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Audiolab 6000CDT experience
- Thread starter audiopile
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Deleted member 24508
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Really hope you enjoy it, it will drive really good DACs if needs be.6000CDT has 44.1kHz on outputs (usually cheap Blurays / Xbox give 48kHz) and for £379 there is a chance it is properly clocked and buffered
I'm happy with mine, tempted to say it is crystal clear but probably music from my PC via Fiio K5pro would sound the same (don't know, haven't tested that). Cheers!
Curious, just what is involved in "driving" a dac...and when do you know if it "needs be"?
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Deleted member 24508
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Your CD player puts out a signal that is what 'drives' the DAC. If your needs are for a better than budget DAC the Audiolab is a good value choice to so use.
What? It just provides a digital signal....it doesn't "drive" anything. You can imagine what you want....especially your imagination about "budget" dacs.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
It's a bit like 'Driving Miss Daisy'. Imagine the transport is Morgan Freeman,
You see how that makes sense now?
Back in the 90's, DACs were important, perhaps. Though, even then, there were inexpensive DACs in CD players that were revered, and still hold up to a controlled comparison. The difference is those DACs didn't pretend to do anything but 16/44, and didn't have to interface with computers. Separate DACs were expensive. Some explored really interesting ideas that were challenging to implement in three dimensions, but that gained incremental advantages, perhaps, in measured performance. The RingDAC is possibly one such. These strategies worked around the speed at which signal processing could occur at the necessary bit depth, to avoid even microscopic error rates. CD transports even from the earliest days could deliver the bits to the DAC without error, and were doing so in computers at speeds higher, and a little later much higher than required by CD playback.
But time marches on. The chips used these days work so much faster than 16/44 that they can throw most of their signal processing power away and still have too much for Redbook CD. And the implementations around those chips are now so clean that they are 20 or 30 dB better than they need to be to attain effective transparency--and that's measured at the audio outputs. They are so good that one can stack a DAC and ADC together and feed audio through them, converting to analog, redigitizing, converting that again to analog, digitizing that again, and so on for many generations with no audible degradation in the sound under controlled testing (assuming lossless encoding, of course). And the DACs that do this are now at commodity pricing--by that I mean I don't need One DAC To Rule Them All--I buy a new DAC for each situation in which I want to perform the conversion instead of trying to figure out how to manage the switching to use a single DAC.
There are expensive DACs that perform really well, of course, and provide many attributes some might be seeking, particularly connectivity features, source switching features, aesthetics, build quality, country of origin, story, ownership experience, and so on. People who want an expensive DAC don't have to justify it. But they should be aware of what they are and are not getting. I see little correlation between output and price.
So, I would alter your statement above to say "the Audiolab transport will not hold back even the best DACs, which you can choose as you like to fulfill your other needs and desires." I've never owned one, but I believe this will be true simply because it's really difficult to build a CD transport that would prevent a DAC from getting the data that's on the CD accurately.
The same could be said of the Cambridge Audio CXC, and most quality CD players with digital outputs that are in a state of good repair. Keeping them in good repair is most of what differentiates transports in my experience.
Rick "whose first DAC was in a Magnavox CD player, and whose latest DAC is a Topping E30" Denney
I also have an E30, and a much more expensive Soncoz SGD-1, both get used with the Audiolab, if there's a difference in sound quality it's too subtle for me to notice/care about.
Also tried the Audiolab with a Soekris R-2R DAC I borrowed, even more expensive than the Soncoz, plus the owner had replaced the SMPS with a linear PS and did some other mods on it, adding to the expense.
Again, differences were non-existent/trivial.
Also tried the Audiolab with a Soekris R-2R DAC I borrowed, even more expensive than the Soncoz, plus the owner had replaced the SMPS with a linear PS and did some other mods on it, adding to the expense.
Again, differences were non-existent/trivial.
Having recently acquired the 6000cdt and connected to the Gustard X16 DAC, I am gobsmacked at the performance. I've been listening to my vintage CD collection and the detail and presentation projected by this duo is brilliant. I was never that impressed by the Arcam CDS50 or the Cyrus CDt previously. Glad I made the purchase and now I eagerly wait to pair it to the Topping D90SE DAC.
I bet you will probably hear night and day differences with the D90SE Vs X16, since you already noticed imaginary ones with Cyrus CDT Vs 6000T.
I bet you will probably hear night and day differences with the D90SE Vs X16, since you already noticed imaginary ones with Cyrus CDT Vs 6000T.
Whooooa tiger! I was reflecting on my previous experiences with using DAC's either built into the player Arcam CDS50 or connected to a streamer/DAC as with the Cyrus. Previously I've never heard of brands such as Topping or Gustard, so these are all new to me and pleased with the journey so far which I do hope tickles some imaginary moments!
I had an Arcam CD93 to experiment with the RingDAC for about ten minutes. It sounded terrible!
But there was obviously a failure in the audio part of the DAC and I sent it back to the seller.
Rick “whose other CD players and DACs all sound the same” Denney
But there was obviously a failure in the audio part of the DAC and I sent it back to the seller.
Rick “whose other CD players and DACs all sound the same” Denney
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Deleted member 24508
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Having also tried the Arcam and the Cyrus I was not impressed either.
KellenVancouver
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Guess I got lucky. Continuous use of slot-in player for 21 years and counting, nary a single hiccup...
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Sorry, I just saw this. I have one, and it does the job very well. I've not yet had any CDs which skipped or wouldn't read, and the drive is inaudible (to me).
You did not:
I guess reliability was a thing 21 years ago.
jsrtheta
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Not necessarily.You did not:
I guess reliability was a thing 21 years ago.
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Deleted member 24508
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Exactly the same experience now on my 2nd slot loader , Audiolab 6000, however I've had both Rotel and Naim products that have failed draw mechanisms.
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