On a whim, I decided to dig under the bed in the spare bedroom for my dusty old Sony CDP-XB930 QS player and revive it, just to see how it compared to my computer audio system. Had forgotten how damned heavy the thing is; its built like the proverbial brick outhouse:
I just used the analogue outputs into the balanced output passive, rather than going via my MF DAC.
It sounds fantastic through the monos and Mets and with digital filter 2 engaged, simply plays music.
After comparing the some tracks via the internal DAC and via the MF DAC, The CD player's internal DAC sounds quite a bit better than the standalone MF DAC; the MF sounding somewhat bland in comparison.
A few of you chaps have tried to put me onto this DAC issue, both at Owston and at Colin's place, and I can sort of see what you mean.
The MF DAC is good just a bit soulless in comparison to the Sony. I am sure "soulless" was an adjective used by Andrew L at Colin's a while back when describing the sound of my pp amp/DAC combo, through Colin's speakers. I thought it was the amp, Andrew suspected the DAC. Seems Andrew was right on it.
I still like the sound of the computer audio side but now, I could do with a new DAC, preferably non - upsampling if the sound of the Sony is anything to go by. We'll see what happens first though; I could be equating different with better.
