No kidding...This is the Ultimate Tweak!! The Audio Desk System - Page 7

Don't let the word "error" when referring to CD technology deceive you. Correctable errors are C1 errors. Once corrected they are 100%, bit-for-bit the same as the data on the disc. These are the "common" errors. If CIRC didn't work this way, our music would indeed sound horrible and our computers indeed wouldn't work.

The less common C2 errors are the ones that happen less than 1 time per hour of playback, and these are the ones that are corrected by interpolation on most players.

There is a buffer between the pickup and the output of the transport. This buffer, in most players, is kept half-full and when it drops below that amount, the disc spins faster to keep up. Because of this buffer, no such interruptions are possible, even if the data correction worked by reading from another part of the disc (it does not work this way).

Reflections, refractions, and other optical oddities will not, under normal circumstances, affect the laser reading the pits on the CD. If the refraction/reflection were great enough to interfere, it would cause a read error which would then be subjected to the same error correction explained above.

Theoretically it can not work because there is no physical or electrical connection between the edge of a CD and the data stream fed to the DAC. Things in the digital domain don't work that way. This isn't an LP we're talking about. One shouldn't have to explain why spinning around thrice with one's thumb upon one's forehead will have no effect (perceivable or otherwise) on audio playback.

If some people are hearing differences after doing this tweak, there must be some explainable reason why, and short of any other explanation it must be psychological.

--Chris

we should just abolish this part of the forum.

Why does this thread of snake oil keep living?

This, along the Tice Clock, SHUN MOOK Resonators and MPINGO DISKS, speaker wire platforms, is among the most absurd thing I have heard.

I strongly suspect that you haven't heard any of them. Don't know about the others, but this tweak works. The differences are not only audible but easy to pick out, and not just by me but by anyone who I had sit in the listening chair. I did informal experiments with 4 or 5 people one day. In no time they could identify which disc was being played. They would either say "trimmed" or "not trimmed" and would be right at least 80% of the time.

It's pretty easy. You just play a 30 second segment of an involved song 3 or 4 times with the trimmed disc, then switch to the non trimmed and repeat the process 3 or 4 times. By then, they will be able to pick out some of the differences. So then you randomly put in one disc or the other. Of course they can't see which one you're putting in, but they can tell you which one it is. Normal, non audiophile types of people, from teenagers to people in their 60s.

But go on with your snake oil stuff. No worries.

I know very little about audio electronics but it keeps me wondering if "error correction" is so powerful then why people are spending some much money and time to invest on new transport mechanism ?

I would have assume if vibration is high, there is a way to "correct" the error. If the laser beam is not vertical, there is another way to "correct" the error. If the beam intensity fluctuates, there should be yet another way to correct the error. And if error correction will end up 100% bit -perfect transfer for data, then why CD players have such a wide price range - from US$100 to US$30,000 ? Why Esoteric is getting so much fame from its VRDS transport ? And why Philips still keep coming up with new CD servos 20 years after CD was born ?

Also related, if CD data pick up is made so exact by error correction then why people are coming with different CD media / material - Alloy Gold, 24k Gold, LPCD (black high density plastic ?), and even pure glass.... Shouldn't any imperfections in the CD media be "corrected" so that there is no need for all these ?

Sometimes, I think that music listening is like food and wine tasting. It is all about senses. I am pretty sure there are scientific explanations behind, I doubt if we have all the answers today. As someone keep reminding me at work : "You don't know what you don't know", and I agree - after all, the progress of science is driven by what we do not know, not what we know already.

Cheers,
F. Lo

This is the "Cables, Power, Tweaks, Speakers, Accessories" forum.

on another note...

There was a thread related to burn-in a while ago where a guy used microphones to record a headphone being played before and after burn-in and posted the samples here. It kind of showed the audible difference that was there, but there are control issues with volume, equipment temp, mic placement, etc..

I think with the AudioDesk system, you could rip a CD with stringent settings, then have the CD tweaked, do it again, and possibly hear the results. This is what I plan on doing, and as long as it is ok, I will post short snippets of the songs.

Everyone loves to go down this road on this board, but connoisseurship isn't the issue. Food and wine are organic products that can vary dramatically in quality, depending on weather conditions and how long they are stored. Electronics are manufactured using many of the exact same stock parts, and generally either works or it doesn't. Any quality differences are going to be quantifiable and measurable.

The appreciation of music may be an art similar to the appreciation of wine or food, not the ability to hear the differences in the tools used to reproduce it.

See ya
Steve

I think there are more similarities here. Chemistry & Bio-chemistry are behind food and wine just like physics are behind audio as far as science is concerned.

There were must discussions in the past on how to "prove" what one hears using scientific parameters and theories, just like people are in the quest of proving the taste of wine as described by someone using chemical parameters and theories.

And yes, people are try to say fine chinaware delivers better tastes than cornings - something to do with heat dissipation and distribution in the food that they contain

Nevermind.

