PC Peripherals DVD player for an audiophile??

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Raymond Jhirad

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Hi folks, This is my first post. I don't live in India and have basically been away since 1984. Hence, I dont know much about what is awailable there now. I am basically looking for a DVD player for my dad who lives in Pune. He is a purist and a true audiophile and when his Philips CD player finally went kaput last year, he had a hell of a time replacing it with another CD player - since everything has moved to DVD and home theater. Poor fellow had to pay 40k for a Marantz 5400. I have convinced him to finally go for a combo player that does it all so he can start watching DVDs and resort to the Marantz for serious listening. I noticed in the specs that the DACs are 20 or 24 bit - that should produce good sound (his main concern). However, I would really like to get him a carousel unit with HDCD, SACD, that plays MP3 and WMA (Bur Brown 24 bit converter with special filter would be nice). I have read some of the reviews/posts on the Philips models - like the DVP5106, though I am not crazy about the loading/ejecting mechanism it has. Without getting into really high-end stuff, are brands like NAD, ROTEL, REVOX, DENON, ADCOM etc available in India? Once again, I would prefer to get a 5/6 disc carousel unit. Your help in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Ray32825.
 
^Try the Arcam and Cyrus units, or even the Denon 1920.. all are available here. One question -> 5/6 carousel unit, won't that lead to worse sound quality?
 
The Denon 1920 will cost you about 32k - are you willing to put in that much? If you want a cheaper solution have a look at the The Toshiba SD-350E which costs about 8k over here. It support mp3/wma/divx etc. It also has HDMI out and supports upscaling. A great value buy, in my opinion.
 
Thanks guys! I will be looking into the models suggested. I was wondering if the not so common models are serviced there. Regarding the carousel units - generally the sound quality is not affected by the tray/carousel mechanism. It is basically the transport and the circuitry there after that is important. Some manufacturers have seperate power supplies for the audio, dvd, display etc. Best way to go ofcourse is to get a seperate transport, take the digital out ( coax, AT&T, optical Toslink, or balanced XLR) to whatever DAC you like and go from there to the preamp. I used to do that with the California Audio Labs combo of the Delta and Alpha(with two low distortion 12AX7 tubes on output stage). But it is much more convenient to be able to choose between discs in a corousel unit. Also, carousel units with seperate and twin converters (specially the Burr- Brown 24 bit package) for HDCD and SACD have much better specs than the ordinary 16 bit machines, however fancy the latter may be. The new HDCD CDs are recorded in 20/24 bits and are supposed to sound superior to the 16 bit red book standard.
In my opinion that depends on your equipment and what it can reproduce, your ears, and whether they can hear the difference. If you can easily hear the difference between a wave file and an mp3 file you may hear the difference between 16 bit encoded material and 24 bits. But then, you may have to be a true audiophile who prefers the sound of an analog vinyl recording to that of an ordinary digital CD. At this point the general public is not too concerned about HDCD or SACD, I wonder which direction it will go. I see a lot of equipment being offered with SACD now.
Once again, thanks for the posts/info, if you need anything from my end, don't hesitate to ask - audio or auto stuff, not gaming etc.
 
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