I was looking at standalone CD players to add to my home studio setup, and thought I'd have a look at posh ones just to see what I was missing out on. I was intrigued to find this in the blurb about one of them:

"This system intelligently interpolates 16-bit/44.1kHz CD data to 24-bit/384kHz data, through the use of a 32-bit Analog Devices Black Fin DSP (digital signal processor)."

I don't understand what it's on about, but it looks like it's saying that the CD player in some way adds missing information taking it back from 16-bit to 24?

How does this work? Wouldn't it need to know what dithering algorithm had been used when initially converting from 16 to 24-bit? I'm totally non-technical, so don't really understand what any of these terms actually mean - maybe I could get a job selling HiFis!

I would be very careful about spending a lot on a fancy CD player. I've had my fingers burnt over this. Is it an English one made in a certain university city, costing over £400?

I had one of these that did all the up-sampling and all that stuff and just after two years when the guarantee had run out it failed. (Laser) I was told it would cost £150 to fix.

I now use my cheap Japanee DVD player (£60) to play CD's and I realise it sounds just as good, maybe even better.

These things could be a big rip off.

Hi Fi smoke and mirrors.
I suspect this is some sort of dopey proprietary system that claims to `put back all the missing info` lost whilst dithering down to 16 bit.

Since the term `ntelligent` is Hifi speak for `a wild ass guess` I think you can afely assume that what you`ll hear is basically still 44.1 at 16 bit.

--------------------
Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

thanks for the warning!
Fear not, there's no way I'd be spending that sort of dosh on a CD player - I'm only getting entry level monitors for a start, so if I had any more cash available that's where it'd be spent. I was just curious to see what was offered on these expensive models - I'd have thought that you'd get posher knobs and displays and perhaps better A to D conversion, but was surprised to see them claiming that the player would be adding something to the recording "intelligently".
I've played with plenty of musicians who are unable to do that!

I'm replying to my own post because I think people should be aware of the rip offs that are out there.

My cheap DVD player is a Panasonic and the sound from CD's is very, very good. Much better than the Arcam rubbish that cost so much, was totally unreliable, and made claims to being state of the art sound. Absolute rubbish, it was an unrelliable piece of English junk with a totally naff sound to go with it.

Quote Ariosto:

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I now use my cheap Japanee DVD player (£60)...

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That's not cheap! Try Asda/Walmart's brand which is only £7 for a multi region player!

As for OP, interpolating means if it detects the error, it will do the maths to correct for it. Some error correction systems are better than others and that's what you pay for.

ken

--------------------
I'm All Ears.

Quote Ken Long:

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Quote Ariosto:

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I now use my cheap Japanee DVD player (£60)...

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That's not cheap! Try Asda/Walmart's brand which is only £7 for a multi region player!

ken

---

But mine was cheap when I bought it about 5 years ago! But the prices now are unbelievable.

Well, I have to say that I own a fancy CD player with a university name, and it's the best player I've ever had, sounding significantly better than the others I've owned. I think it was worth the money (and it's not even the top-of-range model), and it gives me more enjoyment from my music collection. A bit of investment in better quality decoding electronics simply does make a difference.

Having said that, it is amazing that you can buy a sub-£20 DVD player that will play CDs and MP3 discs too.
It may even sound quite decent if fed through an external DAC.

Sure, there's plenty of hype in the Hi-Fi business, but £7 won't give you the best sound from your CDs. Why not go and listen to some players? If you can't hear the difference or don't care, buy the £7 one.

Interestingly enough, I too tried playing CDs through my cheapo DVD player and was amazed at just how good they are on cd music for the money.
Maybe it is something to do with having to use a better than cd capability transport to cover the DVD side of things & the result is an inadvertant technology knock-on effect? Who knows....

--------------------
Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

Hi,

I think that truth is that expensive audio gear is neither as fantastic as some makers might claim nor as big a rip-off as the detractors might claim either. More expensive gear is often aimed at a market of audiophiles who seem to be exceptionally picky about what they buy. If an item does nothing differently then they seem to be fairly quick to spot that.

