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Review: Playback Designs MPS-5 CD Player

Category: Digital

1st impressions of the Playback Designs MPS-5.

briefly; The MPS-5 plays redbook and SACD's; it can also be used as a DAC for a music server as well as as a transport. i do plan on getting into server based music and so i like that part. the MPS-5 is also set up so it's software is easily upgradable.

Playback Designs is a new company. this is their first product.

at 1:40pm PDT today the fedex driver pulled up and dropped off the box.

finally; after 5 weeks without.....I HAVE DIGITAL AGAIN.

mine is one of the first 2 units shipped, and the first to arrive. i had heard a prototype a few months back and made a decision to replace my EMM Labs SE Combo with this new product. i had not compared the my EMM Labs Signature directly to that prototype; but i did like some things i heard and made the change.

first; the packaging was perfect and easy to unpack; i was playing music in about 2 minutes after openning the box. the player itself is very handsome; fit and finish are impeccable, a beautiful aluminum case, brushed silver metal on top and black anodized on the bottom. the remote is similarly elegant, and feels very nice in your hand. large, easy to use buttons and it's back lit.

the EMM Labs never had this level of industrial design; but prior to that i owned the Linn CD-12 and before that the Levinson dac and transport. performance is my only criteria; but i also enjoy audio jewelry assuming it can deliver the sonic goods.

how does it sound?

my very first impression in the first 30 seconds was big and bold. the Playback Designs uses a transformer based power supply instead of the switching power supply of the EMM Labs SE Combo. i wonder if that is a factor here.

i must point out that my EMM Labs SE Combo was packed up and shipped to it's new owner in late April. so my aural memory of that is 5 weeks old. OTOH i owned EMM Labs for 5 years, and the SE for the last 2 years. so my sense of that is pretty good.

i'm hearing a sound that fills the soundstage to a greater degree, and the bass seems to have more authority.

beyond that initial impression; like any brand new digital player; the sound started off somewhat congested, sluggish and closed in. after about 45 minutes things started to open up a bit and i could hear farther into the soundstage. it's now been about 90 minutes of play and things are getting more interesting.

it's still somewhat closed in on top but i'm getting more lively micro-dynamics and a bit more transparency in the mids. the bass is getting cleaner and tighter, a few more hours and.......

i like where this is going.

anyway; i'll be breaking this baby in over the next week or so and will continue to offer impressions.

Associated gear
Click to view my Virtual System

Similar products
EMM Labs CDSD SE Transport, EMM Labs DAC6 SE
mikelavigne
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,407 posts
 
"Mike, I understand the advantage of a server or harddrive-based system is the lower error rate in reading a hard drive vs. an optical transport reading a CD or SACD"

Doesn't the content originate on CD and get read through optical drive prior to landing on the server in which case any data that would be lost during the optical read process is already lost before it hits the server drive. So in this case, how can reading from the server be any better?

"Hard disk drives are optimized for timing synchronization at sector level, which is much coarser than the bitwise synchronization required for elimination of audible jitter"

Don't most digital audio systems that read data from a storage device cache the data prior to use to isolate the playback from the performance bottlenecks of the native storage device, in this case the performance of the server hard disk drive? If true, then as long as the cache can be kept filled with the needed data before use, the performance of the storage device (optical, magnetic or otherwise) shouldn't matter. doesn't matter.

If I understand "jitter" correctly, this (as well as other types of distortion) could still be an issue regardless of caching and/or storage medium depending on how accurately the analog signal is assembled from the digital source by the DAC.
dcstep
1,518 posts
 
06-27-08: Mapman said:
""Mike, I understand the advantage of a server or harddrive-based system is the lower error rate in reading a hard drive vs. an optical transport reading a CD or SACD"

Doesn't the content originate on CD and get read through optical drive prior to landing on the server in which case any data that would be lost during the optical read process is already lost before it hits the server drive. So in this case, how can reading from the server be any better?"

My understanding is that in transfer the program re-reads the optical drive rather than "correcting" the error with a logarithm, except as a last resort. Obviously, you need a download program that checks for errors and re-reads, but I can't name a program for you.

Dave
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,407 posts
 
"My understanding is that in transfer the program re-reads the optical drive rather than "correcting" the error with a logarithm, except as a last resort."

That could only help and not hurt. You don't have to have a server storage device in the picture though for this to be done. A storage devices job, including optical, is to deliver any and all data quickly and reliably, so it would make sense to build the re-read functionality right into the optical drive unit for best results regardless of where the data goes from there.

Why is it that no CD player or similar digital source I am aware of provide a meter that indicates a % of bits expected that were actually received?

That would take the guess work out of the picture for me by providing an objective means of determining how well the device is really performing, rather than guessing or trying to figure it out with my ears, Listening is a subjective process based on the listener and not an objective measure.

Or maybe there is a test device that can be connected to objectively measure the bit rate?
dcstep
1,518 posts
 
See this "Memory Player" write up about it's reader:
Memory Player Ad

Dave
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,407 posts
 
At a glance, the write up does indicate that the reader component is where the re-read occurs, which makes sense.

The key benefit of a music server though is to enable easy access to large amounts of music rather than having to swap CDs. I doubt there is anything inherent in the fact that it is a server alone that results in better sound. Take the ability to store large amounts of digital music on high capacity drives out of the picture and the sound should remain the same.

Looks like very well thought out and flexible design overall in this case that surely sounds very good. I'm sure that the optical drive and DAC used are major factors in the resulting superior sound.

The (server) box in this case includes what is apparently a very robust optical drive/reader component and a very sophisticated DAC, but the fact that the bits read from CD are first stored on a magnetic server drive before played probably has little or nothing to do with the sound quality.

Magnetic media server drives are inherently faster than the optical drives, which I believe are relatively slow, but proper use of caching in any practical data delivery system solves the data read rate problem.
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