Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

    I do not have perfect pitch. I am not a "golden ear". I do know
    what I like and don't like. Now that I have a new preamp I've opened
    up a former bottle-neck in my system ($239!). It is easy for us
    engineers to get hung-up in the specifications and forget the sound,
    or to get hung-up on the sound and forget the music.
    
    What is important? The money, the music, the specifications or the
    experience. I say the experience. What is the experience depends
    on the individual. What I like may turn off many others. Some get
    their kicks out of aquisition (spending money is a side effect of
    this!); some get theirs out of blowing their minds (and some times
    their speakers) with high level; some like to tinker.
    
    Isn't it nice we have a forum to share these experiences with others,
    even if we don't share their level of enthusiasm or commitment?
    
    I feel that Mark has some good points about improving Magnavox CD
    players. I'm sure mine would benefit by his changes. I've decided
    not to do them. They don't suit my needs at this time. Mark may
    say my player sounds (not to his liking) bad. I don't care - I like
    it. I might like the modified player better; but I don't care enough
    to make the mods. BUT that doesn't mean that I won't read, with
    interest, Mark's ideas.
    
    Reg - would you please explain your title? Thanks from us dumb cowboys!

    RE: .0, .1
    
    Like the MTV commercial says....some people just dont get it.
    
    Walt

    I've been contemplating a flame response to Brian Reid's opinions
    for the last couple days.  I've resisted for several reasons:
    Brian is a respected computer scientist and cook.  He has done a
    lot for usenet.  His attitude is decidedly close-minded (like most
    of net.audio) and anti-intellectual; I can't hope to open it to
    inquiry and a less convicted opinion.  There are enough flames already.
    Finally, attacking someone like Brian will cause people to ignore
    anything I have to say.
    
    On the other hand, since no one else is attacking him, I might have
    to anyway.  :-)
    
    My version of a fable:
    
    You can buy a fine text processor with editing capabilities for
    about $0.10.  Its called a pencil.  An order of magnitude more money
    gets you a text processor without editing.  For another order of
    magnitude, you can buy a calligraphy pen.  Why would anyone want
    to spend an additional 3 orders of magnitude more money for a digital
    computer with PostScript processor and laser printer.
    
    Is it worth 100000 times as much money to write with PostScript
    than with a pencil?  The same ideas (or lack of) still come accross.
    
    Audio, by comparison is a bargain with only about 3 orders of magnitude
    range.
    
    
    BKR's statement is totally unsubstantiated.  He displays no knowledge
    of simple audio electronics.  If he did, he would know that expensive
    amplifiers have more than just better face plates.  Of course, if
    he knew that then he would know better than to lump all "digital"
    audio products together as if because some part of them were digital
    that their analog parts are also equivelent.
    
    Limitations of the CD standard are:
    1.  Sampling rate.
    2.  Linear quantization
    
    Limitations of implementations:
    1.  Phase shifts and ringing induced by anti-aliasing filters in
    	recorders.
    2.  Phase shifts and ringing induced by anti-imaging filters in
    	non-oversampled CD players.
    3.  Interchanel phase shift induced by single DAC players with no
    	or minimal correction.
    4.  Near state of the art 16 bit D/A and A/D converter usage pushing
        accuracy, linearity, monotonicity, and noise.
    5.  Poor quality electronics in the analog section of both recorders
    	and players.
    6.	Limited error correction capability in most CD players.
    
    Of course, all the digital chauvinists ignore all these issues.
    "Don't confuse me with facts."

	What does knowledge of electronics have to do with it? If my
	ears tell me that I have to spend an order of magnitude more
	money (where the amount that's based on is somewhat higher than
	the cost of a pencil) to get something that sounds perceptibly
	(barely) better, then I'm a fool to spend the money when it
	would be put to much better use buying more music to listen to
	(not to mention food, clothing, shelter...). That's what Brian
	seems to be saying.
	
	I don't need to be confused by facts - I like what I hear. What
	more is there to audio?
	
	Mike

    The other thing that anti-CD'ers seem to lose sight of is that
    the (obviously debatable, since it *is* debated) sonic superiority
    of CD's is just *one* aspect in favor of CD's.
    
