Half the information on CDs is analogue

Sean, please name your digital recorder. The implications of your comments is that A/D conversions cannot capture any analog signal, whether a line feed from a microphone or the output of a tape deck. Even professionals who prefer analog recordings have admitted that high resolution digital is more faithful to the original sound.

Sean,

Take an analogue source, record it onto a CD and then compare the original analogue source to the digital "cloned" recording using the same playback equipment. If you can't hear the difference between the original and the "digital clone", you better check into the office of an audiologist for a very thorough exam. You are either going deaf and / or are thoroughly lacking in listening skills.

By your definition I am deaf and thoroughly lacking in listening skills. I admit that I often can't tell whether my AKM ADC & DAC converters are in the signal path or not. What equipment are you using that you hear such a huge difference....a PC sound card?

Shadorne,

Currently, I do not find differences in DACs to be subtle. I find many DACs to be un-listenable and others to be quite good. Some DACs sound 'confused' while other sound 'right.' When it comes to transports, some sound threadbare and anemic while others are full-bodied and create an excellent sense of space. I have also experienced significant differences between digital cables (see my review of the Stealth Varidig Sextet, for example).

When I first started building a high-end system, however, the difference between various digital front ends was indeed subtle.

What many want to argue is that the difference between a good sounding digital front end and a bad sounding one essentially comes down to jitter (jitter in the time domain). In other words, its easy to get all the information off a disc, CD players, DVD player, CD drives in computers, all do an excellent job of extracting the information from CDs. The hard thing is to deliver all those bits of information to the DAC at precisely the right time.

I actually find it hard to argue with this.
After all, if the crappy CD drive in my computer missed picking up the information off a CD, the program (or whatever was on the disc) wouldn't run! I also understand how hard it is to deliver all those bits of information to the DAC at precisely the right time in order to make music.

What conclusion does this lead to?
It leads to the conclusion drawn on an excellent site on jitter (jitter.de) that is written by the maker of excellent digital equipment.
Here it is argued that all you need is a transport (any cheap transport will do) to send digital information, timing errors and all, to an EXCELLENT clock that is positioned right in front of the DAC. The excellent clock will re-clock all the perfect data that has been sent thus removing all the jitter. The DAC will then have all the information, nearly perfectly timed aligned, to then convert to analogue.

This sounds really good in theory and it will be my hypothesis going into a controlled experiment to see if it is actually the case.
If the experiment shows that different transports sound significantly different when feeding the same clock and DAC, we will have to scrap this hypothesis. I know that it will be hard for some of you to do but the scientific method demands it.

Some suspect that we will be looking for a new hypothesis after my ML 31.5 CD transport ends up sounding better than my DVD player. If this is the case, then, in the name of science and the honest and noble pursuit of knowledge, we can all start working on a new hypothesis. And those who continue to argue that transports DON'T make a difference because, in theory, they SHOULDN'T make a difference, will be politely ignored.

Onhwy: The digital recorder that i was using was a stand alone TDK CD-R Audio burner. I purchased this unit based on the reputation that the TDK computer based burners had at the time i.e. as being the best and most reliable at the time for pennies on the dollar. Most of this had to do with their software, which included specific "tricks" to minimize errors, data correction and "glitching" due to a lack of buffering.

From what i can remember, i think that the ADC's and DAC's in this unit were made by AKM, which is the brand that Shadorne mentioned above. I would have to pull this unit apart to make sure, which i will do if you guys really want me to.

Obviously, this is not a "high tech" or "ultra resolving" unit. Then again, the original analogue tapes were made on a DC powered portable monophonic Marantz unit. Even so, the recordings made on the Marantz unit sound more realistic in terms of tonal balance than the direct feed "dubs" made via the CD burner. As i previously mentioned though, the digital dubs should have simply recorded what was being presented to it, NOT shifted the tonal balance in quite noticeable fashion.

As far as recording using a computer or sound card based device, i wouldn't bother. That's why i bought the stand alone Audio based burner. Sean
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