Already own a DV27A, should I bother getting a CD33 ?

[jmfmacra]

I already own the DV27A. Since the DV27A has excellent CD music capabilities already, would anyone bother getting a CD33 just for 2ch music? Do I really want both machines? Of course I WANT them but am I crazy to think I will hear any substantial improvement in 2ch or just marginal improvement?

I see Crustyloafer has a DV29 and CD33, your thoughts?

Thanks all,

[Timmy C]

I guess it depends how important music is to you. I have a dv27a and a cd23 but music has always been more important to me than movies. If money was really tight and I had nothing to sell then I'd rather get rid of the dvd27a and buy a cheap dvd player than lose the cd23!! On the other hand, the cd playback on the dv27a is pretty good so if you're only an occasional listener maybe you should spend your cash on something else!

[Crustyloafer]

My thoughts are that the CD33 is noticeably superior even the DV29 for CD replay. I sometimes wondered to myself if there really was much difference but now that I have sold my CD33 and am playing cds on my DV29 until my new player arrives I have really noticed how big a difference there was. The saying' You don't miss it until it's gone' seems very apt in my situation.

[NicolasB]

If it were me, I would buy a stand-alone reclocking DAC and use the DV27A as a transport. Obvious candidates would be a Benchmark DAC-1 or a Chord DAC64. This is likely to give you better bang-for-buck compared to buying a new transport as well.

[scott brown]

Originally Posted by NicolasB

If it were me, I would buy a stand-alone reclocking DAC and use the DV27A as a transport. Obvious candidates would be a Benchmark DAC-1 or a Chord DAC64.

I own a dv27a and a dac-1, but I'm annoyed with the fact that the dv27a downsamples 96khz output to 48khz over the digital output. I'd love to send 2 channel 24/96 signals to my external dac, but the dv27a only sends 48 for dvd-a discs. There are players under US $300 that output 24/96 over the digital output for non-copy protected discs...

[Ettepet]

Originally Posted by scott brown

I own a dv27a and a dac-1, but I'm annoyed with the fact that the dv27a downsamples 96khz output to 48khz over the digital output. I'd love to send 2 channel 24/96 signals to my external dac, but the dv27a only sends 48 for dvd-a discs. There are players under US $300 that output 24/96 over the digital output for non-copy protected discs...

Are you talking about the optical digital output and not the coaxial one?

[Shaka]

I use a MF Trivista 21 DAC with my DV27A for CD playback and it sounds stunning. I don't know how the Trivista 21 compares to the DAC64 or DAC-1.
As for DVD-A discs I don't own any and if I did, I'd probably use the DV27A's on-board DACS for that purpose.

[Ettepet]

Originally Posted by Crustyloafer

My thoughts are that the CD33 is noticeably superior even the DV29 for CD replay.

Isn't the DV29 inferior to the DV27a, at least in analog play? As far as I am aware Arcam's simplified the analog side (one clock in stead of three, etc.) in favor of HDMI.

[Crustyloafer]

Having used both the DV29 is inferior to the DV27A for analogue video only, the audio side is noticeably better.

[Ettepet]

Originally Posted by Crustyloafer

Having used both the DV29 is inferior to the DV27A for analogue video only, the audio side is noticeably better.

It is a bit strange though that the dv27 and dvd27a both got such raving reviews for their excellent (analog) cd-play, even comparing it to dedicated cd-players costing $7000 or more. These reviews are refered to everywhere, even by Arcam itself. To then declare that the dv29 is clearly better, and the cd33 is easily better than the dv29 makes me wonder what to believe.

ps: Not saying that in your setup you have seen improvements from dv27a to dv29 to cd33.

[scarty16]

Goi for a CD36 not the old CD33

[jmfmacra]

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. They really helped me decide my budget vs. listening needs ratio. If I were more serious about 2ch music, I think I would go for the new CD36 - but I'm not (yet). At this point, I think I'm going to wait a while and see how fast some used/demo CD36 hit the market. I was thinking about a used CD33 but now I see the CD36 is due out soon so I'll just wait. Maybe for the meantime, I will play with some external DACs just to get a feel for them.

[NicolasB]

Originally Posted by scott brown

I own a dv27a and a dac-1, but I'm annoyed with the fact that the dv27a downsamples 96khz output to 48khz over the digital output. I'd love to send 2 channel 24/96 signals to my external dac, but the dv27a only sends 48 for dvd-a discs.

The DV27A is certainly capable of outputting 96 kHz via the coax digital output (so long as you haven't told it to downsample it to 48kHz - there's an option in the setup menu which I think defaults to downsampling).

However, this doesn't apply to DVD-Audio, as you say, because of the fact that it's multichannel and because of encryption/DRM issues which require D/A conversion to be done in the player.

[NicolasB]

Originally Posted by Ettepet

It is a bit strange though that the dv27 and dvd27a both got such raving reviews for their excellent (analog) cd-play, even comparing it to dedicated cd-players costing $7000 or more. These reviews are refered to everywhere, even by Arcam itself. To then declare that the dv29 is clearly better, and the cd33 is easily better than the dv29 makes me wonder what to believe.

I don't think any sane person has ever compared the DV27A to a $7000 player. It has usually been the case that the FMJ series DVD player is roughly on a par with (although rather different from) the corresponding top-of-the-Diva-line CD player, but not as good as the corresponding FMJ CD player.

[General Skanky]

Hmm, I like to think it's a fair bit better than any Diva model and actually a lot closer in performance to FMJ players than one cares to admit.

I for one think it is that good for CD.