I’ve been following the community for a while and last week finally took delivery of my Atom. For the time being I am running it through my old trusty Mission 780s and it’s sounding really good. I have also got a well loved Arcam CD62 that I want to connect to it. I have two questions, what cable should I be connecting the CD to the Atom? Some people seem to recommend digital coaxial and other feeds recommend RCA. The Arcam has both outputs as well as optical. My other question is what should be my next purchase to take the overall sound quality of my system up? I guess everyone is going to say speakers but are there cheaper tweaks I can make that would make a difference, cables etc. Thank you in advance.
I have a Rotel RCD-965BX connected to mine and prefer the optical. It’s not going to matter too much as I understand all analogue signals into the Atom are converted into digital anyway.
Welcome!
Are you mostly using CD as source or streaming is also on the menu? If so, for sure a good high res service provider will bring a smile on your face.
You have a nice streaming unit.
Personally I temporarily have both Tidal and Quobuz and still haven’t managed to pick only one, but I’ll get to it… eventually.
As for digital vs analogue cables it depends whether you want to use the DAC in the CD player or the Atom. My guess is the one in the Atom would sound better, so I’d expect digital to win. But it won’t cost you too much to try both and see which you prefer.
As for upgrades, yes I’d be looking to the speakers. But the first thing I’d do is actually do nothing for a while and enjoy what you’ve got. The problem with making changes too quickly is that once you’re on the upgrade path you can easily end up upgrading a component you’ve only recently acquired to match a change elsewhere in the system. This can prove expensive, though many of us have done it.
The Atom will digitise the analogue signal before sending to its DAC and preamp, so you will be using the Atom DAC regardless of which input you choose.
That doesn’t mean that the DAC and analogue output of the Arcam won’t add something to the sound compared to bypassing it. The only way to find out which you prefer is to try both connections and listen for a while.
These loudspeakers are superb.
I wouldn’t let them go before you finally found something better - its not easy.
Maybe they need more power than Atom have ?
I wouldn’t worry about digital or RCA cables, get some not expensive and see what input you prefer.
@Easynova - don’t be in a rush to change your speakers. They were fantastic speakers and unless the rubber surrounds on the drive units are degrading I suspect you would need to spend heavily to better them significantly on the end of your Atom.
I would make sure that you have proper stands (Solidsteel or similar) and some reasonable (not necessarily expensive) speaker cables.
I would go digital out from the Arcam to the Atom purely to minimise cabling. Any old cheap single RCA cable will carry the digital coax signal, but it would be worth investing in something better in due course.
Post some pics of the 780s on the relevant thread - I’m sure many like me would like a trip down memory lane (and I mean that with the greatest respect to those speakers!)
The 780s are in really good condition, couple of surface marks only. They are sitting on the original Mission stands I bought them with back in the day.
I’ve just googled them.
Front ported exactly as I remember them.
Were they branded Mission Cyrus 780 ?
I noticed another Mission 780 edition, not known to me, not front ported, curved wood on lower front, looks pretty different, I never heard these if thats your speakers ?
Thing is, though, those speakers will likely now be 30 years old or so and speaker performance generally deteriorates over time. I think Mission used ferrofluid in their tweeters and that can dry out over such a long period. Electrolytic caps in crossovers can dry out, too. That’s not to say they don’t still sound wonderful but just something to bear in mind.
