[labrat]

Deleted.

 

[Leporello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch Isn't the DCD-685 an older player?

That may depend on your definition of "old".

AFAIK it was introduced in July, 2001. Denon still have it in their current product line.


Regards,

L.

 

[flibottf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by trains are bad Sigh. I know how redbook CDs work. 16 bit word length, twos complement, eight to fourteen expansion, 44.1kHz yadda yadda like the beginning of the Shellac song. Does anybody understand what I'm saying? That it seems less efficient to actually encode the audio on the CD (redbook) rather than just store an audio data file on the CD such as flac, mp3, or some uncompressed other format, to be decoded and played back in software? And that also eliminates any differences in the transport used?

I do, good point but I don't think it was practical from a technical and economical point of view back then. Just like someone said, you can use a buffer right after the transport to get closer to real data transfert scheme. But indeed, redbook audio as it is has its shortcomings. If we were to have audio files on a cd, the transport wouldn't matter anymore, but that would piss off those who like to show off their expensive gears. You know how quickly they like to bark around here...

like those who like to point out that you suck because you don't have an expensive CDP....

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leporello That may depend on your definition of "old". AFAIK it was introduced in July, 2001. Denon still have it in their current product line. Regards, L.

Thanks for the info... interesting. Apparently the numbering scheme of the DCD lineup is really weird and has no correspondence whatsoever to dates.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Senn20 Er, yeah! DRM didn't exist either. .

(D)RM was alive and kicking back then in the form of "home taping is killing music" courtesy of The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society as we have it in the UK. anyone remember that? They attempted to stop mainly Japanese double cassette decks capable of 'high speed dubbing' from entering the EEC (as it was).

Of course they were barking up the wrong tree because no self respecting music fan would ever have used high speed dubbing. It was however a god-send for bootlegging copies of 'jet set willy' for the zx spectrum. (that was around 4k raw computing power for those of you not yet born).

DAT put the 'D' into DRM so to speak when it appeared in the mid 80's and the industry furore was such that it was never allowed to become a consumer format although there were some commercial releases.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Senn20 CDs were more durable, more convenient, with better dynamic range and detail than any music storage medium available at the time. That's why they became popular.

Not really true then or now. CD's didn't really take off as a format until the 90's when the price came down, largely as a result of delta-sigma processing technology bringing the players within the reach of non-yuppies.

CD's offered more of everything as you stated but at an AFFORDABLE price rather than per se. In the same way MP3's took off not because they were technically superior but because they were largely free.

The early CD players sound very nice by modern standards on the whole. They just sounded god-awful by comparison with high-end analogue and mostly still do.


Quote:

Originally Posted by Senn20 But by all means, feel free to go back to cassette tapes.

Cassette tapes actually offer better fidelity than CD if you have a High end cassette deck like a Nakamichi, Revox or Tandberg but these were way out of most peoples reach back in the day so CD suceeded because it was easier to make and offered better quality playback at a price that people could afford.

 

[Publius]

A reply to the original topic:

1. Audio data is intrinsically more forgiving of errors than computer data. I know it hurts to hear this, but it's true. CD-ROM discs have an extra layer of error correction on top of the audio error correction stuff (which by the way is still shockingly advanced stuff). And this is the way things should be. You lose a lot of audio data (50MB!) with that error correction too.
2. Multispeed CD readers didn't exist. You were limited to 1X read speeds, which just happened to be how fast you had to be reading to get the audio data off the disk in real time. It was, quite simply, impossible to use a format like WAV that did not have hard sequential-access specifications with such readers. If things started off as 8X, then obviously they could have used a more data-oriented format.
3. Data-oriented audio access implies a filesystem, and a cache, and a CPU for the most part, and those things are relatively expensive to implement.
4. CD-ROMs were a novelty until the mid 90s. Using a filesystem to store your media (ie DVD) seems obvious in hindsight, but...

 

[Leporello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool Cassette tapes actually offer better fidelity than CD if you have a High end cassette deck like a Nakamichi, Revox or Tandberg

Huh?

Regards,

L.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leporello Huh? Regards, L.

It's true. check the specs on a deck like the Nakamichi Dragon, CR7 or Tandberg 3014 and you'll see they are capable of recording 16hz - 25Khz give or take a few hertz. So if you made a live recording on deck like this it will have greater fidelity than a recording made on a Marantz CD recorder for instance.

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool Cassette tapes actually offer better fidelity than CD if you have a High end cassette deck like a Nakamichi, Revox or Tandberg but these were way out of most peoples reach back in the day so CD suceeded because it was easier to make and offered better quality playback at a price that people could afford.

I agree. I'd add that top-of-the-line TEAC, Pioneer and Sony cassette decks came close to the above mentioned brands for all-out cassette performance.