I recently upgraded my home music equipment and didn't expect to have to replace the old Yamaha CD player, which was very good in its day and still seemed to work just fine. So I was quite surprised to find that the difference in quality could be as big as it turned out to be. (And like others above, my first hint of that came when I played a CD through a modern DVD player and noticed a jump in clarity).

When I did replace the CD player I shopped around, and did some testing and reading, and then spent much more than I had originally thought I'd need to just on a CD player. But the difference was very obvious - much greater than I had imagined - and well worth the money. It wasn't that it sounded bad on the old setup - it seemed fine, until I heard how much better it could be. With a good player I could hear things on the CD that I never even knew were there before, and the whole listening experience was considerably improved.

If you can't hear a difference, then you're probably wasting your money, but if you can then it boils down to how much you want to spend. It's like buying a car - if your only requirement is to get to the shops and back then a cheapie will do the job just fine. But if you get a buzz out of driving a really decent car, and can afford the price, then I say stuff the cheapie.... buy the one with 6 gears, leather seats and the breathtaking looks... It might cost twice as much, and it won't do the job twice as efficiently, but if you do value the difference it will be worth it.....

Chris

Edited by Chris Charles (11/03/09 08:00 AM)

Why not take your cheapy player along to a Hi-Fi demo room, and A/B with a good quality player using some music you know well? If you can't tell the difference (or even prefer your player) then you can walk out laughing. Otherwise you'll just have to upgrade
If you'd prefer not to know how much better your CDs could sound then don't book the demo!
Oh, and avoid DVD-Audio and SACD which can sound even better, if you can get the discs!

And be careful, hi-fi shops play the equipment they want to sell slightly louder so it sounds better to most people.

--------------------
No longer a forum member.

Quote easily confused:

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I don't understand what it's on about, but it looks like it's saying that the CD player in some way adds missing information taking it back from 16-bit to 24?

---

Any upsampling will involve a digital filter, and the output of that digital filter can have any word length you like...

It is not putting information back -- that's impossible. It can only work with the information provided on the disc in the first place which is 16/44.1. Upsampling makes the analogue reconstruction filtering stage much easier, and that's the only reason for doing it.

The 'interpolation' being referred to here is an attempt to 'estimate' the additional information that would have been captured had the original material been sampled at 384kHz. But that additional information can only be in the frequency range above 22.05kHz, so it's all largely pointless. The interpolation relies on the fact that audio is largely predictable.... but it isn't as any data reduction codec designer will tell you...

Most modern CD players upsample 128 or 256 times (5.6MHz) using delta-sigma converters. Part of the advantage of this is not only to simplify the analogue filtering, but also to reduce the wordlength to just a few bits (sometimes only one), which simplifies the signal reconstruction too. Wordlength and sample rate are inter-related and it is relatively simple to increase one and reduce the other without losing information. It's done to simplfy the analogue reconstruction process.

Essentially, the manufacturer has come up with a quirky unique selling point that may seem appealing to hifi nerds with little understanding of digital audio. But that's not to say the player won't sound lovely... (although my experience of high cost nerdy British hifi has been largely disappointing).

Hugh

--------------------
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Quote easily confused:

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"This system intelligently interpolates 16-bit/44.1kHz CD data to 24-bit/384kHz data, through the use of a 32-bit Analog Devices Black Fin DSP (digital signal processor)."

I don't understand what it's on about, but it looks like it's saying that the CD player in some way adds missing information taking it back from 16-bit to 24?

---

It can't reclaim any missing information - all it can do is play the 16bit 44.1kHz data as accurately as possible. Most CD players do something similar by upsampling the signal. This allows the important reconstruction filter to be implemented in the digital domain where it is much easier to build a good brickwall filter. The final analogue filter can be a much simpler and gentler filter which won't affect the sound as much as an analogue brickwall filter would.

