[Solude]

Last thing...

In my years here is what I've learned, digital tech and op amps are so cheap and good now that even the entry level is great most of the time. Pre/Amp/Int spend money here. There are still massive gains to be had in upgrading any of these up until the $2000US range. Smart money buys used from AudioGon though

Cabling... buy what makes it looks right. Although Kimber $2000US cable and zip cord sound the same, zip cord doesn't quite look right. So get the cable that is well built and looks the part. Speakers, speakers, speakers the holy grail of final sound. Skies the limit here diminishing returns kick in at about $3000US.

For headphones of the price tags come down but the principal is the same. Digital costs pennies to produce, metal processes are miles ahead of where they were and high power, high quality woods cost bucks.

For reference on cabling, outside of your own tests look at the test McIntosh ran with 'golden ears' a few years back. Basically the owner stood on a spool of zip cord 100ft? long wired to speakers with brand X mega buck cable cut to length 6ft? for the same speakers. Both pairs were dB matched and the test began. No one knew which cable was hooked to what speaker and low and behold no one could tell which the mega dollar wire had. Makes perfect sense afterall when was the last time you saw quality wiring inside a speaker? Anyway off to a movie.

 

[JaZZ]

David...

...I agree with you, transports are not less important than DACs. Unfortunately really good (high-end) transports are almost unaffordable.

In my setup the combo Philips DVD 963SA / Bel Canto DAC2 sounds best, better than the 963 with its own built-in DAC. When I use my Audiolab 8000CDM transport with the DAC2, it sounds even worse than the 963 alone. The sound is much darker with it, less detailed, although it can be perceived as slightly more natural (less digital). I'd really like the Audiolab transport to be the better sounding one, because of the Philips' poor handling convenience with CDs.

I notice a certain influence from the digital cable as well, but it's nowhere near the range of transports and DACs. My current choice RCA cable is indistinguishable from the toslink connection.

 

[Achilles]

Why is it some of you think that an interrupted digital signal effects the sound in the same way as it would an analog signal. If a digital signal is molested for any reason the resulting sound isn't made darker, less clear, less full, it is utterly and totally destroyed. That's what makes it digital, either the signal comes in perfect or it does not, in which case the resulting sound becomes an audible mess. This is why any 'decrease' in sound quality heard is physiological.

Instead of sound, think of it in terms of satellite TV. There is a signal, either that signal is picked up or it is not. If it is, then it is of equal quality to any and every other satellite picking up the signal. If you notice a difference in image quality it has nothing to do with satellite dish but your TV, or any other product that receives the information after it has been converted to analog.

Think of any example you like. Whether P2P networking or digital phones, when the signal is sent in bits, errors in the reception become inarticulate because its effects do not relate to the decoded information but a precompiled, crude, assortment of 0s and 1s of which no native connection to sound, video, or data exists.

 

[JaZZ]

sTaTIx...
Quote:

Again, notice that I never say there isn't a difference or not. My point is that our minds cannot accurately and reliably determine any difference that is there.

I just can't agree with you on this – again you leave just one possibility open: «...there isn't a difference or not». But you know that I agree if the first red part is removed...

, just not in the radical conclusion: «It's impossible to trust your own judgement.» So whom do you want to trust at all if not yourself, your hearing? The technicians, the data? You can trust yourself if you are critical and conscious enough. Otherwise I have to aks: whom do you mandate to evaluate your headphones and your speakers?


Solude...
Quote:

Sound changes are possible on the analog side, not the digital side unless it's processed in some way.

You must be joking. Even the toughest technocrats concede sonic differences in the digital domain (DAC linearity, jitter...).
Quote:

... none of those transports sounded any different playing the same CD, at the same time, toggling between A/B.

I guess the toggling took some time to swap the interconnects, right? A/B toggling in a chronological distance is not the same as a seamless switching where all differences are obvious. You have to concentrate more on the associations and feelings the sound evokes with you than really remember how it sounded before, in view of the subtle differences. I concede this isn't an absolutely reliable method. And it's not for everyone. Moreover it's possible that your test items were in fact very similar or almost identical in sound. But I can assure you that the ones I had to do with weren't. It was like different amps or the like.

As to your description of a cable test. I know (read) of many blind tests where the auditioners failed. There is a simple explanation: the differences are too small! You're laughing?

