Esoteric DV-50: Any cdp's Significantly better?

I apologize for the spelling of my last post, I did not have proper lighting in my room, my father in law is recuperating here from cancer surgury, I had my HT showing Law and Order, his fav, and the lights were out. I will try to be better in the future.

No Disc, glad your feeling better.

Guys, I have also ordered the top of the line Esoteric from quintessince audio to compare in my system, when it arrives, I invite those who would like to hear, and experience, to email me.

If you know where I can purchase other HIGH END digital, in my area, with the right to return, without fee's, I would much appreciate. This would include the Meitner Dcc2, DCS-Elgar, Reimyo, ect. My cards can handle it, and I will buy the best. Yes, I am obsessed with finding, and owning, what IMHO is the best digital source.

Reb, if you are ever in the area, email me and we can get together, I have had different experiences, and I feel my system is very revealing.

AVGURU, please see my answers below,

Denon uses their famed ALU processing (an arithmetic logarithm) to "interpolate" a word length of 24 bits from a standard 16 bit redbook cd. They've been using this technology for the last 10 years in everything from their recievers to their dvd players to their cd players.

>>> Denon has refined their algorithm for the 24 bit expansion. There are many other companies using similar techniques. Philips SACD1000 and even the little Pioneer 563a are also expanding to 24 bit. Of course, the “engine” incorporated to do the job is really important. In the Denon 3910 case, as I mentioned earlier, this is done by World’s best “hands down” Analog Devices SHARC Audio DSP.

This is a proprietary process that Denon has developed. Other more "hi-fi" companies such as Ayre, Cary, Arcam etc accomplish the same feat through a different process that I'm not technical enough to explain. But the results speak for themselves and I don't think most people reading this post feel that Denon's sound is anywhere close to the performance levels of the companies mentioned above. And to be honest, there are great 1 bit cd players on the market today that sound incredibly good. So I'm not even sure if interpolating data to a larger bit stream is critical to obtaining great sound.

>>> See the above answer. The Bitstream conversion has nothing to do with the bit rate expansion.

Regarding upsampling (atually there's no such thing and it should be referred to as oversampling)your comment "there's no theoretical or practical advantadge to upsampling the cd" is not true. While Denon may have come to this decision after reviewing the overall design and performance criteria of their units, there are many other companies (including Marantz which is now owned by Denon) that are very high on the concept and use it with regularity. Ayre, Arcam, Cary, Musical Fidelity, Esoteric, etc are but a few of the companies that routinely use oversampling in their cd players and with GREAT RESULTS! All of the above companies are much more highly respected than Denon when it comes to their engineering design and "know how".

>>> Oversampling and Upsampling (actually Re-sampling) are two different things. It does not matter to me what the other companies do with “GREAT RESULTS” because whatever they do does not sound right. The Re-sampling to any rate does not improve the quality of a CD. This can be clearly seen in a Spectral Analysis after Re-sampling which I have done using the best CD/DVD mastering program available in the World. It is also clearly stated in their instruction manual that re-sampling the CD will NOT improve the audio quality. Further more, when CD is re-sampled to 96 KHz or 192 KHz there is actual loss of information because these frequencies do not divide by 44.1KHZ but to 48 KHz. So mathematical truncation is used for the conversion. Re-sampling to 96 or 192 makes it actually worse than just keeping it as 44.1 but is really good marketing bringing a lot of money.

I agree that oversampling is not always necessary to achieve good sounding cd playback. But I just want to make it clear to everyone reading your comments that was a decision Denon made and reasons could be varied...anywhere from cost concerns to the design of their unit not being compatible with oversampling. You will note that on Esoterics's UX1 player they decided not provide all of the oversampling options available on the DV 50. One of the primary reasons for this was the design of their transport made it unnecessary to do so.

>>> That was a wise decision for Teac. Again, oversampling is something different that happens in the Digital Filter for PCM and uses LINEAR interpolation. The transport has nothing to do with that.

Regarding the DV-50's transport being the same as the Pioneers, please do not understate the importance/impact of adding the clamping mechanism...which reduces jitter and allows the laser mechanism to track the disc in a more linear and accurate fashion. In my mind this modification alone puts the Esoteric transport on a higher level above the Pioneer. Furthermore, the laser tracking mechanism and the laser wavelengths (which are adjustable) help by determining how far the player is capable of digging in to the "cd pits" and obtaining the recorded information.

