Today's Transport War: Significant Differences?
Nova Physics Group Memory Player is the latest buzz and is attracting rave reviews. It's essentially a computer with a tube based dac ($15k). You also get it without dac ($10k). One reviewer comments on how it outperforms the highly regarded Zanden front-end ($40k+). So, yes its an evolutionary thing with a sweet benefit of lowering costs. |
The computer serves only to provide readable 1s and 0s, and evidently, despite their "noiseball" characteristics PCs are perfectly capable of reading 1s and 0s from CD roms, and hard-drives and streaming them over ethernet or USB without a single bit error. That's how you're reading this web site. An external DAC can have its own power supply, and isolating any noise from the USB or ethernet inputs is not rocket science. Finally RAM based FIFO buffering and reclocking will feed the DAC a bit-perfect signal with noise removed and ultra-low jitter. I understand that Alex produces respected machines, but I see no coherent engineering based arguments that refute any of what Steve (or I, or others) have said. |
Regardless of the way we choose to play our Redbook, it makes me wonder if those in control of the CD mastering process are truly as critical as we are in our listening. How perfect is the mastering process? For that matter, look around and see how many professional recording devices these days have a USB port - what do you suppose that's for? Connecting to a "Noiseball" I reckon. Tells me that somewhere in the recording process our beloved 1's and 0's are quite possibly passing through a Noiseball. If so, is it possible that some of that noise generated garbage is being passed on to us in the final product? Are we just trying in vain to fix garbage that was already there? I'm using a Meridian 518 to send my 1 and 0's from my computer to my DAC. My SPDIF converter is a Waveterminal U24 - which happens to be a professional audio device with , you guessed it, a USB port. The Meridian is supposedly a unit that (according to the manual) has been used in the final mastering process by Chesky records and Sony Classical, to name a few. Considering the above, perhaps I am doing no worse with the end product than what is being done in the studios in the first place? |
The computer serves only to provide readable 1s and 0s, and evidently, despite their "noiseball" characteristics PCs are perfectly capable of reading 1s and 0s from CD roms, and hard-drives and streaming them over ethernet or USB without a single bit error. That's how you're reading this web site. If this is what you believe in and makes you happy, so be it. An external DAC can have its own power supply, and isolating any noise from the USB or ethernet inputs is not rocket science. Finally RAM based FIFO buffering and reclocking will feed the DAC a bit-perfect signal with noise removed and ultra-low jitter. Simpe, isn't it? If you don't care how the "perfect" data was processed and transmitted that's fine too. I understand that Alex produces respected machines, but I see no coherent engineering based arguments that refute any of what Steve (or I, or others) have said. Thank you for the nice words! I am sorry but I can not further elaborate. Regards, Alex |
Okay, as of now (and this is just my read on the debate) the crux of the argument between the two positions I started this thread out with seems to be about whether the computer can send out a decent signal. Alex is suggesting that there is so much noise involved in the computer that it is not going to send out as clean/clear a signal as a classical CD transport will send to its internal DAC. So, for now, I guess this is the question: is the average computer really putting out an inferior signal to that of the transport section of a good CD transport? One camp says "no, not right now", and the other suggests, "yes, it now can". |
