Arcam vs. Rotel vs. Cambridge Audio

[Arch]

Thanks RGA.

I have talked to a few local shops in my area, with vastly different recommandations on the best way to build up a good system. Once source suggested that I should look into a high end second hand player that is above the 1000 dollar mark when new, the rationale is that in that price range, a player will start to include high quality hardware like better power supplies, better DACs, lower jitter measurment, etc etc. In another shop I got the opposite opinion: DAC technologies had gone through a vast improvment in the last 2 or 3 years, to the point where a sub-1000 dollar player today will sound better than a player costing twice as expensive a couple of years ago.

All this is very, very confusing. And I suspected that, like what RGA said, that ultimately these guys are trying to sell me something. (I'm sure a lot of newbies like me does a lot of easy purchases based on reviews so it is easy for these guys to get away with a sale.) I have booked an appointment tomorrow to audition the Cambridge Audio 540c and 640c, and I will visit another local dealer tonight that carries both the Arcam and Rotel line.

Because the different shops will setup the demos using very different amps and speakers, these listerning sessions will not be totally objective. That's why I'm asking if any of you out there who has experiences with these players.

[RGA]

First you're correct - not listening in the same set-up isn't objective at all since you have no way to know whether the success or failure is the cd player or the amp or speakers or the room or the positioning of the set-up. SO the best sounding system ma be totally unrelated to the cd player.

The other thing is that a lot of people judge the quality of the transport on the tray that goes in and out. yet when the cd goes into the player the tray has nothing to do with the transport...a clamp - a plastic clamp in all these players lifts the cd up.

Jitter is measurable...but a cheap player and an External DAC uses a buffer. the information picked up by the laser in the cheap player or an expensive player is identical - that info is sent to the DAC - which basically turns the 1s and 0s into music.

Thus it makes more sense to me to buy a highly functional feature laden player such as a mega changer and buy an external dac from MSB Link DAC or Audio Note etc than a single disc player that as a transport has zero value. Better power cords are a scam - and it does not require better power supplies to operate a cd player.

The only part of the cd player that could be better is the small amplification step which is sent to preamp section of the amp. Again though that is done after the DAC stage.

I'm not saying you won't find a better sounding cd player than a mega changer...however, I would want a home audition of one against a single disc player.

My dealer had a nice set-up with a Pioneer Elite 300 disc changer and the best transports from Wadia Theta and Enlightened Audio Designs. As a transport they were all the same sounding being fed into the top of the line Cal Labs DAC running through the best Bryston Monoblocks and Martin Logan Oddyseys...a system over $30k Cdn.

Even sighted no one could tell the difference - exceopt that the cheapest transport was by far the most functional and IMO the best looking.

[Arch]

This is fascinating.

2 questions:

1) If I eventually want to upgrade my CD player, providing that my transport is working well, does it mean that the way to go is to buy a external DAC and hook it up to whatever player I will eventually have?

2) What about a DVD player? What if I connect a CD DAC to the digital output of my DVD machine? Will that sound identical to a CD transport?

[Arch]

I dropped by one of the local dealer last night (where I will audition the Cambridge Audio players tomorrow), I noticed a CD DAC / Transport combo from 47 Laboratory (don't remember what model).... the transport has no trays, no slots. The entire unit is nothing but a silver metallic box, slighly bigger than a thick paperback novel. The transport is exposed on top of the machine. To load the disc, you simply place it on the transport, weight it down with a cap, and it starts playing.... wonderful sounding setup too, might I add.

[musicman1999]

read your post with interest as i too am cd player shopping and am looking at some of the same machines as you.i was able to directly compare the two cambridge players and the arcam cd73,all with camdridge audio power and jm labs speakers,same as i have at home.
i found that both cambridge players are very solid units at their price points(the 640 is $200.00 cdn more).the 640 was as good a $600 player as i have heard imo.the arcam was was another story,(btw it has the same wolfson dac as the 640)but it is after the dac where
the difference appears.the arcam was so clear and detailed that when we went back to the 640 it seemed a blanket was placed over the speakers.well worth the extra $300.00
imo.i have not heard the rotel yet,but it will really have to be something,or the arcam will soon be mine.like to hear if you agree when you listen.have fun

[Arch]

Just another observation in regard to musicman1999's post: I was told that the Cambridge 640c takes quite a bit of time to break in - somewhere in the 100 hour range. The demo I listerned to has been totally broken in according to my dealer. Just wondering if this is a factor in your listerning session. I still think the Arcam / Rotel are "slightly" better performers, but I wasn't prepare to pay the premium to get it.

