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CD Player? PC Music? Naaa Flash Memory Music.

Do you have a CD Player? Throw it away!
I wouldn’t rest until I’ll share this with the rest of you, audiophiles in the world!
First of all forgive my English. My native language it’s Portuguese.
Second, If your source of music is the analog LP (you know, turntables and needles, etc.) this article it´s not for you.
Do you enjoy hear music? You consider yourself an Audiophile?
Are you an Audio CD based system? Ok. Nothing wrong whit it.
Do you have a decent Amplifier and Speakers? Ok.
Do you have already a separate DAC (Digital to Analogic Converter)? Great.
If not, I’m sorry but you must buy one. No big thing, two or three hundred dollars and you will buy a decent one (Cambridge DacMagic ?).
If you comply with the requirements above then…
Throw away your CD Player!
Or you CD Transport!
PC Music, USB cables, firewire, etc? forget it
I’ll guarantee you that, whatever is your CD based system is, this will sound better! (Much better)
And I’ll promise you that you wouldn’t miss him anymore (the CD player or CD transport, not any one you love, although after this I cannot guarantee that you will not find some troubles with your other half, if you have one)
Hoops, I forgot one thing. You must have at least one or two hundred dollars more. But it will be the most well employed money you ever spend (in music, of course).
So, what you need to replace is your devil machine (the CD player or transport) with 3 things:
• A Media Player (yes, it works with the PS3) that reads wav files. The ones I know are the O!Play from Asus and the WD TV Live from Western Digital;
• A flash drive. Could be a USB flash drive or a SD card or similar (depends on the media player interface). With a 32 Gb pen (or card) you can store aprox. 50 albums.
• A digital interconnect cable (SPDIF). Here, it depends on the media player. Most of all work with the optical Toslink. But I’ll guess that with the coaxial it also works fine (even better?)
Note: It must be a flash card, not a HDD.
So, you are ready for your most rewarding audiophile change you ever made.
Connect this all (if you are an audiophile guy I don’t need to explain how, right? ) and…ENJOY.
Beautiful, quasi-analogic music, coherent, smooth, detailed, you name it, the best sound you ever had hear with your own system (digital). Of course, if you have a friend that have better amplifier, speakers (and DAC) and also did the something you did, probably his system will sound better than your own.
But in the same system, this solution will play better than any other solution Transport+DAC ,CD Player or PC Music. Promise.
Now you ask: Hey! Are you crazy? Where do I put my dears CD’s in, to play?
Nowhere!
Hey. Wait, don’t go away. I mean, you don’t need, no more, to introduce the CD’s in any machine at all. Except one time, in your PC, in is CD drive.
Here I must introduce you to that beautiful program named EAC – Exact Audio Copy by http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Maybe there are others CD grabbers out there that work fine. But this one I know and I love him. It also let you access a free data base with track names and covers.
Install it and rip your entire CD collection in an UNCOMPRESSED way. This will create a wav file (*.wav) for each track. Put them in a folder with the album name.
Copy your collection for the Flash Drive( or several, if you have a lot of CD’s) , insert it in the media player and you’re on!
And another thing: You never always need to get up to change CD’s (or even change the volume, because most of the media players have their one volume, although I don’t recommend it for sonic reasons)
You don’t need to thanks me. Just spread the word. Maybe this way we can change the format they sell us the music.
CD (16 bit 44.1KHz) it’s not bad. But it could be sold in flash drives, not in cd disks.
HR Music (24 bit) it’s better than CD. Yes but, it could be sold in flash drives, not in sacd disks.
Why flash drives, not CD’s?
Because the big problem with the Digital Music is one thing called jitter. And with this solution you throw away the major source of problems in this matter. Optical drives and their Digital MASTER internal clock’s. (read this site http://www.lessloss.com )
With Flash Drives and Media Players you don´t have those problems. And you can let your DAC do what it was meant to do. Convert Music not garbage.
Enjoy and ear the most music you can.
Fernando Pereira
fmnp
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
Fernando, my statement that a S/PDIF interface, whether coax or Toslink, is inherently prone to levels of jitter that may often be audibly significant is a statement of fact. I could provide a lengthy technical explanation of the reasons for that, but you seem to have sufficient technical knowledge for that to be unnecessary.

My statement that the jitter levels associated with that interface will often be more significant than the jitter that occurs internally within a WELL DESIGNED cd player is admittedly debatable, and is a question that probably cannot be easily settled. Notice that I qualified my statement with the word "arguably."

In any event, as I said I don't doubt that the approach you have described can, if well implemented, yield excellent results.

It should be noted, though, that the two specific media players you indicated you are familiar with sell at NewEgg.com for $59.99 and $99.99 respectively. And each device provides many functions and interfaces in addition to playback of flash media to an optical S/PDIF output. It therefore stands to reason that the production cost of the optical S/PDIF interface and associated circuitry in those units is miniscule. While I don't question the quality of the results you obtained in the particular setups you used, some skepticism as to how universally applicable your findings may be would seem to be warranted.