F. Lo

That's a great question all of us should be asking ourselves before running out to buy the latest and greatest. It's one thing to claim that one CD player sounds better than another when using the on-board DAC, but if you are going to pipe the unconverted PCM to an outboard DAC with its own clock or jitter-reduction scheme (such as the Grace m902's s-lock dual-PLL, a method firmly based in real science and used in studio-grade equipment), there is no reason to believe why any one quality transport should differ from another. If anyone doubts the quality of his transport, the PCM coming out from the transport can be recorded digitally and compared to the actual data on the disc, thus objectively proving beyond any doubt that the transport is doing what it is supposed to do. Computer science and information theory 101.

A better test, if you are willing to do so, would be to play the cut and uncut disc on both a consumer-grade CD player and a the highest "quality" CD player you have access to. Using the digital out, record the PCM coming from the digital out of both players for a selected track and compare that to an MD5 hash-verified EAC rip of the same track in both states. Using foobar (which I believe has a feature that will help you line up the recorded segments with each other), you can then compare bit-for-bit what came out in each event. Although it probably won't be necessary, you may repeat this process several times for greater accuracy.

--Chris

Its is not usually argued that the effect of CD-treatments has anything to do with that reproduction is not bit-perfect at the digital out. If someone has said so in this tread I have missed it. Such a measurement should therefore be meaningless.

I have not pretended to be able to explain why the the AudioDesk works. I cannot either understand why a user should be required to explain the physical mechanisms. When persons who have not tried themselves argue that a tweak is theoretically impossible, it is not possible for me to know if they are knowledgeable and right, knowledgeable but wrong on this issue or just charlatans. Why should I believe more in their untested theories than in my experience?
It is possible that the transport has no importance if you have s-lock dual DLL but the argument is not very convincing - hempcamp said it should not differ. I have not tested exactly this but in my experience the transport and CD treatment has importance in varying degree, including that is sometimes not hearable.

My principal conclusion of CD treatment and transport issues is that the CD is a medium with serious flaws, not that everyone should by an AudioDesk. I expect that the CD will be replaced by memory players and hard-disk based systems. These are still in their infancy and I wait a little before buying one. But I am afraid that this is also snake-oil! If CD reproduction is bit-perfect and the the DAC has jitter-reduction we are already close to perfection, theoretically.

Because people will spend a lot of money for peace of mind. There is no need for a $7k transport. And the issues with burned cd's, is that they can degrade. Stuff like the gold CD's are either snake oil or designed to last longer, it depends.

Wine is double-blind tested. Audio is not. And comparing it with food tasting? What?

Wine and food would be the music, the plate and glass and fork et al. would be the cables and etc. in your shoddy analogy.

Stop insulting chefs, musicians, and wine producers.

If this, thing, didn't alter the bit-stream, then, what exactly is it doing? CD's store data, ie. bits. CD players et al. read the bits. As long as the bits are read correctly (ie. bit-perfect), then nothing else matters.

Now, let's step away from the hole bit-perfect argument and the like. Ignoring all that, what would this tweak even do? Such a minuscule amount of material is trimmed away, it is unlikely that it would have any effect (affect? I can never seem to use those two words correctly) on how the disc spins, or anything. Even ignoring the whole bit-perfect thing, this tweak makes no sense.

My thoughts exactly. While I am genuinely impressed with the knowledge that some of these same people seem to have, I'm more impressed by what I've heard with my own two ears, and have observed others hearing those same things for themselves. There is no snake oil to be found in my listening chair, just trimmed and non-trimmed CDs; the trimmed ones are invariably more resolving. The differences are not night and day, but are clearly audible whether you know which version of the same CD you're listening to or not.

I'm sure this thread will now carry on for pages and pages, gleefully ignoring these types of responses that have been born in experience. Or perhaps we'll be quoted and told once again what idiots we are for believing what we've heard for ourselves over and over again.

I agree. I would love to see threads like this flourish, so as users begin to have their own experiences they could share. But in the next day or so, It will degenerate into the same mudslinging as usual.

Not at all. There are so many other factors that actually matter, that actually have scientific challenges and explanations when it comes to the authentic reproduction of audio. On the recording end there is much that could be improved with the mastering quality of the source material, the quality and placement of the microphones; on the playback end, again, it is worth worrying over speakers (that actually have measurable, explainable differences), speaker placement, room acoustics, etc.

You would be far better served to put $600 more into your speakers and room acoustics than to purchase a lathe for your CDs. But if you want to throw out your money on something that defies the basic tenets of finite set mathematics and information theory, go for it!

--Chris

Please, please do me a favor. I will send you my next three paychecks, straight up cash money, and you can tell me what audio gear I am getting with my money. Does that sound like a fair deal? I could use a new headphone amp, but you may have opinions otherwise... feel free to override any of my flawed, biased, subjective leanings. Unfortunately, I own no test gear, and have no way of verifying any specifications and/or common measurements of my audio gear. I don't remember any of my physics classes, so I'm completely daft as far as scientificness is concerned.


what if I don't like the way my new gear sounds? even worse, what if it fails a DBT?