Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

I recently bought the Carver and moved my Technics SLP-1 to the bedroom.
The Carver sounds significantly better than the Technics which I thought
sounded good.  I have found two disadvantages to the Carver:

	1. There is no numeric keypad so random access and programming
	is done by repeatedly using the + and - keys.

	2. The display is not large enough to show current track and time
	played simultaneously.

The Digital Time Lens adds considerably to the fullness of sound.  I don't
want to start a war on Bob Carver's electronic magic, but I like the effect.

Jack

The Mission is a rip-off.  Take a $150 Magnavox 1040 and add a supersonic
filter and remote control and charge $700.  They are both quad-oversampled
dual D/A converter machines.  The Meridian is also based on this same Phillips
circuitry, but has many more improvements to the audio circuits.  The Mission
level of mark-up is typical.  "High-end" players don't cost much more to
build, but the consumer really gets soaked.

Go out and listen to the players.  Ignore 90% of the marketing literature.
The only important factors that affect the sound is the audio circuitry.
All the stuff about how many lasers, and shock mounting is crap - all players
these days read bits off a decent disk just fine.  The only difference between
error correcting systems is how they deal with multible non-correctable errors
which should be very rare.  The CIRC code can recover errors up to 3500
successive bits and hard errors only happen with 12000+ bits (8.5 mm).

If the marketing literature doesn't rave about the quality of the analog
sections, assume it is crap.

So, what I hear you saying is that features such as sampling rates, the number 
of lasers incorporated, and shock resistance are of minimal importance since 
most CD players are adequate in these categories - its the filtering technique 
which counts.  Right?
If so, then this would account for all the bickering over whats best in 
filtering algorithms.
Moreover, it would be difficult then to categorize players such as Pioneer, 
Marantz, and Technics in the low-end (like we do when pertaining to other 
audio equip.) while labelling players such as Mission, Revox and Carver in 
the mid to high end.
How then do companies such as Revox account for $1000+ price tags?  

RE.3
Well, I think some people who are rich enough will not be concerned with
the price.  Because of the law of diminishing return, a $1200 CD player might 
only be slightly better (in terms of fidelity) than a $500-600 player (if
they do differ at all).  I think the important factor in choosing CD players
are features (and therefore, the convienience of using it) and quality in
terms of workmanship and reliability.  I own the Sony CDP-102 and I am perfectly
happy with it.  Granted that I did not listen to a aweful many players when
I was in Japan (I listened to the Yamaha CD-3 and Denon) nor did I compare
the players in CDP-102's range with much higher priced machines.  I still
feel that there is not much difference between machines.  I forgot to mention
that one other important buying factor should be the error correction scheme.

The business over filtering algorithms is simple: Phillips did it right.
Sony and the other Japs did it wrong, but are now wising up and using
oversampling and dual DACs (Sony's top model with outboard DAC, anyway).

Marantz and Nakamichi are the two Japanese companies that use Phillips
technology.  Nearly all top machines use Phillips technology.

ADS claims they use only one DAC because they can compensate for interchanel
phase shift (indeed true) but avoid problems of mismatched DACs (which is
really a manufacturing problem because it costs too much to use precision
components in their opinion).

It is somewhat difficult to catagorize cd players with all the marketing
hype around.  But still, the low-end players will not make any claims about
the high quality of their ANALOG circuitry, whereas the good ones do.  I
am talking about basic circuitry, and not adding features like Carver.

NAK and Revox can somewhat justify their price because they do indeed use
better components (ie resistors and capacitors) and better power supplies.

I havn't decided how important the filtering stuff is.  I can hear differences
in component quality, but have never experimented with phase coherrence because
nearly every audio component adds some shift, especially most speakers. 
The CD masterers add tremendous distortion when they have to do the analog
to digital conversion, probably using 11-pole or more filters.

Fancy resistors and capacitors don't move the merchandise in the mass market.
Price competitive player makers can't justify $thousands greater expeses
on resistors and capacitors if its not going to sell more players or increase
the selling price.  It makes a better sounding player, but 99% of the market
can't tell, or can't tell in most showrooms, or reviewers can't tell the
difference.  Listening for a difference takes a long time with different
brands of a component, an infrequent opportunity.

Shopping for audio components should be like shopping for anything else.
Go try the very best product in the field, be it cars, chocalate, clothes,
or CD players.  Get to know it well, and then try the products you can afford
and see how they stack up against the best and which one comes closest.

The educational advertising method has worked well for sellers over the last
20 years.  Unfortunately, many sonic compromises were made for the sake of
sine-wave performance specifications.  CD players pose a marketing challenge
to makers wanting to differentiate their player from their competitor's since
spec's are nearly identical.  The answer is more gimmicks.  Beware.

