DAC for a CD player

I have a VTA ST 70 and the VTA SP/PH10 pre-amp. I mainly use this for vinyl but I do have a load of CDs. My CD player is a plain vanilla Onkyo C 7030. Would I gain much in sound quality by going into a DAC (bypassing the internal DAC) and then into my SP 10?

The two DACs I've been looking at are the Cambridge DacMagic 100 ($100 off at A. A.) or the Music Fidelity V90-DAC. These are at the outer limits of my budget ($299).

Worth it?

Associated question....Is there any advantage to coaxial out over optical (toslink) out on the CD player?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Dave

Dave_in_Va wrote:

The two DACs I've been looking at are the Cambridge DacMagic 100 ($100 off at A. A.) or the Music Fidelity V90-DAC. These are at the outer limits of my budget ($299).

Dave

I'm thinking of giving the V90-DAC a try but now that you mention it the Cambridge looks interesting as well. I wonder under what circumstances you would use the ground lift.

Ground lift?

Sounds like something you'd normally run into with pro equipment using XLR or unbalanced connections. Some setups need the second ground (pin#3?) "lifted" or open to work properly. Mostly hummmmmm issues ...

In that case, there's either a switch to open that connection, or you need to get an adapter or just desolder the connector in the cable itself.

Or not ... ground lift?

In case anyone is curious, I ended up using the coax-digital out of my Onkyo CD player into the Musical Fidelity V-DAC II, out of the DAC into the acc. in of the SP-10. There was a major improvement. Now I can really enjoy my CDs as well as my LPs.

I also ran a 15' toslink out of my TV into the V-DAC and the audio from my Roku and DVD players is really improved also.

Lot's of improvement today for about $25 in cables.

OK, I came late to this party. I would have answered: it depends. It depends on the quality of the DAC in your CD player. Looks like you got it worked out. Good job!