Here are the prices I found:

Cambridge 640c - $700 cdn sug. retail, paid $580
Rotel RCD-1070 - $1000 cdn sug. retail, $775 on sale
Arcam CD72t - $1000 cdn sug. retail, $800 on sale

[musicman1999]

arch
i am not sure how much time the cambridge units had on them,but the arcam had only been out of the box for about a week,so not much time.our experiences differed a bit in that i was able to hear both players through the same amp and speakers,which closely matched what i have at home and the arcam i heard was the newer cd73.but the cambridge if a fine player and you will enjoy it.i also just ordered the azur 540d matching dvd v/a player and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.enjoy your cambridge.

[Geoffcin]

read your post with interest as i too am cd player shopping and am looking at some of the same machines as you.i was able to directly compare the two cambridge players and the arcam cd73,all with camdridge audio power and jm labs speakers,same as i have at home.
i found that both cambridge players are very solid units at their price points(the 640 is $200.00 cdn more).the 640 was as good a $600 player as i have heard imo.the arcam was was another story,(btw it has the same wolfson dac as the 640)but it is after the dac where
the difference appears.the arcam was so clear and detailed that when we went back to the 640 it seemed a blanket was placed over the speakers.well worth the extra $300.00
imo.i have not heard the rotel yet,but it will really have to be something,or the arcam will soon be mine.like to hear if you agree when you listen.have fun

Exactly how I percieved it. If people tell you that you cannot hear the difference between CD players, then they are not doing critical listening. The Arcam had the best sound that I've heard in a sub 1k CD player hands down. I've really only heard one player that was noticably better at all, (very slightly) and that was a >3k Meridian 508!

Once you up in this league with your digital source you can sleep easy knowing that your getting all that you can from your CD's.

[BillyB]

Exactly how I percieved it. If people tell you that you cannot hear the difference between CD players, then they are not doing critical listening. The Arcam had the best sound that I've heard in a sub 1k CD player hands down. I've really only heard one player that was noticably better at all, (very slightly) and that was a >3k Meridian 508!

Once you up in this league with your digital source you can sleep easy knowing that your getting all that you can from your CD's.

Hi Geoffcin. I just ordered a 73T from my audio dealer. I did demo it but I'm always nervous with audio component purchases. I know how subjective this stuff is. The more I researched the 73T the more I came to the conclusion that if it's not the best $700 player it's dam close. I'm trying to not be unrealistic about how much better My system will sound with the 73T. I'm replacing a 14 year old Rotel CDP and I'm hopeful the arcam will be a big step up in overall performance.I have Rotel amp and pre-amp played through B&W 703's. The 703's are too bright with my existing configuration. I'm very curious to see how the 703's interact with the Arcam. They were a big investment and if the 73T improves their sound I'll be thrilled. I've already thought ahead and know at some point I could upgrade the 73T to the upsampling version with hardware change to further improve sound.

[RGA]

This is fascinating.

2 questions:

1) If I eventually want to upgrade my CD player, providing that my transport is working well, does it mean that the way to go is to buy a external DAC and hook it up to whatever player I will eventually have?

2) What about a DVD player? What if I connect a CD DAC to the digital output of my DVD machine? Will that sound identical to a CD transport?

Firstly any difference is attributable to the dac stage. So theoretically a better DAC in the cambridge or Arcam will plausably sound better. But WHY pay for the transport as well? Especially if you have a transport already. Yes you could use a DVD player just the same...though it may disrupt the movies sound adversely.

DACs in a lot of players are internally upgradeable - which tells you the only part of the machine that has an effect is the DAC. If I had $1200.00 to spend I would buy a changer and an Audio Note or some other external DAC and I get great sound and lots of features.

Or I can buy a single disc changer with a far worse DAC and no features with a sound no better and probably inferior for the Same. Gee this is not too hard to choose.

And what if you get that sub $200.00 feature laden changer home and oh wow in fact it sounds very damn good all by itself? The Audio Note Dac 1.1 is ~$850.00US. Now UHF magazine just reviewed the unit with the matching transport and said it bettered their mega buck reference cd player.

