Ruminations On CD Players

Ironic.  I find ASR useful and informative as I do have an engineering background, designed and modeled in Spice amplifiers, crossovers, and preamps. But most of us understand specs as currently understood are not the last word. I'll take a Hegel over a Benchmark amp any day. The irony is, I was tossed off ASR because I believed ( know) I could hear the difference between DACs and amplifiers. My wife can do with more precision than I. 

I suggested load variances as one factor effecting sound. I also mentioned dynamic compression in tweeters. Both quite real, measurable, but not in Amir's playbook. Harder to measure is the effect on IPS and VAS from bass transients with poor board layout or insufficient dynamic current. Again very real. I can even model it. I found by testing, tweeter breakup causing IM making upper midrange edgy. Again, Amir does not believe this so he banned me.  Not exactly scientific in my book, but it is his site. 

I only have about 500 CDs on my server.  Hitting Goodwill every week to grab any 69 cent one that looks' even mildly good.  I have not gone streaming yet as it takes too much effort.  I am an old guy and do not live with a phone attached to my hand and don't own a tablet.  Eventually.  Soooo much great music out there.  And Sooo much garbage to wade through. I wish I had any assurance that streamed files were at least CD quality.  From what I have heard and read, a lot are just old garbage up-sampled. I gather Qobuz is about the best. I have Prime, but found it to be a mess and did not have half of what I went looking for.

I compared some "HD" streamed files with the same music in RedBook and did not hear any difference,. Always a "but" and in this case, it was not showing the specific edginess that bothers me.  Nora Jones does not hit those notes. She is always smoooooth.  

So, I RIP with JRiver.  Play over USB to my DAC. WASAPI Exclusive, asynchronous. Testing buffer sizes, testing if -3 dB is best. May test ASIO as well but I don't see the advantage. Looking into host based oversampling, normalizing, and any other possible off-line processing to feed the DACs. Or, just a DAC like the RME or Cord that has the power internally.  My PC DVD transport, about $15, reads the disks 100% error free at about 5X. There is nothing else a transport need do.  Any jitter, noise, rise time issues are completely lost when the file is saved to disk.  Just physics.  We now have USB interfaces that don't mess up the signal, even in CH-FI. The DAC chips are all fantastic, which leaves the reconstruction (including clean power) as what effects the sound. Good and bad. 

If you want to call if "Neanderthal", that’s OK -- I don’t take it personally!

@stuartk Sorry, that wasn’t meant toward you at all but rather how the act of spinning CDs today seems to me.  That said, I do find it surprising you’re not discovering tons of new music you’d like to explore and listen to.  I feel like a kid in the audio candy shoppe and am constantly finding intriguing new music all over the place, and more often than not when I go to Qobuz it’s usually there in CD — and often times better — quality.  But, in the end we all experience audio and music the way we enjoy most and that suits us best, and that’s really all that matters. 

@soix 

Thanks for the clarification but the apology isn't necessary. I didn't take it at all personally -- I was simply attempting to be humorous, which doesn't always translate well  in a medium where non-verbal cues are absent!  It's all good. 

I'm familiar with that "kid in a candy store" feeling -- it lasted for a good 20 years while I was focusing on exploring Jazz but at this point, I have a very good sense of what I like and don't like and it takes very little listening to an unfamiliar artist or release to determine whether it's something I'm likely to enjoy playing over and over. In other words, I'm limited by the boundaries of my own tastes/preferences, which I haven't found to be very flexible. 

I will soon be listing THE giant killer-
Resolution Audio Opus 21 CD player with Great Northern Sound Co. reference level modifications.  Separate dac (BB 1704's) and new transport as of 11/22. It will meet your price range and exceed your expectations.  Just read the reviews.
PM me if interested.

 

@mbmi “…Streaming sucks. Why.......because people Don't sit there and enjoy a certain song or complete album...they bounce around playing 1 minute of this song and 30 sec. of the next song etc…”

That is typically only true when the sound quality of streaming is significantly below that of your other medium. In my system I get glued to a new streamed album I typically would not listen to and just can’t quit because I get immersed in it.

The “surfing” problem used to haunt me and my system until I finally raised the sound quality of my streamer / DAC. It put the musicality into streaming without loosing the detail. Both my main system and headphone system glue me to nearly anything musically in my sphere of interest… and a lot of things outside.