decent cd + dvd player

souter

At the risk of calling almighty flames upon my head, is it not true that CD processing is a subset of DVD processing? It's all digital, any mechanical imperfections are corrected mathematically. Ergo, it should be eminently feasible to obtain a combined DVD/CD player for home theatre + music. Hell, should be available as a Taiwanese internal drive to fit my PC.

By way of clarification, I'm looking to unify my music (vinyl + cd) with home theatre (doesn't have to be too spectactular, lot's of Thomas the tank etc and the odd block buster) with a Yamaha RX-V2700 and an amenable wife. I appreciate this is far from audiophile nirvana, but it is reasonable compromise for me.
Where was I? That's it - can anyone recommend a slim line, DVD/CD player that is child proof, gives good CD 2ch, plays DivX etc, and is cheap?
And if it can fit into a low power PC, so much the better.

Idleater

AFAIK they are different lasers for CD and DVD.

A good DVD player would probably be pretty good at CD's.

The audiophile way of doing it would probably have a seperate DVD player, a HDDVD/BluRay/SACD player and a CD player.

DivX is not important to me so I can't help you there.

How do you find the 2700 by the way? I am comparing it to an Arcam which has way less "features" but supposedly more audiophile quality?

L.

souter

Cheers nereid. That would be the audiophile way alright, but it's not going to cut it so well with a wife and 2 inquisitive kids.
I might be able to spring for a dedicated CD and compromise on the DVD, hddvd/blueray/SACD aren't on my horizon.
For what it's worth I love the 2700 - as you can tell I wouldn't be much of an audiophile but it plays my old records with gratifying warmth and guitar loudness, there's some sort of circuitry bypass specifically for 2ch stereo. Yet to try it with CDs or the other 99% of fancy features.

Idleater

souter wrote:

there's some sort of circuitry bypass specifically for 2ch stereo. Yet to try it with CDs or the other 99% of fancy features.

Pure Direct ...

Yeah. I listened to that on the 2600 in Peats. It is good. Works great with a good set of speakers.

Have you connected the 2700 up via the ethernet yet? that is a feature I would go for all right.

L.

Red Alert

for 2 channel / CD you may get good results with a dvd player if you use a digital hookup to the amp.

Slaphead07

the only box that plays both CDs and DVDs well is an Arcam DVD player, the DV88+ will cost you about €1,800 so I'm guessing it's not an option!

souter

1.8k is a bit on the steep side alright. I had a browse at richersounds online and they have CDs more in price range (<200stg) from brands I'd heard of (marantz,nad). But I'm still a bit puzzled - skimming they're synopses they all have their own DAC, which I've already got on the 2700. The 2700 manual does show the CD -> phono in as recommended setup, with digital in as alternative.

I guess the thing to do is to shut up about it and just try it and see if it works for me.

btw nereid, no idea about the ethernet connection - I have no intention of getting MCE or yet more h/w in the shape of yamaha's MCX yoke, so I'd be going the linux geexbox route (assume it's compatible), but given my level of competence that may be a long way off.
Tried to play some stuff off a usb memory stick, but either I'm doing something stupid (quite likely) or else it requires a screen attached to operate.

My one box solution is now threatening to take over the room.

souter

Just in case anyone is following this, I eventually hooked up a mini-itx pc (small form and power consumption board supposedly for OEM home entertainment hardware) with old DVD-ROM. Running linux and after a world of pain had the DVD outputing S/PDIF from DVD ide, through the onboard sound chips and out via digital coax into amp.

To cut a long story short, despite my predications and expectations, the sound was distinctly underwhelming. Even to my cloth ears CDs weren't soundnig quite right - bit tinny in the vocals, mix a bit off.

Might be doing something wrong with with the amp setup, but quite a disappointment.