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I've got similar questions for the techies here as well. Why is it that old technology such as a tv antenna can instantly stream video to my television set without any lag, whereas to download the same file using an internet connection wireless or otherwise is so much slower? If we can send a hi-definition video signal over a cable line why can't we stream the file just as quickly over the internet if there was a dedicated server?

why on earth did it take so long for computers to come out with 64 bit processors, while the nintendo 64 gaming console already made use of the technology long ago?

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Here we probably agree to disagree. I still own a Walkman DD and while good for a cassette walkman (I like the way it is built!), I was always bothered by flutter issues and other instabilities. OTOH, my newly acquired Creative Muvo is a marvellously clean sounding little device (eats batteries voraciously, though) with 192 kbit wma.


Regards,

L.

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Sorry that's why I put the 'D' in brackets referring to double cassette decks and the 'Digital' comes in with DAT. Ever hear of SCMS? Serial Copy Management System was built into consumer DAT from the 80's to prevent a copy being made of a copy which is surely the earliest attempt at DRM.

The record industry weren't too enamoured of Sony's idea of digital recordable tape or 'perfect copies of copies forever' and pretty much successfully prevented the format ever making it beyond the studio.

I guess I was putting it in context of industry attempts to control how we may use what they see as their 'content' or 'programme' as it used to be called. If anything the computer industry's use of the same formats has completely undermined this.

Remember Philips recordable CD-A? which cost about 5-10 x more than a blank CD-ROM. The computer industry gave this the finger and that's pretty much how we got to where we are now.



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I don't really find that many advances in CD since the early days. In many things like clocking and upsampling there have been improvements and innovations but in other areas such as transports there have been retrograde steps.
On balance I don't think the older players sound so bad at all but then I am comparing older top of the line machines like my Studer A727 or a Marantz CD94/DA94 with modern mid- priced machines like the Naim CD5.

Perhaps 'god-awful' is a slight exaggeration but compare either of these to an equivalent vinyl set-up and there is that flat one dimensional digital awfulness that you just can't get away from. Maybe I need to hear more expensive CD playback but to be honest I can't be bothered. It just doesn't exite me.



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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcasting

Because "Broadcasting" doen't work in the same way as "streaming". If I were to send you an uncompressed video accross a computer network I would need at least a 30 meg leased line to go point to point and it wouldn't be anywhere near real time. Full uncompressed video streams need 1Gb per minute which rules out everything but fiber channel and Ultra SCSI 2 over very short distances.


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one word; Windows " 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition"

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Similar reason why SACD and DVD-A aren't taking off. Not only is everyone happy with 32 bit computers (infact even dad's 64bit comp still uses standard windows on it), but the industry supports it. Applications are 32bit, hardware drivers the OS everything is 32 bit. It doesn't really have much to do with windows itself. The server market for instance is very different. RISC processors are quite common (were quite common) as this stuff is purpose built.

The Nintendo 64 was also purpose built. On it's release Nintendo released only 64bit games for it. There was no requirement to run existing nintendo games, there was nothing holding people back. This is also why the PS3 can use (hopefully) it's complicated Cell processor and why Apple can switch from PowerPC processors to Intel with a wave of a corporate hand.

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I don't know what you see with regard to over-the-air HD, but it sure doesn't look error-free to me! We live 30 mi from downtown Chicago, and I have a dedicated UHF antenna that provides a strong signal--yet I'd bet every few minutes there is a small but detectable gack.

One wouldn't tolerate random errors every few paragraphs when retrieving a Word document, so strict error checking/correction is an absolute necessity.

My idea would be that anything designed to stream video in real time has to tolerate many more errors to stay in real time when transmission conditions are less than perfect. Having it in real time with a few imperfections is more important than bit-perfect reproduction, right?

I only recently started to gain some understanding of why programs like Exact Audio Copy have any reason for their existence. I knew that CD technology was definitely NOT designed as an audiophile format, but as a convenience format, and designed to tolerate and "fix" read errors on the fly. What I didn't know is that there isn't anything that close to a "file system" on audio CD's as exists on data CD's.

The thing that bugs me quite a bit at this point in the game has to do with both error and jitter issues. Seems to me that with RAM so inexpensive, that ALL home players should use high-speed drives and do multiple reads into a large buffer to ensure the proper numeric data, and from which the "absolutely correct" data should flow to the DAC.

