What connection to use to play regular cd's on universal player? [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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mjnoles1
03-15-2005, 10:14 PM
I am using right now an optical digital cable to connect my universal player to my receiver for playing dvd's and using the 5.1 analog cable connections to play 5.1 dvd-a or sacd music. And as of now when playing a regular cd I just turn my receiver to the dvd play mode and play the cd. Is their a better way of connecting the universal player to the receiver for playing regular cd's or is the way I am doing it fine? Should I connect the coaxial digital audio out on the universal player to the cd coxial digital audio input on the receiver? Or connect the L/R stereo channels from the universal player that is not being used for the 5.1 audio to the L/R stereo channels input for CD mode in the receiver? Or will it make no difference at all except that the receiver will show "CD" on its display and I should just play the regular cd's with the connections I have been using?

Audioman00
03-15-2005, 11:18 PM
nt nt nt nt

paul_pci
03-15-2005, 11:24 PM
Conventional wisdsom states: unless your universal (or other) player has a better DAC than your receiver/preamp, then digital is the way to go. On the other hand, if your player has a better DAC than your receiver/preamp, then you may wish to use analog connections for CD playback.

kexodusc
03-16-2005, 04:25 AM
Paul_pci is right. It gets even more more complex if you consider that the better DAC in whichever component might not necessarily play CD's any better, or present any audible improvement.

If you've already got 2 connections to the receiver, no need to a add a 3rd via the L/R outputs. I'd use the optical...chances are if you've got a receiver that compatible 96 kHz signals (or more), the DAC is fairly new and quite competent, and probably isn't going to give up much to the DAC in the universal player.

May we ask what models these are?

shokhead
03-16-2005, 08:50 AM
Wouldnt you say that if the dac's are better in the player,it might be time to upgrade the reciever or no?

kexodusc
03-16-2005, 09:22 AM
Wouldnt you say that if the dac's are better in the player,it might be time to upgrade the reciever or no?
Definitely not...
You could upgrade to satisfy the upgrade bug but, if the receiver was otherwise good enough for your purposes, and now you have a better DAC in your player that lets you play everything you want, there's no need to spend money to have better DAC in the receiver, that would be redundant, you can only use one DAC at a time (at least I can't think of any reason to use 2 DAC's in 2 different components, I'm sure there's someone who has a reason though). Unless you didn't like the DAC in the player...but even then, I'd have a hard time looking someone in the eye and telling them they need to upgrade their receiver because their DAC didn't handle 96kHz/24 bit or whatever...
I'd wait until you needed a few more essential features before buying a new receiver.
Also, there's no guarantee that the DAC in the new receiver would be better or even as good as the one in the player.

And if it's a universal player for DVD-A's or SACD's, you'll be using the players DAC almost always anyway.

Of course, if you're like me, you'll start "finding" other features you "need", and you'll end up with a new receiver before you know it :D

mjnoles1
03-16-2005, 10:06 AM
Thanks everyone for the reply. If I am understanding everyone correctly then what I should do is keep the connections I have been using and continue to use the dvd mode on the receiver to play cd's?
Also to answer "kexodusc" question I have a pioneer vsx-d514 receiver and a pioneer dv-578a universal player.

kexodusc
03-16-2005, 11:11 AM
You could do a quick test on a few CD's...try playing a CD and switching outputs, do the 578a menus allow for this? The receiver? Pick the one that sounds best.
I won't be at all surprised if you cannot tell a difference after many hours, though you may find one to be a tiny bit better for whatever reason.

Let us know...

PS: How do you like the 578a?

Quagmire
03-18-2005, 07:59 AM
I am using right now an optical digital cable to connect my universal player to my receiver for playing dvd's and using the 5.1 analog cable connections to play 5.1 dvd-a or sacd music. And as of now when playing a regular cd I just turn my receiver to the dvd play mode and play the cd. Is their a better way of connecting the universal player to the receiver for playing regular cd's or is the way I am doing it fine? Should I connect the coaxial digital audio out on the universal player to the cd coxial digital audio input on the receiver? Or connect the L/R stereo channels from the universal player that is not being used for the 5.1 audio to the L/R stereo channels input for CD mode in the receiver? Or will it make no difference at all except that the receiver will show "CD" on its display and I should just play the regular cd's with the connections I have been using?
Using the 6 channel discrete inputs that you are currently using for multichannel DVD-A and SACD playback will give you the cleanest stereo transfer possible. The stereo L/R information will be output through the front L/R channels of your player just the same as stereo SACD's, the other channels will simply be absent of any audio information. Usually, this discrete input on the receiver bypasses all AD or DA conversions and allows the receiver to be used as a simply preamp. The ONLY reason I would use a digital connection instead would be if you desired to have DSP processing of the stereo signal for surround enhancements like "HALL, 5 CHANNEL STEREO, LOGIC 7, etc...", I see no other advantage in using the digital connection to play regular CD's, however, as others have said it should be easy enough to A/B the discrete analog to the digital connection to see. But to make a fair comparison, you should compare stereo to stereo and not stereo to some DSP mode. It will be interesting to know what your results are, so please do take the time to come back and report what you find -- but I'm betting now that for strictly stereo music reproduction, you won't get better results than using the discrete analog inputs.

Q