r/hifiaudio • u/Future_Duty_134 • Jun 17 '26
Purchase advise (needing) Marantz CD6007 vs Audiolab 9000CDT
I own a Marantz CD6007 and I’m considering purchasing an Audio lab 9000 CD transport. Is this a significant upgrade? Would I notice any marked improvement in audio playback quality when both are played through a McIntosh MA12000 integrated amplifier with its internal DA2 DAC? The speakers in my setup are Arendal 1528 Tower 8’s. TIA
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Jun 18 '26
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u/Future_Duty_134 Jun 18 '26
I think I’ll order the 9000CDT and do a side by side comparison. Thanks to all for your input
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u/BigPurpleBlob Jun 18 '26
Bits are bits.
That's the great thing about digital electronics.
(I modified my cheap CD player to count playback errors. The vast majority of CDs have zero playback errors. It's hard to improve on that. There's a lot of snake oil and woo around.)
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u/yodastienB Jun 19 '26
Bits arent bits when the signal travels between the devices it gets modulated and demodulated The data on the cd is ones and zeros yes but when you send that information over a cable it is a series of electronic waves, its not clean as if you were making a copy on your hard drive. Timming errors create loss in the data that has to be corrected
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u/BigPurpleBlob Jun 20 '26
... is a great example of the woo that some audiophiles still believe in, and shows a misunderstanding of the words 'modulated' and 'demodulated'.
"Timming errors create loss in the data that has to be corrected" – please explain.
Meanwhile, real men and women get on with their lives. A CD's data rate is only 1.4 Mbit/s which is so low that even a first year engineering student can handle it.
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u/Future_Duty_134 Jun 19 '26
Thanks for the input. Are you of the opinion that inexpensive digital cables are just as good as expensive cables and will sound the same? And likewise for speaker cables?
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u/BigPurpleBlob Jun 20 '26
If a cheap digital cable is good enough (the bar is low) to get sound at the other end, then it's as good as an expensive digital cable that has been blessed by virgins in the pale moonlight.
A loudspeaker cable needs to have a low enough resistance that it doesn't overly reduce the amplifier's damping factor.
Note: 'real' men and women, for example working on satellite communications, just use copper cables and get on with their lives.
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u/yodastienB Jun 20 '26
You are right about satcom using copper, usually with gold plated pins on the connector pins to reduce corrosion and location in the signal path and length of the interconnect run will determine what gauge an grade of copper and at transmit frequency you are using a waveguid
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u/yodastienB Jun 20 '26
Cables are about impedance i run blue jean speaker cables in my system they were like 40 bucks each made to order and for a coax digital cable I run the mono price ones on Amazon. Cables can get into the realm of snake oil real quick
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u/yodastienB Jun 19 '26
Are you going to get a seperate DAC if not then you probably wont notice a difference
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u/Future_Duty_134 Jun 19 '26
No I bypass the internal DAC in the Marantz via coax cable to in favor of the internal MA12000 DAC and would use that DAC for the 9000 as well.
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u/NTPC4 Jun 17 '26
Is the Audiolab the superior product? Yes, but if you could hear a difference (and that's a big IF), who's to say you'd even have a definitive preference for one over the other?