Mark

Very interesting ....
I can remember back last year at this time listening to the Marantz CD-54,
I believe? Don't quote me on the model.  It was reviewed by Sterio Review some 
time ago.  Priced roughly in the $400 - $500 range.  
But at that time I kept saying to myself .. "Marantz?, Marantz? 
how good can this be?"  Don't get me wrong, I don't put Marantz in the same 
class as Pioneer or Sanyo.  However, when categorizing names I don't think of 
stacking Marantz up against the Harmon Kardon's, and ADS's either.  In 
my mind I guess I put the name Marantz up with the Yamaha's and Sony's.  
Whether this is fair/justified/whatever.. is subjective, however, for this 
kind of $$$ one looks hard at the Carvers and NAD's.  Good to know though that 
they use the Phillips technology - somewhere I remember hearing this from 
someone else.

Your right about the "bottom line" being the listening test.  One feels 
guilty taking up a guys time listening to a number of players knowing 
perfectly well in the end he'll buy it mail order.  

If its true that all manufacturers add a little extra to compensate for the 
loss in phase coherence during conversion, then Carvers deck has got to look 
attractive - after all that is what the Time Lens is all about.  Right?
But then again, why not purchase the Magnavox and the Time Lens serperately,
I understand that Carver has a model thats sold by itself.

By the way have you been able to audibally detect a significant difference in 
sound between the Phillips units and Jap designs?

I think that the Carver Digital Time Lens costs about $250 retail.  Cuomo's
sells it for 200.  The Carver CD player sells for $650 but can be had for
$550 or less.  The January Stereo Review has an interesting article describing
some listening tests comparing different CD players.

The article also said that you should only use the DTL for "poorly recorded
CDs" but not on "CDs that are not poorly recorded".  I'm not sure how you
really tell the difference.  The article doesn't explain how to tell the
difference.  I like the sound of all of my CDs with DTL on.  It provides a 
much richer and fuller sound.

The latest issue of Stereo has a double blind listening test on several
popular models of CD players.  They were not attempting to differentiate
in terms of goodness, just whether you could detect a difference.  It appeared
that they tried to take a more structured approach to the problem. No ragging
on Stereo Review please - this is not another Julian Hirsch "I love it".  This
was some independent person who makes his living engineering equipment to
perform such double blind tests.

Then in this month's audio there is some guy with a "golden ear" who stretches
the limits of audio techno jargon as he proves how he can distinguish, and
then describe in gruesome detail, the difference between several different
CD players.  This guy is truly amazing - he gives me the feeling he could
split hairs with a chain saw.

- peter

So what was the conclusion in "Stereo" ?  Could anyone hear a difference
or not?

-pd

RE: .6
Most players with one DAC DO NOT compensate for interchanel phase error.
Sony does in its ultralinear line.  ADC probably does too.

RE: Stereo Review.
It seemed that for most of the players, folks could tell a difference, but
sometimes only with test signals and not music.

A .2 db level mismatch was clearly identified.  Carver's time lens had frequency
response changes which also made it identifiable.

There were some problems with the test.  First they used Hitachi cables which
are poorly rated.  More importantly, the test was done in 4 hours, which
is very fatiguing and doesn't give much time for listening.  I'm sure they
spent much more time and money (and page space!) on the photographs of the
CD players!!!!!!!!!!!!

The test apparatus works by first playing the reference player (top Sony
unit) and then randomly playing either the reference or the test unit.
Both players have to be playing the same disk in exact sync.  The problem
with this procedure is that when you listen to each machine, you are listening
to something different - namely different parts of the same music.  Perhaps
this is why the test signals were more revealing - the source was the same
and the only variable was the player.  I like comparing the same snippets
of music between two components.

Mark

Is the world coming to an end? Stereo Review admits to differences in the sound
of CD players! Next they will try to tell the world that amps and preamps sound
different as well! Can the high end market take this stress? (Sorry I couldn't
pass this up)

Seriously, if you are looking for a high end CD player, my advice is to wait;
that's what I am currently doing. Several respected high end companies are on
the verge of releasing CD players based on the Phillips technology, with quality
analog back ends. This should give the current leaders (Meridian, Mission, and
possibly Nakamichi, Kyocera, and the high end Sony) something to compete with.
With folks like Krell, PS Audio, Spectral, Adcom and others getting into CD, I
expect that there will finally be some CD players worth listenng to. Don't plan
on taking any of them home for anything less than a 4 digit price tag, thou. 

Well, Stereo Review's article had a very wishy-washy conclusion: there were
differences, but they really didn't matter. The data were more interesting
than the comments.

Me, I'm waiting for one from Soundesign with a built-in coffemaker and
microwave. 

How accuratly do the pictures hanging at the Renoir exhibit have to be
aligned?  Would having the sides within 1 degree of vertical satisfy the
general public?

Or would the exhibit be so much more satsifying if someone came in with
a laser interferometor and replaced all those 'passive picture hanging
components' with something *really* accurate, so noone could detect the
slightest misalignment even on a direct A-B comparison to some NBS reference?

- Jim

What a good point.  I'm sure they don't go around with fancy equipment in
art galleries/museums.  What they do however is set up pictures so that
they LOOK good.  The placement and lighting isn't done with test equipment.
It is adjusted and refined until it looks good.

SR doesn't dare threaten thier religion by asking reviewers if the players
sounded good, they just wanted to know if they sounded different so that
they could justify it away with myriad technical explanations like the holy
Flat Response.

