Do I really need a Dac?

A good DAC would probably beat your CDP, but you also need a good 1.5m S/PDIF cable from Transport to DAC. And BTW, your transport will need to be replaced or improved. The jitter on older transports is really high. I have modded quite a few of them over the last 12 years.

You are looking at probably $1500 for the DAC (Wired for Sound DAC2), $4000.00 for a good transport or instead your old transport and a $600 reclocker and finally $500+ for a good 1.5m S/PDIF coax cable. You can do it for about $2700.00

This will transform your system. The source, particularly the digital source is the most important thing next to your speakers.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

No you don't. DAC's are just in the middle of their 15 minutes of fame. It will pass.

I would say yes, but there's only 1 way to find out . . .

a cd player has a dac, so the question is , can you find a dac and transport combination that perorms better than a cd player at a price point ?

Like most questions on these forums, yours does not have a definitive answer.

As Mrtennis said, if you have a CD player you already have a DAC. The questions then are whether the DAC you now have inside your CD player sounds as good to you as any external DAC you might buy instead, whether the rest of your system is resolving enough to let you hear the difference and whether or not any difference you hear is worth the additional cost of the new DAC.

My experience is that the reason there are lots of new DAC's available isn't because they're 'hot' right now but because that's where the R&D is being done and where the greatest technological improvements are being made. Of course there's marketing hype but that's the case with every other kind of audio gear, as well.

Only one way to find out if one works for you.
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