You have to dig this stuff up because if you JUST read the heavily advertised American magazines you're going to buy the usual Arcam, Cambridge and Rotel. As transports they are no better than a mega changer. They may use a better DAC...and they may sound slightly better...but gone are the days when cheaper cd players sounded really bright or shrill. The Sony mega changer actually sounds sweet in the highs.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue2/andac.htm
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/audionote_dac11.htm
http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/audionote11kit_e.html
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazin...anmeetsmsb.htm


Best of all the Audio Note DACs are upgradeable all the way up to their $50,000.00 model. All of their stuff is upgradeable with their top of the line system being over half a million smackers. For the fun here is a review of one of the more ridiculously priced DACs
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazin...ac5special.htm
http://www.hifichoice.co.uk/review_read.asp?ID=439

[nickway]

Wow, back the boat up here.

Transports do not make a difference??? Thats not true, they make a huge difference! This is such a big subject that I do not have the time to type all the reasons.

First let me start off by saying that the tranport is the first item in your chain of gear. If you have a bad signal from the start none of your other components are going to fix it. If you had a $100 CD player feeding a Mark Levinson amp to a set of Martin Logan speakers or any other high end gear, it would sound awful. The fact is that all you will hear is just how bad the source (the $100 CD player) is not how good the other stuff is. Amps and speakers are designed to be NEUTRAL and to change to sound as little as possible. They will not make a bad source sound better.

Most people see CD's as reading like a record in a linear fashion but the is NOT the case. They read infomation in thirds. The information is divided up into three sections on the CD, so as the laser reads it put all three sections together to get the data. If for some reason it can only get 2 of the 3 pieces it will use error correction to guess what the third piece of information. Now I do not know about you but I do not want a CD player to guess what the CD acually says. It is quite simple really, the better the transport the more information that can be sent to the DAC for decoding.

If transposts did not make a difference then why does the Linn Genki and Linn Ikemi sound different? The use the same DAC! The only thing that is differenet of other than balance outputs is the transport. The Genki uses a philips CDM12 transport while the Ikemi uses a custom built Linn transport. Any person who has ever listen to these two players can tell you that the Ikemi sounds much better. Wether the Ikemi is is worth twice as much is another question depends on your budget. But the fact is the transport makes things sound different.

As a test take your current CD player and place about 10-15 pounds of books, or anything else really heavy on your player. Put it over the transport if you can and then sit down a listen to an album you know really well. Then take the weight off and see if you can hear the difference. Somethings tells me that you will like it with the weight on it.

What is does is reduce some of the vibration in the player allowing the transport to get a better reading of the disc and thus send more info to the DAC.

Imagine it kinda like a record: if the record is wobbling around the stylus will have a hard time getting a good reading on it and the best phono stage in the world will not make it sound any better. In a sense the same is true for CD. If the CD is wobbling around due to a bad transport, the laser is not going to get a good reading on it so the best DAC in the world is still not going to make the transport work or sound any better.

Now in all of this I still have not taken into acount the laser quality, power supply quality are anything else in there. When I said I would not have time to explain everything I ment it. Check out UHF magizine quick high fidelity reading coure. http://www.uhfmag.com/book1.html It is quite good. I would recommend the books, they will tell you everything I did and more. If your are going to get them, get both of them. They are worth it. Look on thier websitw www.uhfmag.com and they have special internet deal were you can save some money.

Well I hope this helps. The next time someone says to use a mega changer as a transport and tells you it will not make a difference, do not believe them. To most people they simply do not know any better and there own rational and what companies like JVC has said has taught them otherwise.

Cheerio and good luck.

I would recomment a Rega Planet by the way. You can find them new for about $1200 canadian if you look and call around. From what I hear they sound mighty nice. And my ears are acustom to my best friends Wadia CD player.

[Arch]

Just came back from a listerning session during lunch time, I sampled the Rotel RCD-1072 and the Arcam CD72 side by side. The Arcam CD72 is a clearance model and is therefor cheaper than the Rotel, which is a current model.