No reason to... It's just that speakers and the acoustic properties of the listening room make a much bigger difference. You have to be familiar with the given acoustics and the signature of the speakers, the whole setup, and you need to be exactly in the sweet spot in the middle between the speakers, without any heads in front of you, in the ideal case not too far away from them. Now you can perceive the subtle sonic impacts of electronics through the much more evident colorations of speakers and acoustic environment. This is the normal situation of most hi-fi enthusiasts (I guess), at least it's the precondition to care at all about such subtle sonic details – which automatically seem to become important once you know your setup by heart.


Achilles...

...that's well-known stuff. It's not that I don't know how digital works. I do. But just don't let you hold off from listening by your knowledge. You may know: all amplifiers and CD players measure the same. So do they sound the same? Do you buy them without first listening?

JaZZ

 

[sTaTIx]

Quote:

Originally posted by JaZZ sTaTIx... I just can't agree with you on this – again you leave just one possibility open: «...there isn't a difference or not». But you know that I agree if the first red part is removed... , just not in the radical conclusion: «It's impossible to trust your own judgement.» So whom do you want to trust at all if not yourself, your hearing? The technicians, the data? You can trust yourself if you are critical and conscious enough. Otherwise I have to aks: whom do you mandate to evaluate your headphones and your speakers? JaZZ

I don't trust my own ears very much. And to be quite honest, I feel that most audiophiles trust their own ears TOO much. Have you read that one Stereophile review who felt that the Grado SR60 provided 90% of the sound of the HP-1?

Most people are mostly full of ****. But some people just don't realize it.

I beg of you to ask yourself this question: is there even an iota of a chance that your findings of differences between transports were ********?

 

[gpalmer]

Quote:

Originally posted by Achilles Why is it some of you think that an interrupted digital signal effects the sound in the same way as it would an analog signal. If a digital signal is molested for any reason the resulting sound isn't made darker, less clear, less full, it is utterly and totally destroyed.

This isn't quite complete, since a digital signal will always have a source. Assuming a CD as a source. The mechanism of any CD player attempts to read pits on the surface of a disc. It may or may not be successful depending on many factors, size of the pit, depth of the pit, amount the reading mechanism if off the center of the path followed by the laser used to burn the pits, etc. If it fails to read the pit correctly, we have a problem. Typically that problem is solved by relying on the Error correction data that is part of the stream of data. This works well up to a certain number of errors but fails if there are too many. At this point a CD player will either guess and punt with a value it makes up (consumer electronics) or if it reading computer data it will tell you there is a problem with the disc. A better quality read mechanism will tend to tolerate these errors with fewer problems, since among other things it will tend to track the proper path to read the bits better. CDs tend to take a beating in the real world and many will be suboptimal. God knows I try to take care of mine and I still wind up with scratches and other imperfections. So even before you get to your digital signal you have at least one solid reason for a difference in transports performance.

 

[Solude]

"You must be joking. Even the toughest technocrats concede sonic differences in the digital domain (DAC linearity, jitter...)"

Not joking at all. The core problem with audiophiles and digital is that people can't remove themselves from the fact that it's just data in the digital domain, not sound. Data can come in looking like a 1000Hz chart from Headphone.com's headphone graphs it doesn't matter. But as long as it matters to you they can show you how pretty their digital domain is and you'll eat it up. Course none of them are stupid enough to show you the output of the receiver cause then you'd know it was the same as the ugly signal and you wouldn't spend the money. With audiophile companies using PC CDROMs for transports and ATA cables internally frankly the bottom of the barrel and the top are much closer than you think, today. 10 years ago was quite another story. Frankly mid level consumer CDPs today are as good as Stereophile A of 10 years ago. The gap between a $400US CDP and a $2000US one is quite small compared to the same gap on an amplifer. Digital is cheap, analog is expensive and in the high end CDP market you'll see the difference between $400 and $2000 is all invested in the analog section.

"I guess the toggling took some time to swap the interconnects, right?"

If you have the money to spend on multiple transports and DACs, what's a .50 burnt CD

No I meant 2 transports playing the same CD at the same time switching sources on the DACs selector. Same test ran for DACs, 1 transport playing into 2 DACs using the pre to switch between them with NO PAUSE from the comfort of the sweet spot. If memory serves 47 Labs has all their research data on their web site, you might want to read up on how it all comes together. I will say this though, not all transports and DACs will sync with each other well, but that typically causes drop outs. Adcom GDD-1, bad receiver... Aragon D2A MK2, god like... Adcom GDA-700, god like... SB Live!, bah somewhere in the middle. Anyway off to bed early day tomorrow.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by sTaTIx I don't trust my own ears very much. And to be quite honest, I feel that most audiophiles trust their own ears TOO much.