    Do they sound better than vinyl records? I don't know, nor do I
    particularly care. I do know that they sound better than records
    played on equipment that I can afford. I do know that I haven't
    yet had to put up with pops, clicks, and skips on a CD. I do know
    that they sound quieter to me. Maybe there is some sort of trade-
    off involved, and that CD's lose something else, but so what? All
    the CD's I have bought sound good to me (except the couple of
    Rolling Stones CD's I have), and while I'm impressed by certain
    aspects of the sound, I care more about the music than by the sonic
    quality. Which is why I, like Bruce, will probably never make any
    of Mark's suggested mods to my Magnavox. It may well be able to
    sound better with the mods, but it sounds good enough to me as is.
    	But more important *to me* is that CD's do not wear, that they
    take less rigorous care, that they are one medium that I can take
    and play anywhere (once I get a D-7, that is :-)), and that they
    take up less space than LP's. All of these factors taken together
    put me in the CD camp. Are they worth the extra cost? To me, they
    are, just for the convenience factor.

    --- jerry

I have been doing audio for about 18 years now.  When I started it was
really easy to differentiate the good from the bad and boy was there a lot
of bad.  As audio stuff developed the good got better  and the bad
improved dramatically.  Reasonable sound can be gotten from a lot of equipment
which was unthinkable years ago without going for the 'high end' stuff.
This has put pressure on the high end people as the low end equipment has
moved up into the mainstream.

Today it is very difficult to introduce equipment which sounds so much different
(better?) that people's attention will be focused onto your equipment without
a lot of marketing hoopla.  CDs has aggravated this problem greatly.  I have
seen all the debates of good turntable vs CD and find it very interesting.
To my way of thinking no matter how esoteric the turntable, those folks are
fighting an uphill battle because the basic media they deal with stinks.
I am not saying that an analog recording on vinyl sounds bad, what I am
saying is that the record carries to many intrinsic negatives to make it
viable for the future (all the problems associated with plastic).  Think
about it for a moment.  If you look at what the process of extracting 
information off a record really is.  We use a polished stone at the end
of a metal stick which scrapes inside a groove in the plastic and then we
record the movement and convert this into a tiny signal which we then
amplify to get music.  Given the electronic age we are living in today's
turntables and records have more in common with the Edison tube then they
do with modern day audio.  Its a crude method (albeit, its been matured
to death) but its days are numbered.  Are people still going to be arguing
for records when they introduce solid state recordings - the whole damn
thing on a 500 mb chip which you just plug into your machine and down line
load.  As far as I am concerned CDs are great but until they get rid of
all the mechanical garbage they are still pretty crude.

As for audio in general, electronics, as it has developed over the years,
has compressed the high end so badly that you have to have GOLDEN ears,
do double blind tests etc. to try and convince yourself that this sounds
better than that.  It seems people spend more time arguing about it because
its harder to prove.  Because of this we have a whole new set of terms to
describe this new ethereal difference that supposedly this new high
end equipment offers.

A long time ago it was easy, the garbage sounded like
garbage and there were no arguments.  Today even the mid hifi stuff is pretty
good, maybe not as reliable, powerful (certainly pretty) but not bad.  CDs
make mid fi even better even if the purists rag constantly about everything
from error correction and capacitors.  What kind of error correction do they
have on lps?

Well the bottom line of all this is that there will be audio purists and
esoteric audio companies but it's getting harder and harder to distinguish
yourself as being significantly better then everyone else and still be
able to make a product that can sell.  Maybe that's why marketing is becoming
more important.  You need pros to try and distinguish between all the
different products that are bombarding the consumer - even if the difference
is bull shit.  Remember when McIntosh never advertised - all they had were
their audio clinics?

pj

I agree pretty strongly with the opinions above, in that we are very far
out on the asymptote now as far as audio electronics goes.  I built my
first 'stereo' in the 6'th grade (2 50C5 beam power pentodes, with a 12AX7
resistance coupled preamp stage, driven by a ceramic cartridge), and have
had pretty much monotonically increasing quality since then.  It used to
be a challange to merely eliminate hum in my equipment, let alone worry
about real nuances.

The problem with 'golden ears' is that they will forever stick their
heads in the sand, and not do some simple, controlled, psychoacoustic
experiments on their own equipment, to see what is really audible and why.
In particular, you would find it amazing how much distortion you can
insert (a good fraction of a percent) before its really noticable,
when this is *ALL* you have changed.  This is hard to reconcile with
the vanishingly small distortion that normal electronics introduces
nowadays.  Further, non-null differences between preamps, amps, etc,
center on very small frequency response errors - a good listener can
pick up on about .2 dB of difference, and this is hard to completely
eliminate.  But does .2 dB *really* matter in enjoying music?