 

[Dave1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool It's true. check the specs on a deck like the Nakamichi Dragon, CR7 or Tandberg 3014 and you'll see they are capable of recording 16hz - 25Khz give or take a few hertz. So if you made a live recording on deck like this it will have greater fidelity than a recording made on a Marantz CD recorder for instance.

Wow. Forgetting about wow and flutter issues, physical tape damage and stretch, head misallignment, head azimuth, pre-emphasis compatibility issues among the different noise reduction types, and correct speed(pitch) issues, the s/n ratio with Dolby C was 80db. Dolby B (the most common system) only reduced the noise floor by 10db. And that came at the price of killing the high frequencies, which saturated with Dolby B & C.

No thanks, I'll keep redbook over cassette.

 

[Publius]

Oh, and CDs can go down to 0hz while casettes can only go down to 16hz. You know, that's a lot of octaves.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave1 Wow. Forgetting about wow and flutter issues, physical tape damage and stretch, head misallignment, head azimuth, pre-emphasis compatibility issues among the different noise reduction types, and correct speed(pitch) issues, the s/n ratio with Dolby C was 80db. Dolby B (the most common system) only reduced the noise floor by 10db. And that came at the price of killing the high frequencies, which saturated with Dolby B & C. No thanks, I'll keep redbook over cassette.

In spite of all these issues cassette is a remarkably robust format. I am not talking about basic implementations of the technology as of course it's much easier to mass produce a pretty good sounding home CD player... so long as you don't have to move it around anywhere that is....

If you do it's a different matter. A portable CD player built into a boombox is a non-starter because the vibrations from the speakers inevitably make the hyper delicate mechanism skip, unless of course its so heavily made it's not properly portable.

Any contamination of the disc will cause annoying skipping rendering it quickly useless. Storage in anything other than the optimal conditions causes the discs to rot after 10 years or so. .

Forget the fact it has a rechargeable battery that Sony will discontine in a few years and takes too much power for a normal battery unless you want to lug around some kind of bespoke outboard rechargeable around with you.

And worst of all it's too big for your pocket unless you wear a heavy overcoat all year round.

I would take any Walkman DD model over a Discman D-Z555. Both of course sound a lot better than my Ipod or any mp3 player I have ever heard.

Of course I'm being slightly disingenious focusing on portability but it is after all what a cassette was designed for. If I wanted the ultimate fidelity from tape I would of course put everything on 1/4 inch and listen to it off my Revox. If it didn't cost a few pounds a minute in tape that is.

Oh and by the way you don't really need Dolby with a Nak the heads are good enough to record to +10db without distortion.

 

[Senn20]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool (D)RM was alive and kicking back then in the form of "home taping is killing music" courtesy of The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society as we have it in the UK. anyone remember that? They attempted to stop mainly Japanese double cassette decks capable of 'high speed dubbing' from entering the EEC (as it was). Of course they were barking up the wrong tree because no self respecting music fan would ever have used high speed dubbing. It was however a god-send for bootlegging copies of 'jet set willy' for the zx spectrum. (that was around 4k raw computing power for those of you not yet born). DAT put the 'D' into DRM so to speak when it appeared in the mid 80's and the industry furore was such that it was never allowed to become a consumer format although there were some commercial releases.

Digital Rights Management is something built into a format to prevent making a bit for bit copy. What you're talking about is more akin to today's RIAA lawsuits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool Not really true then or now. CD's didn't really take off as a format until the 90's when the price came down, largely as a result of delta-sigma processing technology bringing the players within the reach of non-yuppies. CD's offered more of everything as you stated but at an AFFORDABLE price rather than per se. In the same way MP3's took off not because they were technically superior but because they were largely free.

You've got a point. Of course any new format is going to be expensive when first introduced. It became popular for the aforementioned reasons once it became affordable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool The early CD players sound very nice by modern standards on the whole. They just sounded god-awful by comparison with high-end analogue and mostly still do.

Eh, I've always found older cd players to sound just okay compared to today's standards. Correct me if I'm taking the second part wrong, but I disagree that modern cd players sound god-awful compared to high end vinyl/reel-to-reel. A well engineered and mastered cd competes very well with analog formats, but with the advantages in ease of use and a low noise floor cd wins out for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool Cassette tapes actually offer better fidelity than CD if you have a High end cassette deck like a Nakamichi, Revox or Tandberg but these were way out of most peoples reach back in the day so CD suceeded because it was easier to make and offered better quality playback at a price that people could afford.

A matter of preference, I think.

 

[Garbz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Publius Oh, and CDs can go down to 0hz while casettes can only go down to 16hz. You know, that's a lot of octaves.

Pity most of the stuff under 20 is brickwalled out isn't it

 

[bigshot]

It's brickwalled by your ears! Good luck even hearing 20hz, much less getting speakers to accurately present it in balance.

See ya
Steve