I'm really sorry for you about your lack of self-conciousness. Pity if you're deducing from this that others should be like you in this regard. I don't know many audiophiles except me, so I don't know if your criticism is justified, but you may nevertheless be right to a certain degree.

Quote:

Have you read that one Stereophile review who felt that the Grado SR60 provided 90% of the sound of the HP-1?

I'm absolutely not in the US hi-fi magazine scene. But this judgement is ridiculous by all means. 90%!

I even don't know the HP-1, just the recent models up to the SR-325, but this says enough to me. Surely I wouldn't call such an author an audiophile, and I can imagine this one would even call a $120 CD player 90% of the top Mark Levinson transport/DAC combo.

Quote:

Most people are mostly full of ****. But some people just don't realize it.

Sorry, I just don't know what «****» is (in this context).

Quote:

I beg of you to ask yourself this question: is there even an iota of a chance that your findings of differences between transports were ********?

I've done it, even several times. Not so much in the last time though.


Quote:

Originally posted by Solude The core problem with audiophiles and digital is that people can't remove themselves from the fact that it's just data in the digital domain, not sound.

Do you see «audiophiles» as a conspiring group? For me each audiophile is a unique person with individual opinions. And the fact that some (or maybe most) of them believe to hear differences between CD transports doesn't reflect in any way their ignorance in terms of digital techniques. You have not the least advantage over «us» in this regard. What you're postulating is that the pure knowledge of the 0s and 1s should prevent one from hearing what «we» hear. That's an absurd standpoint – I for one would call this a bias: to insist on a kind of self-censorship, with digital as a holy cow...

You're wrong with your statement that it's just data. It's also data flow (which incorporates a clock rhythm). You may not be familiar with the possible effects of jitter (= data out of rhythm) – I confess I'm not as well –, but I guess it's not hard to imagine how it can affect the proper reconstruction of a music signal which in fact consists of an immeasurable amount of different frequencies at the same time which are to a certain amount dependent of an accurate and precise reproduction of their spectra. Jitter represents a shift in the time base, thus an alteration of the frequency spectrum of the concerned signal.

And there is also the data conversion (DAC) in corresponding devices. The 0s and 1s arriving here get converted into an analog curve. You know there is a bit depth of 16. This makes 65,536 steps which serve to reconstruct the signal as it was before the recording or the analog-to digital conversion, resp. It's important that every step has the same measure, meaning the same level change throughout the whole dynamic range. But that's not possible, technically. There are small to considerable deviations from linearity, depending on selection and overall quality standard. And these will inevitably further deteriorate the original signal and alter its frequency spectrum as well as its phase response and create higher-order harmonic distortion. You see: digital isn't just 0s and 1s.

So you're telling you indeed have done direct A/B comparisons. Well, it's your experience and your perception, whereas I have my own one. I don't want to put yours down. It's just my experience that it's very important to use high-resolution equipment and – first of all – a setup you know very well in a familiar acoustic environment. Whereas there's no need to attach importance to cabling and the transport section for a setup that's meant for a party, independent of the quality demands.

As I said, the sonic difference the transport makes is very obvious in my system. Actually I would really like the Audiolab 8000CDM, a dedicated, quite expensive and formerly highly acclaimed CD transport, to be the better sounding one. The quite cheap 963 SA which has assumed this role now has a rather poor audio handling convenience. After all it's (just) a DVD player. But its sound is just miles ahead of the Audiolab's...

I've made a test with my 17 y.o. son, a music lover like me, but without an explicit hi-fi background. I played his black-metal CD through my speaker rig, once with the Philips and once with the Audiolab as transport, through the Bel Canto DAC2. He preferred the more colorful and detailed sound with the Philips by a wide margin. It turned out that he believed the DACs also have been swapped, and he almost couldn't believe that pure digital can make such a difference. I wasn't surprised about his judgement, since the difference is really almost like day and night, not just subtleties. BTW that's what astonishes me a lot, too. Because I do know how digital works...

JaZZ

 

[sTaTIx]

Quote:

I'm really sorry for you about your lack of self-conciousness.

