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Did Redbook get it right?

I've always felt a tension between the narrative that a) the Redbook spec murdered music, probably in cahoots with greedy plastic vendors, and b) the great respect I've had for engineers I have worked with. I would think they knew what they were doing, considering the stakes and the state of their art at the time.

I leaned towards the murder/greed scenario, especially as my original Sony 520-ES CD player presented a fleshless corpse of Joni's Blue album, and the few high-end players of the time I tried, like the Enlightened Audio, seemed to fail at resurrection.

I've reconsidered. If I rip my CD's to FLAC, feed a Benchmark DAC over USB, and into my tube amplification, I am stunned by how good and satisfying many CD's sound. I have no desire to fire the Linn Sondek back up. I have no sense of things missing. Sure, there are many crap CD's, but is any of that stink coming from Redbook spec? Some newer CD's simply stun. I not into country, but something like the Mavericks' In Time CD is acoustically complete and fully fleshed.

I've been over to HDTracks and Acoustic Sounds to download hi-rez versions, and I can feel the pull to feed my rig the best I can buy. It's such a good story, easily embraced by the audiophile mind, but I'm increasingly wondering if it is all marketing razzle-dazzle...more, denser, higher...and in the end, Redbook got it right, and the new DACs finally do it justice.

Always with an open mind, and there's much better gear than mine, but I'm newly impressed by the original Spec.
electroslacker
jon2020's avatar
jon2020
991 posts
 
Milpai,
That last statement was made in the context of my current set-up which is a pairing of a high end transport with a "low end" hi-res dac. I can only imagine what a high end hi-res dac will do for hi-res material.
The point is that redbook hardware technology has improved so much today that one can truly enjoy redbook without replacing it all with hi-res.
Meanwhile, I shall patiently wait for that dream high end hi-res dac that comes with a spdif input for my high end transport and a usb A-port for a portable solid state drive, with no need for any of the computer/streaming paraphernalia.
Cheers! J.
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Milpai, I say Jon2020 has got it right.
Especially if one has got it right using a Dac with old school R2R lader Multibit dac chips like the PCM1704 d/a convertors, not these far cheaper to manufacture bitstream (Deta Sigma, ESS ect) type of dacs that are used today

Cheers George
jon2020's avatar
jon2020
991 posts
 
Yes, George, the Marantz NA8005 uses the multibit delta-sigma CS4398 chip :-

http://www.marantz.co.uk/uk/products/pages/productdetails.aspx?catid=networkproducts&subcatid=networkaudioplayer&productid=na8005

http://www.cirrus.com/en/products/cs4398.html

Cheers! J.
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,418 posts
 
But Jon, your Esoteric K-01 is contributing greatly to the terrific sound of your digital setup. The design of this unit to accurately read the disk cannot be understated.
This is what we've been talking about; the evolution of playback gear to get excellent SQ from Redbook. I'd love to hear your system.
jon2020's avatar
jon2020
991 posts
 
Yes, Lowrider, the retrieval of data by the transport has been said more than a few times by those in the industry, to be more important than the processing of data by the dac(garbage in, garbage out, I guess).
And yes, you are certainly welcome to my humble home for a listen. The only problem is that I live on the other side of the globe but if you happen to drop by, it would be my immense pleasure....
Cheers! J.
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