said earlier in this thread...the change I was hearing could have been the result of me hearing something I wanted to hear...I think that is a possibility with every change in audio playback that you can make, and I am probably as guilty of it as anyone else.  I can say with certainty that the video output was markedly better on the new unit...so given that, I wouldnt be surprised if the improvement was a result of a more vibration resistent transport, but it is obviously subjective...

[carlbeck]

There are two schools of thought when it come to this sort of thing. The first is start with the best transport/dac you can afford. It is the FIRST piece in the chain, the old garbage in = garbage out school of thought. IMO, a good transport makes all the difference in the worls. Like Nick said, smoooooooooth playback. Although all this high end digital crap still can't compare to a crappy turntable, don't get me started. Case in point, my digital front end costs 3x what my analog front does & still doesn't compare 

The other school of though is that you start with your speakers & build your system around them. Not a bad way to go either. Your speakers are the final point of reproduction, if they can't accurately reproduce or at least reproduce in a manner you want to hear then no matter what you do upstream will matter.

Hmmmmmm, I have tried it both ways. I have a stellar transport & DAC, they are very good at what they do but I also have excellent speakers with great cables. Yes, I can hear the difference when I change cables now or tweak my speakers but I have spent some time building the system to where it is today. What I mean by that is that I have spent a lot of time (wasted some time & money too) trying a lot of different gear in my system to get it to sound the way I want. I say this all the time but the most fun in audio for me is experimenting with different gear to see what works with your tastes & system creating a synergy. A new player may be an improvement for you just as new speakers or amp or cables may also be an improvement. Audio is a wonderful hobby, there are so MANY flavors of ice cream out there, you just need to find what works for you. you don't need to spend a lot of money either, buy used. As a matter of fact, buy & sell alot of stuff used, you won't lose much except shipping & it will allow you to see what floats your boat in the audio world.

Or maybe you aren't as much of geek as I am & all you want to do is play music back at home but then again you probably wouldn't be on this site you weren't