The players were paired up with a Rotel pre-amp and power amp with B&W speakers. After a couple of songs I think they are both very good players. The Arcam has a slightly narrower soundstage, but the highs are very forward and detail. The Rotel on the other hand has a very wide soundstage, has slightly richer base, but overall much more lay back than the Arcam... I can see now how different 2 cd players of similar price can sound. I suspect the Arcam definitely WOW you in the listerning sessioin, but once it is settled at home it might sound quite bright. The Rotel might not sound as "alive" as the Arcam, but it is true that it is "accurate", like what others say about this player.

Tonight I will test the Cambridge Audio twins (540c & 640c). Stay tuned.

[RGA]

As a test take your current CD player and place about 10-15 pounds of books, or anything else really heavy on your player. Put it over the transport if you can and then sit down a listen to an album you know really well. Then take the weight off and see if you can hear the difference. Somethings tells me that you will like it with the weight on it.

First of all don't just regurgitate UHF. It happens to be one of my favorite magazines and I subscribe to it but quite frankly they're deluded on transports and there is simply ZERO evidence of any kind to support that transports make any differences that are audible. I am not a double blind test supporter by the way but you have to at least shoew MEASURABLE differences in the audible spectrum...and there are NO audible measurable differences on transports. Besides that a loaded 300 disc cd player is FAR heavier than any player your talking about.

Jitter has nothing to do with weight. Is a clocking issue and UHF was probably right 15 years ago but DACs today buffer out ALL and ANY possible jitter effect...it is not unlike a portable cd player today compared to those of 10 years ago. The information is completely scanned FIRST and ffrom the DAC creates sound.

The issue with the Linn if there really is one and not a bias from delusion is at the output stage. A CD player is actually a Pre-pre-amp. The stage where the cd player sends information to your amp can have an audible change - there are measurable differences in the audible spectrum between DACs.

Transports have none. SO whatever change you heard between the Linn has absolutely nothing to do with the transport. Audio note makes perhhaps the most expensive DACs in the worl up over $60kUS...interesting that their top transport is $1200.00US and is a Phillips that they modded. (They throw a cheaper one in with the $50k DAC.

I like UHF, but their source first theory is simply out of date and frankly they comment on things they have not heard. They make assumptions based on price and on name.

Quite frankly I heard the Rega Planet and it alters the sound with a deliberate reverberation in the audible band...I would be very surprised if that cd player was not picked up in a double blind test incidentally. It may sound good to some people but it's less accurate and IMO worse than a mega changer in terms of accuracy. Rega is trying to make their player sound more like LP and it works on some cds and butchers others.

I'm not saying there is no difference in cd players - and indeed many people may like the Rega over the mega changer because once there is a difference it will depend on preference. In fact all of the transport supporters have zero REASON or can tell anyyone WHY or WHAT makes a good transport and what does not. UHF has not explained it EVER.

And if you truly wanted to get a cd player with no jitter you would buy from Audio Note and basically nobody else...because their player has none, no oversampling no error correction of any kind because their clock perfectly matches and creates no errors. And even then reviewers gripe sometimes about the sound. ??

[Arch]

Well I had a busy day yesterday.

Listerned to the Rotel and Arcam yesterday at lunch time, and then I listerned to the Cambridges' after work. The Cambridges were paired up with a pair of JM Reynaud speakers and a Classe integrated amp.

Knowing that the system setup is totally different between my two auditions, I might as well not compared the 2 sessions at all. In retrospect I think the B&W speaker did not do the Rotel and Arcam justice - they just didn't sounded as good as I expected. My Cambridge Audio test setup, on the other hand, is beautiful.

After an hour of A/B test between the 540c and the 640c, the 640c won hands down. Vocal is so much clearer with the 640c, the soundstage is more defined, the base a "little" bit better.

My final conclusion (and this is indeed very, very subjective) is that the Cambridge 640c is almost as good as the Arcam and the Rotel, the vocals dosen't sound too forward, has great details, good base and imageing. Plus it is quite a bit cheaper than both the Arcam and the Rotel (I managed to located two dealers that has the Arcam CD72t and Rotel RCD-1070 on sale, but I got such a sweet deal on the 640c that it is still more than $200 cdn cheaper than the "sales" price of the other 2 - which means the 640c is $400 cdn cheaper than the suggested retail of the Rotel and the Arcam...)

The Cambridge 640c won me over in terms of cost / performance. It is now sitting next to my speakers, waiting for me to come home tonight...