Regards,
-- Al
fmnp OP
30 posts
 
Hi Almarg,

Do you want a better Transport than the Meridian?
I don´t know what are the technical reason's that you mentioned but I'll be glad to read them.
But one thing I know. this sounds better. But its not only better. It's all most perfect.Analogical.
Probably because the data is send to the DAC in a LAMINAR WAY?
With no asynchronous clock issues? I think so.
Another source of jitter are the cables. Mainly the coaxial and their RF antenna problems. that's why I use toslink. Of course, this must be a good glass fiber and not plastic.
I agree with you that this small boxes can be improved of course.
But with less things and not more.
One improvement is the power supply as in many other components in a audio system.
I'm working in a DC/DC power supply but it must be LPS (limited power supply) or you damage your little box.
Again, Almarg, do the experience, please. And then forget the "good cd transports".
Regards
fmnp OP
30 posts
 
Hi you all,

I just found one thing!
And I already experiment with SUCCESS.
If your little box as two USB entries, you can have a HDD attached with as good as 2 TB (and with all your collection of album's, unless you have more than 5000 album's).
Then, all you need to do is COPY the album you want to hear to the USB Flash Drive or SD card (my WD Live TV, have two USB's).
But remember to ALWAYS DISCONNECT THE HDD from the box each time you ear music!
That's a BIG DIFFERENCE. Mainly if it is a portable USB HDD, because the souce of the power it will be your little PS form the box.
From now on, you just need to spend as less as 30$ for a 32 GB USB pen or SD card. And you can have your 50 favorite albums ready to listen.

Regards
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
04-01-12: Fmnp
I don´t know what are the technical reason's that you mentioned but I'll be glad to read them.
From this white paper by the noted audio designer Charles Hansen of Ayre:
... the standard S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format) digital connection used with two-box solutions is flawed, unavoidably and needlessly introducing jitter into the audio playback system.

A low-jitter master audio clock is essential for attaining high performance levels of digital audio reproduction. But that low jitter only matters at one critical point—at the D/A chip itself. Jitter-induced timing errors create artifacts that audibly degrade the music signal. Therefore a well-designed one-box disc player places a fixed-frequency master audio clock right next to the D/A chip for the best possible performance.

In contrast, a two-box system splits the system into a disc transport box and a D/A converter box. The two are normally connected with the industry-standard S/PDIF connection which places the master audio clock in the transport box, where it is mixed together with synchronization codes and the audio data and transmitted to the D/A converter box. The D/A converter box must then attempt to recover the critical master audio clock from this jumble of signals for delivery to the D/A chip itself.

The standard solution for a two-box disc player is to use a PLL (Phase-Locked Loop) to control a VCO (Voltage-Controlled Oscillator) in the D/A box, generating the master audio clock. The VCO varies its frequency in order to lock onto the incoming signal sent from the transport box. Unfortunately, a variable-frequency oscillator simply cannot achieve the low-jitter performance of a fixed-frequency crystal oscillator.

Over the years many schemes have been implemented by various manufacturers in attempts to improve the jitter performance of the S/PDIF connection, including dual PLL’s, VCXO’s (Voltage-Controlled Crystal Oscillators), frequency synthesizers, FIFO (First-In, First-Out) buffers for the audio data, external re-clocking (”jitter reduction”) devices, and so forth. While all of these methods are able to reduce the jitter levels, they cannot eliminate the jitter that is inherently added by the S/PDIF connection.

Another approach to reduce jitter that has become increasingly popular in recent years is to use an ASRC (Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter) chip. The idea is that the original audio data is replaced with newly calculated data that represents what the audio data would have been if the incoming signal had most of the jitter filtered out. The technical theory behind this method is sound, as demonstrated by the measured performance, which is generally quite good. However the audible performance of these devices is controversial, and Ayre has avoided this approach as it completely discards the original audio data.
Also see the following paper by the distinguished authority and academician Malcolm Hawksford:

Is The AESEBU/SPDIF Digital Audio Interface Flawed?

And these articles as well:

The Jitter Game

Jitter in Digital Audio Data Streams

In addition to the problems that are inherent in extracting a jitter-free clock from the single S/PDIF signal that combines clock and data and other information, the precision with which the DAC can detect the timing of the signal transitions (between the voltage states corresponding to 0's and 1's) that ultimately are used to perform that extraction will be limited by noise on the signal waveform, by distortion of the waveform, and by the bandwidth limitations of the interface (resulting in slow risetimes and falltimes). All of these things will contribute, to some degree, to fluctuations from one clock interval to the next in the timing with which the start and end of the interval is sensed by the DAC.

Toslink has inherently limited bandwidth, and correspondingly slow risetimes and falltimes. Risetimes and falltimes of electrical S/PDIF signals are intentionally limited in order to reduce RFI emissions. Noise is always present to some degree on electrical signals, and in the case of coaxial S/PDIF will be contributed to by ground loop effects between the connected components, as well as by noise generated in the connected components which couples onto the signal, and by pickup in the cabling. Waveform distortion will arise in coaxial S/PDIF connections as a result of reflections caused by impedance mismatches between the cable and the components that it connects. Also, anecdotal indications seem to be that Toslink commonly suffers from low transducer quality, which contributes to jitter.

Regards,
-- Al
fmnp OP
30 posts
 
Hi again Tom,

If you want to use SDD, dont use portable. Use a SDD hard drive with their own PS (power supply).
But I still believe that the SD card or the USB pen will be better.
Because they don't' need more PS attached to the box (and their problems associated) and they consume less power than a SDD (I think, but I'm not sure). If any one noes, please tell us.
But, the best thing, always is to experiment. So, go ahead and do it.
Regards
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