>>> The clamper is nicer, I agree, but this is not necessarily removing the jitter from the transport. Also the clamper has nothing to do with the Laser tracking. The Laser tracking mechanism and laser wavelengths (which can not be adjustable) remain untouched and original to the Pioneer transport found in the DV-50.

As you know, many laser tracking mechanisms travel on a thin wire that in itself is subject to vibration. The better companies such as Esoteric do not use this method..or they use a better version. In my mind the outer housing,laser mechansim, etc are all part of the transport and in this regard the Esoteric does have a better transport than the Denon. You are free to disagree as I'm sure you will.

>>> There is no Laser mechanism that travels on thin wires. If you are referring to the actual top lens of the Laser pick up then yes it is suspended in thin wires in 99% of the cases including DV-50. The ONLY laser pick up in the World to date using pure magnetic field for the top lens suspension in the Laser pick up and radial primary tracking is Philips. As I mentioned above, the Laser tracking mechanism in the DV-50 is not upgraded in any way from its original Pioneer state.

Regarding comparing the DSP (Digital Surround processing)chips in both units that really doesn't concern me as I'm much more interested in analog audio performance (op amps, DAC's and their associated filtering processes) than I am with digital processing..most of which is associated with video and digital processing speed. Is the Denon the better DVD player? Probably.

Do I care? NO!

Is HDCD a nice feature to have? Maybe to some but not to me since the in my listening tests the use of the three oversampling filters can bring a level of resolution to cd's that's better than HDCD.

>>> DSP stands for Digital Signal Processing and I was referring strictly to the AUDIO DSP in the Denon which, again, is superior to the one in DV-50. As for the HDCD decoding, you really need to hear how HDCD sounds with the Denon 3910 compared to other HDCD or non HDCD machines. The Analog Devices DSP is practically unbeatable.

Alex, 711 has given me several extended listening auditions of your units and I think they sound incredible..much better than the DV 50 in terms of musicality. And if you are successful in bringing the DV 50 to a level of performance on par with your APL 3910 I will gladly be one of your next customers requesting an upgrade. But I just had to respond to your comments and imho the build quality, transport and overall engineering found in the DV 50 is on a much higher level than the 3910. To be able to use the lesser Denon platform and take it to a level of performance that surpasses the DV 50 is high praise indeed and a testament to your modding skills!

>>> I am glad that you liked my 3910. It is actually not modded, it is my own machine. All I use from it is its transport and DSP just like many other companies like Krell, Musical Fidelity (Philips). Marantz (Philips, Sony, Pioneer). Teac (Pioneer), etc. The digital information from the transport is taken to my own DAC board then to my own tubed Analog stage which are powered by my own power supply.

The only better thing about DV-50 compared the Denon is its much nicer enclosure, nothing else. Of course, the DV-50 DACs, Analog stage and Power supply might be and I am sure are much better than the Denon, but I do not have any reasons to care about that because I completely bypass and disable them with my re-design. Since ALL I care is the transport and DSP of a given machine, the Denon 3910 makes better platform than the DV-50 at least theoretically. I do have DV-50 coming in for evaluation so the results will be announced soon.

Now, if you ask me which machine in current production features the best transport, I will say it is Teac VRDS in the UX-1 and X-01. There is nothing better currently available. I can not comment on their DSP though. It would be nice to use one of these for a platform but their price tag is really high. Who knows, I might be able to do it some day.

Regards,
Alex

Mr. Jsala, nice to hear from you!

The 2900 and 3910 transports are absolutelly identical. The tray loading mechanis, and clamper were re-designed in the 3910 and although it makes a cheap funny noise it is better than the 2900. What makes the 3910 a winner is its better Audio DSP design. The major flaw with the 3910 is its Master Clock circuit. The 3910 owned by 711 Smilin has compromised Master Clock upgrade which is still not to my liking and is about to be completely removed (bypassed and disabled) from the machine. My new coming Master Clock generator will be installed soon. If my 3910 sounds good now, just wait until I upgrade it with the new Master Clock.

I hope you are doing well! BTW, the 563a with the new DAC board is now reality. I just completed the first one. I now have a option of using Tamura transformers for its Analog stage. It sounds really amazing.

Regards,
Alex

Hi guys, a bit late to jump in here as the thread has just been brought to my attention. The shootout was certainly interesting and I am obviously pleased with the results.

I believe that this has been cleared up already, but the unit we modified for the customer in question is the Sony DVPS-9000ES, not the XA-9000ES.

RE the 3910, we do have a unit here that we are working on and I am impressed with the stock unit. I have some 'new' parts on order to complete the work and I will be posting when the mods are available. We will be selling complete new units with mods at that time.

