Silly question (maybe) about DAC’s.

I’m kind of a budget audiophile and I love vinyl and cd’s pretty much equally.
i currently have an Onkyo C-7030 CD player and am thinking about a NAD C328 to replace my psaudio sprout100.
I understand both the onkyo and the NAD have pretty nice DAC’s. I can run the CD player out via coaxial or optical into the NAD and I guess bypass the DAC in the CD player or run it out as line level and into an analog input and bypass the DAC in the amp. I think.
Is there a consensus on best practice or is it try it both ways and see which sounds better? Will there be much of a difference either way? And is there a big difference between the optical and coaxial outputs from the CD player?
Thanks! This is a cool forum!

 

Try it both ways and see which sounds better you truly never know til you try it.

 

Indeed a matter of trying. DAC do sound different and you need to find you for yourself which one sounds best.

In general only, integrated DAC’s in amps can sound quite good given that they are in solid housing and benefit from the usually better power supply of the amp, higher end CD players excluded. Also in general coaxial can sound better than optical, at least according to blind test of a German magazine, conducted already some 25 years ago (and is also my experience). Btw, they also concluded that there was no difference between a more expensive and cheaper coaxial or optical. However this was then and might have changed.

 

I second the try it both ways and see .....

my own experience is that using a Musical Fidelity A5 CDP most musical to my ears is to run it with analogue interconnects into a BenchMark Dac1 HDR ...thus using the A5's dac with the BM used as a pre amp to feed a pair of cyrus mono x amps but another cdp i have a Marantz 6000 OSE Ki i use via optical into the BM where it acts fully as dac and pre amp...i've found that optical "sounds" better than using coax in this configuration ...but when using a tube integrated amp (Minute EL34) the Marantz "sounds best" using its analogue outs and thus its own dac ...while the MF stays as it is, analogue out.

So in summary as others have said try it every way you can and "listen" for what sounds most musical to you ...only then will you have your answer ... i used to think that a dac was a dac and a cdp was a cdp and that optical and coax must surely make no audible difference but they do ..go figure ...

 

That’s great. Sounds like I can’t go wrong either way so I’ll try both. Can’t wait for the NAD to show up.

 

I’m interested in this as well, so thank you for asking this question. I have a NAD 5000 CD player connected via analog output to my Denon receiver, but I’m wondering what it would sound like via optical into the Denon DAC. Will buy a cable and find out.

… and please share your findings once the NAD has arrived and you had some time listening!

 

I just got new Denon also and will be running to a Oppo BDP-93. I'm also wondering if going analog via optical would make a difference. Also, maybe a dumb question but since they both have internal DAC how does it determine which to use (I've read that both on would cause sound issues. No idea if this is true or not).

 

An optical connection is a digital connection, not analogue. Optical connections carry a digital signal.

If the digital output of an Oppo (via SPDIF/coax or via optical/TOSlink) is connected to an external DAC, and the analogue output of the external DAC is then connected to a preamp or integrated amp or receiver. The user has to switch the preamp or integrated amp or receiver to whichever line input the DAC is plugged into.

If the analogue output of the Oppo is used and plugged directly into a line input on the preamp/integrated amp/receiver, then the preamp/integrated amp/receiver has to be switched to that input instead.

Simultaneously connecting the digital output of the Oppo to an external DAC and the Oppo’s analogue output directly to the preamp/integrated amp/receiver, effectively lets someone switch between the Oppo’s DAC and the user’s external DAC to figure out which DAC he likes best.