Actually, I think I'm exhibiting a fair amount of self-consciousness. I don't know what your definition of self-consciousness is, but I've always been of the opinion that self-consciousness meant awareness of one's faculties. I think what you're trying to say is that I have no self-respect (at least self-respect for my own ears).

Quote:

Pity if you're deducing from this that others should be like you in this regard.

How is it a pity? I have opinions, you have opinions. Are you implying that your opinion is less pitiful than mine?

Quote:

I don't know many audiophiles except me, so I don't know if your criticism is justified, but you may nevertheless be right to a certain degree.

That's just fresh. You're a truly great and genuine audiophile, so whatever I say about people not being able to tell the difference between transports doesn't apply to you, even though you actually agree with me. It's just that my statements that you agree with aren't descriptive of you (because you're better than most people). I must say, you're NOT egocentric and arrogant.

Quote:

I'm absolutely not in the US hi-fi magazine scene. But this judgement is ridiculous by all means. 90%! I even don't know the HP-1, just the recent models up to the SR-325, but this says enough to me. Surely I wouldn't call such an author an audiophile, and I can imagine this one would even call a $120 CD player 90% of the top Mark Levinson transport/DAC combo.

My point is that anyone who thinks he's an audiophile can make ******** up. He can be totally full of it. This guy apparently thought he was enough of an audiophile to apply for a job at Stereophile, and people apparently thought he was an audiophile, so they hired him and paid him good money to write that stupid ass review of the Grados. Now let me ask you this: if this guy and all the people around him didn't know that he was full of ****, then how the hell do you know YOU'RE not?

 

[JaZZ]

sTaTIx...

...no offense meant, really. Just some words to make my standpoint clear, and some of them obviously misleading.
Quote:

I think what you're trying to say is that I have no self-respect (at least self-respect for my own ears).

Yes, that's what I meant.
Quote:

How is it a pity? I have opinions, you have opinions. Are you implying that your opinion is less pitiful than mine?

I thought the «if» would take the offensive potential away... I wanted to state that others don't necessarily want to think the same as you in this regard. I'm not saying your opinion is less right than mine, it's just not mine. I evaluate all my equipment myself – using and trusting my ears – if possible.

Quote:

That's just fresh. You're a truly great and genuine audiophile, so whatever I say about people not being able to tell the difference between transports doesn't apply to you, even though you actually agree with me. It's just that my statements that you agree with aren't descriptive of you (because you're better than most people). I must say, you're NOT egocentric and arrogant.

Wow! Yes, I'm saying that I'm just self-aware and -critical enough to be aware of the potential of illusions. Which I'm certainly not completely immune to, but when the perceived difference is that clear it's clear anyway. I'm sure even you with your unconfident ears

wouldn't rate an Airhead equal to a PreHead, although both measure virtually the same.

JaZZ

 

[sTaTIx]

I just hate it when I post an insulting flame to someone and they don't respond in the same way. :^\ What can I say, except that I shouldn't have went at you as strongly as I did.

Best friends forever?

 

[JaZZ]

Forever!

 

[taoster]

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[size=small]THE END[/size]

 

[Mr.PD]

Quote:

Originally posted by Achilles Instead of sound, think of it in terms of satellite TV. There is a signal, either that signal is picked up or it is not. If it is, then it is of equal quality to any and every other satellite picking up the signal. If you notice a difference in image quality it has nothing to do with satellite dish but your TV, or any other product that receives the information after it has been converted to analog.

********.
I have satellite TV. I have seen digital artifacts on the tv, little blocks of color, big blocks of color and I have seen it get so bad as to be unwatchable. But the signal is still trying to come through. This was not caused by the analog equipment. It was caused by snow on the dish, and/or snow in the air. Many of the times this has happened just before losing the signal to the point of no picture on the tv, but sometimes it will clear up after a few moments. The signal is not as on/off as you seem to imply.

 

[taoster]

when i was at uni i took a mathematics course in coding theory.
it was said that most cd players had a very high rate of error reading but due to the way the signals are coded(hence the coding theory course), most of the error can be error-corrected.

What that implies is that transports were never expected to read data at 100% accuracy. instead it replied on cyclic coding for error handling but dust, dirt, a not so effective laser and other mechanical related jitter will introduce errors and may lead to incorrect error-correction.

If there was enough error introduced into a segment of code, it would be error-corrected wrongly and it wouldnt know it is wrongly decoded. hence jitter. (my understanding on the matter anyway)