Thanks,

Dan Wright

Alex,

Thanks for your comments. I am not going to get into a long theoretical and technical disertation with you on the merits of oversampling vs. "resampling", nor am I going to debate who makes the best Analog DSP Chip, nor am I going to debate the superiority of who has the better transport.

But I will say this:

Oversampling or re-sampling is widely used by many consumer electronics companies involved in musical equipment manufacturing and musical reproduction. Keyboard companies like Yamaha, Korg and Roland use oversampling to produce better and more realistic piano, drum and orchestral sounds on their keyboards. Audio companies like Ayre, Cary, Esoteric, Arcam use oversampling to produce better sounding, higher fidelity equipment audio equipment.

True, whether this is better or not is subjective based based on the preferences of the listener. But to my ears and millions of other consumers who are buying these products, resampling offers major improvements that are audibly discernable and desirable. To my ears, oversampling (when done correctly) is a pleasant enhancement that brings about a sense of higher fidelity and a more realistic sound. I agree with you that it does not (using your words) "improve the sound of the cd" which I think is more aptly put as "improve the music recorded on the cd" but it DOES offer the potential of making what's already there much more pleasureable, richer in tonal texuture and increasing the detail presented. Oversampling doesn't always sound better but I find I prefer it much more than I don't prefer it.

It just makes sense that the more you take an original waveform and sample it "over and over again" you increase the resolution, detail and fullness of the original waveform. In the case of the high rez formats like SACD and DVD-A, they theoretically have the ability to actually reach these higher sampling rates/frequency. So audio mfg's have started incorporating DAC's that can interpolate a 16 bit word length to 24 bit and then re-sample it 192,000 times per second in an attempt to re-create these higher frequency rates that are an inherent part of these formats.

Anytime you re-sample a waveform this many times (and that fast) there will be errors in the reproduction of the 0's and 1's that represent the digital information. This is commonly known as jitter...or better yet timing jitter errors. And you are right, some of that information CAN BE LOST in the re-sample process.

However, the trick to resampling is in the post filtering process that attempts to re-create the lost information. On the really high end units this filtering process is quite sophisticated, occurs in mulitple stages, substantially reducing and virtually eliminating these errors to the point where they have little effect on the music we hear.

Regarding the Analog DSP, whether or not one chip is better (whatever that means) is really irrevelant. The selection of a particular chip by a manufacturer is usually determined by need, functionality and design criteria rather than what's the best out there. If a particular chip can do DSD conversion for SACD and offer the best bass management it may be construed as being the best chip. But if the mfg wants to convert the DSD stream to PCM (or better yet if the player doesn't offer SACD)or if the mfg decides not to offer extensive bass management features, then using the best most expensive chip is not important and does not add any improvements to the functionality of his unit.

At the price point of the DV 50 I'm sure the engineers could have "afforded" to incorporate the Analog Devices chip of the 2900. And I hope you're not trying to suggest that Denon uses better quality parts for their machine vs. the Esoteric because THAT IS CERTAINLY NOT TRUE. DENON IS A MARKETING COMPANY STRICTLY THINKING ABOUT MOVING LARGE NUMBERS OF WIDGETS, MAINTAINING OR INCREASING THEIR MARKET SHARE AND MAKING THE HIGHEST PROFIT POSSIBLE. IF THERE'S ANY COMPANY OUT THERE THAT DOES "REALLY GOOD MARKETING" AS YOU PUT IT IT IS DENON. My guess is that Esoteric did not use the chip because there was no performance advantage in using it.

Yes, I was referring to the top lens of the laser transport when I was talking about the thin wires. Thank you for your correction as I was writing very fast. However, you will find when you receive the DV 50 that it does not use the thin wire in the same configuration as 99% of the other units on the market. I stand by my original comments. And I am confused as to how you know this for a fact when you've never modded a DV 50 before? Mfg's routinely use Pioneer and Philips transports and modify them for their own use.

Anyway, I've enjoyed our dialogue on the issues above and I graciously "bow out"asI don't want to turn this thread into something other than what it was meant. I am anxious to see what you can do with the DV 50 in terms of modifications. When do you think you will have an idea of what improvements (if any) you can add? If I can make a suggestion, please look at the 5.1 channel analog outs as a start. The rca's are of average quality and the dac's are nowhere near the same quality of the 2 channel dac's.
The improvements alone would substantially increase the multi-channel performance of this unit.

AVGURU