Hello there,
few days ago I bought Marantz CD40 vintage CD player as I wanted to hear that hype about it’s DAC and I was amazed how it sounds. Then after some time I wanted to A/B it with my SMSL pl200t transport into Naim ci102 and using Marantz connected to Naims RCA inputs. Using same exact CD (I have few duplicates) it sounds absolutely the same haha. So I thought okay, this is weird but this entire hobby is nuts so it’s maybe possible. But then I realised that maybe Naim is doing some magic and I was so annoyed haha… AI said my suspicions are right but then again I don’t believe it one bit so I wanted to ask here. Are analog inputs on Naim ci102 affected by some analog to digital conversation? I am not really listening to CD40 DAC? And if yes, why the hell would anyone want this!? What happens when I plug turntable here, tape… My whole life is a lie haha, I used Nakamichi deck and it sounded to digital and almost same as streaming so I sold it!!! I am so pissed I am planing on selling ci102 for a something less “robotic”.
Thanks, Nikola
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Hi Nikola, yes, the CI-102 digitises the analogue input via an ADC.
It does this mainly because it uses a sophisticated DSP engine for room tuning/speaker optimisation (which means digitisation is obligatory) and also so it allows you to stream the analogue source over the network.
When ADCs are closely matched to the DAC as in such an integrated design then they can be very transparent. If using the CD40 then while using the analogue input on the CI-102 it should therefore still capture much of the “character” of the TD1541A DAC chipset, but you may find you prefer going digitally via TOSLINK as the CI-102s digital bits should be very good indeed.
All the recent Unitis digitise their analogue inputs - this way there’s no need for unnecessary analogue pre-amp circuitry (this costs a lot of money to do properly well) and allows more resource to be put in other areas of the devices - and the ADC-DAC section is very good indeed (see my comments above about how transparent these can be when designed together) . Members here that own the new Unitis often use the analogue inputs for turntable front ends and if you didn’t know that the ADC-DAC was there, you wouldn’t believe it.
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I had a Nova and a Graham Slee phono stage, you would not have known the sound was digitised / converted from analogue
@Jimmy018 as both Richard and I have said this is normal.
Thanks for responding! So you want to say even if it’s digitalised sound is unaffected? My A/B testing can be called valid then? It’s really strange to me that good transport with good integrated amp from 2025. (like naim and smsl I mentioned) sound undistinguishable from vintage CD player costing 40 euros. That would be absolutely okay with me if both are used as transports with same DAC but this is odd and I can’t hel but wondering how will vintage marantz compare to my modern CD chain using all analog amp. Thanks
Yes you are. Whilst I have no experience of the C102, I do know that when an ADC & DAC are matched together, it can be exceedingly difficult if at all possible to distinguish the resultant sound from the original. So you absolutely do here the analog sound that went in, which if from some other DAC you would hear what the output of that DAC sounds like, and you would hear what the output of an analog source sounds like. This happens a lot, though perhaps still not very common in the high-quality end of the hi-fi market, though there are plenty that do it, but i understand it happens a lot with professional recording equipment. If only all digital recording or encoding where to use just one specific ADC, and that never changing from day , it would be potentially possible for all hi-fi DAC’s to be precisely , and takeaway the variability between the dozens of different the AC is available. But I believe there are a plethora of ADCs used at different stages in music recording, sometimes even through one then back to analog and then through a different one etc, hence hi-fi manufacturers finding something that reassembles the analog to the best they can achieve, with different approaches or sounding different.
BTW, doing A-B comparisons of analog and digital is only really meaningful if you are certain that the recordings in the two media are exactly the same, including the mastering – very often they are not.
Naim use ADC on their 2nd gen. Uniti products, but they don’t use them on any of their separate streamers such as the ND5XS2, ND555 etc. so I wonder if this tells you something about any effect it may have on performance. The Uniti products were released some time before the higher end separate streamers, and if the effect on sound quality really was neutral surely they could have used ADC on the later products. All this is just speculation though, as there’s no way we can make any meaningful comparisons.
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But the streamers don’t have analog inputs so there is no place for an ADC! The Uniti products have amps, with analog inputs as well as a streamer.
NSC 222 has, IIRC. (And cannot use multi-room on analogue inputs.)
Possibly also a different comparison at differing pricepoints.
A proper analog stage is best of all, but to do that properly where it makes a difference means a lot more space, resource and ultimately money, and may well be for nought if the overall design uses any kind of DSP for speaker/room adjustment where an ADC becomes mandatory.
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