From the appearances of that article in SR, the study was done by the
company that makes the ABX comparator and was then presented to SR.  What
it actually said was that on test signals that there were noticeable
differences between early CD players (notably the Sony CDP-101) and modern
players, but also that most current players sound alike.
				Steve

ABX has been trying to promote their product for years. This should be a
real boon, up to now they have succeded in masking everything from the 
listener. 

Like the guy said go listen to some. Forget the technostuff, the manufacturers
dont know what to measure so they are still running tests that applied to
tubed equipment but do not have anything to do with the sound differences
between solid state analog and digital/analog designs.

Your ability to actually sit and listen is obviously going to be biased
toward small if you intend to shop at the local Hi-fi store then order thru
a catalogue.  At some point you have to make up your mind whether price or
sound is more important.  The audio store proprieters I know can spot a
person who is using them a mile away, and dont go out of their way to be
helpful.

Walt

The recent issue of Stereophile Magazine did some comparisons
between CD players and noticed some substantial differences.  But,
most of the differences between players seem to have something
to do with when they are made.  Newer players are better than the
players which came out 6 months ago and those were better than
the players from 6 months before that.

The logical conclusion is that the players made in a year or two
from now are going to be so much better that the player bought today
for $1000 will be worth about $200 in two years.

The conclusion:  Buy a decent cheap player today (say the Magnavox
1040).  Use this player while building up a CD collection. (Just
think how many CDs one could buy for the difference in price).
When the CD market settles down some, then, buy the best CD player
around.

I like this idea.

--Roger

When you consider how young this consumer technology is, and how far its
predecessors (Disk and tape) have come from their infancy, its scary to
think how good it could be when it matures. 

Walt

The recent issue of Stereophile Magazine compared several between CD
players and noticed some substantial differences.  But, most of the
differences between players seem to have something to do with when they
are made.  Newer players are better than the players which came out 6
months ago and those were better than the players from 6 months before
that. 

One can assume that the players made in a year or two from now are going
to be so much better that the player bought today. Therefore, that
top-of-the-line player costing $1000 will be junk and worth about $200
in two years. 

The conclusion from this article:  Buy a decent cheap player today (say
the Magnavox 1040).  Use this player while building up a CD collection.
(Just think how many CDs one could buy for the difference in price).
When the CD market settles down some, then, buy the best CD player
around. 

I like this idea.

--Roger

I like this idea, too. That's one of the reasons I snapped up a D5-Deluxe
on sale at $217 right before Christmas.  Additionally, when the state-of-the-art
finally arrives, I'll retire the D5 to walkman-type use. No planned obsolesence
here.

Dave

I just bought a Yamaha CD, and am VERY impressed with its quality.  I
can definately tell that the oversampling helps a great deal, compared to
those decks which don't have that feature.  Mine has programming, +/-
indexing, fast forward, fast reverse.  At a local store here in Colorado,
I picked it up for under $250.00 on sale, and would recommend it to anybody.

Dan

re .20

Dave, we too went for the D-5, only we got ours a year ago, when you had to beg
to get one for the $299 list. Unless you want the portable feature (you say you
do), I wouldn't recommend it as a bargain CD player. The Magnavox is less
expensive, and the D-5 has to be the worst sounding CD player I have listened
to. You know thay had to take short cuts to make it so small, and they hurt. I
understand repairs are a nightmare; our unit was in twice. The first time they
just swapped it, the second time we did without for 6 weeks. It IS cute, thou,
and we really don't regret it, as we too plan on using it as a portable unit. My
wife wanted it to one-up an office partner who had a walkman tape player. That
it does quite well. 

Re .22:
     I have owned a D-5 since June - it has had frequent use, sounds great
and has never failed.  I too had the idea that it was a "temporary"
player until I figured I could afford a "real" model - it was, at the time,
by far the cheapest player around ($219) and I figured I could eventually
use the portability (which I already have).  Perhaps the early units had
significant problems?
				Steve

Re: .22:

	Bob, I agree with Steve here - I listened to many players at home
in my system before buying the D5.  Maybe there have been mods, 'cause mine
sounds fine. I think it's a good bargain at $217 or so while waiting for
the PS Audio player to become available.

Dave

re .24 re .22

I didn't mean that it was BAD, just that there is better. I have the Digital
Domain test disk, and can clearly hear noise on its silent track with the volume
turned up all the way (agreed - not normal listening conditions). It just wasn't
there on the Kyocera player (>$1K) where I auditioned the PS stuff. 

BTW, where did you get your news about the PS player. I haven't heard anything
other than that they were working on one. 

I called PS and spoke to an engineer!

Today, I talked to John Hillig (Musical Concepts) who just got back from
the CES show.  He was not overly impressed with the PS - said it sounded
a little gritty like PS's other electronics.  He liked the Kinergetics CD
(Yet ANOTHER Modified Magnavox) from what he could tell in existing listening
conditions.

My dealer has had a PS in stock already - and sold it within 1 hour. He says
PS's next production run is not scheduled until mid February! Apparently,
they made enough to send each dealer one and to have some for the CES show.

Moncrief, in a recent IAR, rated the PS player in class 1AA.

Dave