fe31nz:

 

It is not made clear exactly what outputs the KVD-821D has on its back panel - I can not find any photos of the back or a copy of the manual to download.  So I am guessing that it just has HDMI as a digital output and RCA analogue outputs.  With HDMI, it is supposed to support the 44.1 KHz audio of CDs as well as 48 KHz for DVDs.  But there have been a lot of DVD players where the CD audio has been resampled to 48 KHz instead of just passed through at 44.1 kHz.  If it does that, the audio quality will be slightly degraded.  The degradation is small enough that most people will not notice it, but audiophiles will.  If there is an SPDIF output, that should get the 44.1 kHz correctly, so if your Yamaha tells you it is getting 48 kHz from CDs, try SPDIF (if it is there and the Yamaha also has it).

 

The other problem with almost all CD players and DVD players when playing CDs is jitter.  When playing a ripped audio file from a hard disk or SSD, the data is just buffered and delivered to the DAC on demand from the DAC.  With a physical disc being played, the disc speed can vary a little or there are other problems with the clocking out of the data to the DAC, resulting in jitter in larger or smaller amounts.  Expensive CD players usually fixed this by decoupling the disc operation from the clocking out of the data, so that the disc was being read into large RAM buffers and then clocked out from the RAM buffers on demand to the DAC.  It is extremely unlikely that the KVD-821D will be doing this, so the audio quality is likely to be significantly degraded.  Jitter creates all sorts of artifacts in the sound, typically making it sound "muddy".  So it is really up to you to decide whether you find the audio quality from the KVD-821D OK or not.  I would not find it acceptable, which is why I recommend playing ripped CDs these days instead of using a CD player.

 

Really appreciate your reply mate. Clear, easy to understand, and side-steps the jargon. Thanks!