With the money I saved, I picked up a pair of DH Lab silver interconnects and a in-house heavy duty power cord - and my total is still cheaper than the Rotel / Arcam BEFORE TAX.

I also figured that with the Cambridge, I should have a reasonably good and durable transport, so that down the road, I might entertain the idea of a outboard DACs... my dealer is a totally cool guy, so perhaps after I upgrade my amp and speakers, I can borrow one of his 47 Lab DACs and give it a test...

BTW, thanks for everybody's comments. Much appericated.

[rb122]

And if you truly wanted to get a cd player with no jitter you would buy from Audio Note and basically nobody else...because their player has none, no oversampling no error correction of any kind because their clock perfectly matches and creates no errors. And even then reviewers gripe sometimes about the sound. ??

You mention both the Rega Planet which I own and the Audio Note. Does your comment above pertain to Audio Note Dac's? I just borrowed a Dac 1.1x to play around with late last night. Haven't hooked it up yet as I see I'm missing anything resembling a digital cable - not even a spare video cable around the house. I have the opportunity to purchase this for $375 if I like it.

[Feanor]

...And if you truly wanted to get a cd player with no jitter you would buy from Audio Note and basically nobody else...because their player has none, no oversampling no error correction of any kind because their clock perfectly matches and creates no errors. And even then reviewers gripe sometimes about the sound. ??

RGA, what are you taking about? The presence or absence of error correction and oversampling have nothing directly do with jitter based on what I've heard. You'll need to explain these ascertions a bit further if I'm going to buy them.

Nevertheless I totally agree that one should expect no differences from transports under normal circumstances.

[Feanor]

...
Transports do not make a difference??? Thats not true, they make a huge difference! This is such a big subject that I do not have the time to type all the reasons.
...

There's only two things a transport can do wrong:

1. Drop bits
2. Introduce jitter

Droping bits is causes by (a) laser mistracking, (b) poor press quality of the CD. In principle, a better transport might be less subject to laser mistracking and/or miss few bits. In practice, laser mistracking is only caused by gross vibration or impact: not a problem in non-mobile equipment. Also in practice, the occassional missed bit, (usually due to minor disc mis-pressing), is compensated for by the DAC's error correction. If there are many bits missing, such as on a grossly mis-pressed CD or one that is damaged or filthy, no transport's pick-up can compensate.

As RGA pointed out, good DACs will rebuffer the bit stream and re-clock it it so transport-introduced jitter is eliminated. Granted, a DAC in, for example, a low-cost A/V receiver might not do this.

[RGA]

Sorry this is an older post and I never got back to it... I'm no digital designer - so I'll just post what Peter Q says about his DAC's:

"Extensive research into the fundamental properties of the data stream itself have shown beyond doubt that regardless of the theoretical and measurable advantages of the signal manipulation employed in all currently available digital products, such as higher over sampling, noise shaping, re-clocking or jitter reduction. All these corrective measures greatly interfere with the critical time domain requirements of the signal, based as current theory is, on an assumption that music is similar to book keeping data which off course it is not.

Music is a time continuum from start to end, which when broken is irreparably damaged and no amount of clever manipulation can ever restore it to its original time-frequency-amplitude duration or relationship, regardless of what the theorists may tell you.

As a result we have developed a way of excluding or bypassing all of these corrective measures, to allow the conversion from digital to analogue to be done without any manipulation whatsoever. All we do is to reformat the data stream to allow the converter chip to be able to interpolate the in coming information properly.

In other words, Audio Note DACs have no over sampling, no jitter reduction, no noise shaping and no re-clocking, they use the highest grade Analogue Devices AD1865, 18Bit stereo converter chip because we found this chip to be the best sounding available (yes, even better than the 20Bit versions!!), the digital power supply is an exceptionally low noise, shunt-type. Having removed all the digital filtering that is part of the over sampling, all filtering in AN DACs is done in the analogue domain where it appears to be easier to retain good wide band phase-frequency and dynamically coherent behaviour than in the digital domain."

Is he right? Wrong? Well hearing it versus many other CD players - I can say if nothing else it sounds better for the replay of music than I have heard from the cd format. But then I am probably viewed as quitte biased - so one should hear for themselves - but that is true as always.