At the same time, it is home entertainment, and if some perceptually
null change to one's equipment makes it more magical, then why not
do it?  Most consumer purchases can't be completely rationalized anyway,
so audio shouldn't be much different.

- Jim

    Yeah, pretty reasonable comments.
    
    What I object most to is the following attitude:
    
    CD = digital = perfect,
    
    which was promoted by Philips.
    
    Yes, the phonograph is crude, but the CD is far from perfect also.
    
    I consider CD players themselves to be nearly a solved problem (as
    Jim has said about amplifiers).  Once audiophile grade electronics
    are mated with the improved Philips error correction, successive
    improvements will be minor.  This will be all that the consumer
    can do and further improvement will depend on the record companies.
    
    I suspect the industry standard Sony PCM-1610 has a lot of problems
    and I will order the service manual and see.  Unfortunately, the
    improved PCM-1630's manual isn't out yet so I can't tell what they
    did to greatly improve the sound quality.  While the Sony is pretty
    much the standard in the industry, most engineers feel it is not
    as good as the JVC and others.
    
    I'm very hopeful on digital.  Audiophiles/digiphobes are the ones
    to thank because they have driven CD to improve.  If they had accepted
    or ignored CD we would be stuck with mediocrety.  Instead of pretending
    that problems don't exist, they are being addressed.
    
    

re: .9

I do not agree that change in audio is driven necessarily by audiophiles
griping that what's out there is not good enough.  Audio tends to be
very competitive (even more so now) and in many ways it is this competiveness
which drives manufacturers to change their equipment.  Sometimes these
changes result in better products, sometimes it results in less expensive
products with the same capability.  The quest to differentiate products
to offer a benefit (which gives you a hike up on the competition) may be
the driving force.

I am surprised at the dissatisfaction one has for a CD player which
has bad capacitors or whatever when you pay $169 for it.  What exactly
do you want for $169 anyways?  Sure its not the best, and I am sure
the people who make it know that  but profit is what drives most of
these decisions, not engineering excellence.  If you want a machine
that does the job right all the way through you can always buy it or 
modify it or whatever you want to do.

There will always be compromises in what goes in the box so as the
saying goes "you get what you pay for".  Look at DEC products and what
we charge and what we offer.  If you want cheap you can buy cheap, if
you want better stuff you pay for it.  IF you can take a cheap player
and for a few bucks and a few hours work make it into something you
really like isn't that a good thing?  What if the cheap players were so
bad nothing could help them but a hammer?

One other thing - look how young this product is.  In just a few short
years it has rapidly matured (only the beginning) and become one of the most 
successful product introductions ever to hit these shores.  I am sure there are 
a lot of people who will listen to these devices and be satisfied with
what they got.  For them the price was a good deal.  For those not
satisfied you can pay more, modify it, wait for the next generation
(always around the corner) or stick with plastic - the choice is yours.

pj

    One of the major points I gleaned from 'A Fable' was the observation
    that for some, the quest was more important than the objective.  
    
    I, personally, have always enjoyed the quest as much or more than
    the objective. That is one of the reasons sailing has such attraction
    for me. In the case of audio, I would have to be extremely well
    heeled to continue my quest if I were trying to buy my way to
    perfection. As it is, I do the design work myself (after absorbing
    all the data and work of others I can get my hands on). I also do
    the construction which satisfies the little craftman in me.
      
    The quest for perfection in audio is certainly very subjective.
    More so today than in years past, because the gap between
    the good stuff, the very good stuff and live has shrunk. Many people
    percieve that there is no difference and feel they have reached
    the objective. Others feel that all this 'quest' stuff just gets
    in the way of the objective.  The same crowds were saying the same
    thing way before CD - you may notice they have not bitched about
    the lack of background noise with CD - but ran out and bought their
    new player anyway. 
    
    It all boils down to perception. The fables author percieves that
    all is perfect in the world (or close enough to make any effort
    meaningless) and people who dont share his priorities must either
    be social misfits or snake oil salesmen. 
    
    (FLAME ON) What gets under my skin is when someone trys to tell me
    what I can or cannot hear and what my values should be(FLAME OFF).

    Walt

    In .9, a good point was mentioned in passing about the fact that
    digital is not 'perfect';  however, it has only been marketing and
    advertising that has ever claimed that it is (is this any surprise?).

    If you read the papers published during the gestation period of digital,
    the engineers that made this happen were quite aware of the imperfections,
    but the general consensus was that while there are some very small
    drawbacks in going to a 16 bit/44.1 kHz system, that the benifits
    over the LP far outweigh them.

    - Jim