Unless you get a really basic entry level model it's probable that there will be a headphone jack on the front fascia, with its own volume control. Now many will tell you these headphone outputs are awful and you must have a headphone amplifier, but in my experience most of them work perfectly well.
It probably uses some version of Windows media player that @amirm had a hand in back in the 90’s when he worked for a living ( apparently) ,,
I’d be careful.
Hey, I just shared my experience,.
Unfortunately it seems a lot of people here sound like brainwashed. If you are pretty sure that everything sound the same, stop asking people opinions, about audio gear.
Unfortunately a 100$ dac don't sound like 1000$, and a cd player with an ancient dac sounds a lot better than an entry level dac.
As I said get a used cd player, than compare, hopefuly you have not presbycusis, and then get back here..
Which $100 DAC and which $1000 DAC? Which ancient CD player and which entry level DAC?
You are really brainwashed, are you?
Does anyone here have a cd player and a single disc? Just use them..
You are really brainwashed, are you?
Has anyone here have a cd player and a single disc? Just use them..
Have you received your Dac? How does it compare to the xbox cd playing?Hello! I hope everyone is doing well. Please let me know if I should modify the title or move the thread to a different area at any time.
I want to start listening to some CDs with my hifi audio setup and was initially thinking I'd use my Xbox 360 to play CDs. Then, I stumbled across this article:
http://www.blog.gartonhill.com/xbox-360-is-not-an-audiophile-music-source/
The author claims the Xbox 360 degrades CD quality because it converts 16 bit 44.1 khz audio to what seems to be the only type of audio it can decode - 16 bit 48 khz. Apparently, bypassing the Xbox 360s built-in DAC will not solve this issue (it is simply digital to digital conversion after all). It seems rather strange that the Xbox 360 would do this. I was wondering, does anyone know why Microsoft would do this? What's the benefit? Also, to what extent will this impact sound quality?I was contemplating buying an external CD drive for my PC, would that be a good solution? Would I even be able to skip/pause CD tracks on PC with an external CD drive?
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Have you received your Dac? How does it compare to the xbox cd playing?
The xbox 360 slim had an optical out, so couldn't you just use that as a transport when playing CDs?
I haven't played CDs much since ripping them all to my NAS. But I recall they sounded fine on my original xbox360, and also through the HD-DVD addon drive as well. I still use my PS3 to play SACD once in awhile. The biggest issue with using these consoles to play CDs imo, is the fact they have extremely loud fans.
I have a decent vintage CD player, a Kyocera DA-310cx. I think it sounds worst than flac files through my SMSL SD192 pro.
I got my D30 a while ago and have played several CDs on it for several hours. CDs definitely sound cleaner to me when played through the DAC, and it is easier to spot details. I was pretty surprised at how much of a difference it made. I also use it for gaming, sounds amazing. I have the Xbox 360 E which has 3.5mm output but it still feeds digital audio to my TV via HDMI so I just connected my D30 to the TV and then used the RCA male to 3.5mm male cable to connect to my Xtrempro M1 amplifier. I also game on Wii and am able to bypass its internal DAC and AMP via the $10 Wii to HDMI adapter I bought and my audio equipment.
The 360's fan can sometimes be an issue, although I find its significantly louder when I'm playing busy FPS games as opposed to CDs. Most of the time I don't really notice it but I can see how it would bother some.
The D30 is nice but I feel like I should probably upgrade from my Philips SHP 9500 headphones and M1 amp if I want to get the most out of it (considering getting a Sennheiser HD 598 and Topping NX3). The only thing is that overemphasis in my headphones' FR has become more apparent since I started using it (voices sound more sibilant than before, for example).