By Juan C. Ayllon With the Corona Virus kicking into higher gear, many of us are stuck either working from or puttering around home. And for us audio enthusiasts, having good music and a nice system helps make the time pass faster. But, what happens if your Digital to Analog Converter is out being serviced? I'm glad you asked! Mine is being serviced at my technician's lab and, to be honest, I don't want to simply play vinyl for all my listening. So, what do you do? If you're like me, you can reach out to a friend who'll lend you one of theirs (thanks, Michael!). However, if the urge hits and they're at work, there are other possibilities. I have found, for instance, that simply playing music via Qobuz's internet player on my MacBook Air, using its sound card and connecting directly to my preamp, still sounds quite good. However, since I do most of my digital listening via music server to my DAC, I don't keep a reference CD player these days. So, why not try the next best thing? I was curious to hear how an older CD player lying around the house would play wired directly into my preamp via RCA connectors.
Enter an old 1990s Pioneer CDJ-500II player from my old mobile DJ'ing days. Long retired, I never managed to sell that on Craig's List or eBay, so it's been sitting in storage for years. Wiping down the RCA inputs with alcohol and dabbing a little Stabilant 22 contact enhancer in them, I plug the Straight Wire connectors that I normally use with my Lampizator DAC into it, drop an Usher Audio demo disk into it and give it a spin. The results are quite pleasing. Although it still has a little of that digital hard edge to it that my music server playing through my DAC does not, it's actually quite remarkable. Score! Now, even though I'll have to extract myself from the couch and be productive in a few minutes, I must say that, like grabbing a McDonald's Egg McMuffin and hash browns when you missed breakfast, this satiated the craving quite well! So, in this age of modern DACs, high end transports and dedicated media servers, if you want to try something different and have an old CD player handy, why not hook it up directly to your preamp/integrated amp or receiver and give it a listen? You just might have some fun and get some quality listening in. Cheers!
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Juan C. AyllonA writer, artist, educator and owner of Prairie Audio Man Cave, he lives with his wife, Isabel (AKA Belle), and their Goldendoodle, Liam, enjoys listening to high fidelity music and all things hi-fi at their home in the greater Chicagoland area.. Archives
March 2024
Categories |