I don't end up with installation errors on every software install that I do from CD/DVD, and those have to be bit perfect, and a 400 MB install sure doesn't take 40 minutes!

As to error correction on computer CD/DVD drives--how often does a drive functioning "normally" these days require a re-read that isn't the fault of a bad disc, but rather some mechanical/optical glitch in the read process? Does it happen all the time, but we just never notice it because the data ends up on our HD's just fine in the end--or is it actually quite rare?

Obligatory correction by a computer engineer: The N64 was not a 64-bit machine architecture. Not even close.

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It's pretty difficult to find a recording mastered on both cd and vinyl in which one edition is up to snuff with the other. There are quite a few albums, mostly older ones, that sound fantastic on vinyl but sound quite rough on cd. I think this has to do more with the remastering than anything. System synergy is another thing.

If you're happy with vinyl you don't really need to hear high-end cd players then, do you?

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Kenwood came out with a cd-rom drive about 8 years ago with multiple optical picks and lasers. It can read multiple tracks on the CD at once (ok, I know its the wrong term because a CD has one big spiralling track, but you know what I mean), reducing the speed of the motor. Using a buffer, it can piece the information together quickly.

Apparently, its not that easy to retreive the information from a CD without the existing laser and optical pickups we have today. I wish some crazy fool would build a digital camera system to take a single snapshot of the entire CD, dump the picture into memory, and the decode the entire CD from there. Then we won't have to wait for some mechnical device to track the entire spiral of the CD while reading it.

Both CDs and LPs are capable of reproducing true high fidelity sound to the most exacting specs. Unfortunately, the tin ears of many mastering engineers aren't as up to snuff as the technology. The other problem is the complete abandonment of any sort of baseline monitor in the mixing and mastering stage. Who knows what it's going to sound like at home if they're mixing on bookshelf speakers.

See ya
Steve

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Elaboration, please?

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you can't hear under 20hz, but you can definately feel it.

but can your speakers produce it? I know one product that can, but it's VERY expensive. Too much money for something not audible.

I agree with all the posts above saying that CD was a natural solution to selling digital audio considering the time it was invented, and a darn good solution too.

The OP's question is saying why do don't we build a CD player that reads everthing into a hard drive or memory and than play from that file. Indeed, with all the technology today, it is easy to build a CD player operating that way. But we don't see such a product, why?

If we build a CD player that reads the entire CD track into a hard drive first, would that solve the problem of jitter associated with reading the CD (land-and-pit jitter)? I believe the answer is no.

First of all, although we have 50X CD drives today, reading the entire CD still takes a few minutes. But CD drives operating at such speeds have vibration and noise problems, which is bad for hi-end playback. Also, the faster it reads, the lower the accuracy. Although these additional errors can be corrected, the laser head needs to go back and re-read even more times, which actually would cause more jitter artifacts because the laser servo is a main source of jitter. Therefore using a hi-speed CD drive to read the entire CD into HD for later playback would probably make the CD player sound significantly worse during the initial reading phase, which is more than a few minutes. Once all the audio tracks are loaded into the HD, then there is probably a sonic advantage compared to real-time playback. This probably explains why no hi-end CD player attempts to playback the entire CD from the hard drive.

Of course hard-drive based CD players could read the disk multiple times to ensure minimal error, using something like EAC, so it could read the bits even more correctly than real-time CD players, but that would only make the initial reading phase even longer.

Therefore, I believe loading the entire CD into hard drive is not going to make CD players or CD tansports sound better. CD and similar optical disks are the inexpensive and convenient media to "physically" distribute digital music, and there do not seem to be better alternatives.

Very valid points however you're forgetting something crucial to backup your arguement further. The medium is not the only source of jitter. There's still the servo chips (current trends make them more complicated and cram more fets onto a single chip which is horrid jitterwise), the clock accuracy, the output circuit (which even some very high end manufacturers foul up), etc.

Try solving the things that can be fixed easily without effecting the operation on the consumer's end, then look towards the land/pit jitter problem.

Great responses guys. I learned a lot from this thread. Initially I thought up an answer similar to the "decode X format in realtime!?!? in the '70's? Dude...."

But it was already posted. Yet, the extra info that came out, so interesting, thanks a bunch.