I would also add that most CD players upsample to a few MHz rather than just 384kHz although the bit depth is lower on a standard CD player.

The best sounding standalone CD player I use is really a Pioneer DVD player which cost just under 100 quid a few years ago. It can also play SACD and DVD-A but I've never actually used either format.

Cheers

James.

PS - Hugh's reply wasn't there when I started writing mine but as usual he puts things much better than I can.

--------------------
JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net

Edited by James Perrett (11/03/09 02:05 PM)

Out of interest, have you compared your Pioneer DVD to anything else, and if so what? I'm not doubting that these devices sound good, but they can be bettered IME.

I have a similar DVD player from another manufacturer, and the dedicated CD player (costing twice as much) sounds considerably better, which is why I bought it!

Quote sonics:

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Oh, and avoid DVD-Audio and SACD which can sound even better, if you can get the discs!

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I happened to buy one of these by mistake (DVD audio disc); thinking it was a "visual" thing, I bought a Dave Edmunds live DVD only to feel like a complete berk when I tried to...er...watch it. Sure, it sounds OK but I can't play it in a CD player. What the heck's the point of that?

The clue is in the name of course. DVD-Audio, remembering that the V does not stand for video!

The point is better quality, multi-channel capability, and huge compatibility since almost everyone owns a DVD player that can play them.

I wish CD's were a thing of the past and EVERY release was on DVD-Audio or SACD.

Sorry, I'm still laughing at £400 being expensive.

My own CD player was about £1,400 - and the unit we used to demo the new HD 800 headphones was £10,000!




Hugh is right, by the way.

--------------------
John - Sound-Link ProAudio
President - Federation Internationale des Chasseurs de Sons

Quote sonics:

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Out of interest, have you compared your Pioneer DVD to anything else, and if so what? I'm not doubting that these devices sound good, but they can be bettered IME.

---

I've not tried it on the studio system but it sounds better than anything else that I've plugged into the living room system (like a Lecson DVD or Philips mid priced CD player which were both more expensive than the Pioneer when new). I've seen reports that the model I have sounded as good as a far more expensive Meridian player but I've not compared them personally.

Cheers

James.

--------------------
JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net

Sounds like a bargain then
May I ask the model?

Quote John Willett:

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Sorry, I'm still laughing at £400 being expensive.

My own CD player was about £1,400 - and the unit we used to demo the new HD 800 headphones was £10,000!




Hugh is right, by the way.

---

Now I'm laughing!

--------------------
Nik
Godin, Axon, Tonelab, Repeater & the skin of my teeth!

Quote John Willett:

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Sorry, I'm still laughing at £400 being expensive.

---

+1

The unit that the original poster mentioned costs a fair chunk more than 400 pounds. A quick Google reveals that it apparently won Absolute Sound's Budget Component of the Year! Yep - that's "Budget"

It was also awarded Hi-Fi Choice's 'Best Buy' Award, 93% rating. In the world of high end hifi a grand is small change, and a pair of speakers can cost more than a car.

Alas, the very best gear is not for me.... but I did spend a fair chunk on a good CD player and I'm well pleased with what I got. As Sonics says, if you can't hear the difference, don't bother - but if you can then you probably won't want to go back to the lesser quality again.

It's the same all the way through music and audio gear. If you can afford good studio monitors, better amps, decent instruments etc then they really DO sound better to anybody with a good ear, and they're often better in quality in other ways too. But if you're satisfied with cheaper copies, and can't tell the difference, then there's no reason to spend big money just for the sake of it, and that's absolutely fine too.

If you avoid the real low end rubbish there's a lot of medium range music gear that's very good value for money. Until you get to the day when you've got that desirable high end item in one hand, and enough money to buy it in the other.... then it gets tricky again....

Cheers,

Chris

record player + vinyl = no worries about 16 bit 24 bit and whatever!

it's the bombproof technology, and sounds the best! (to my ears anyway!)

Quote easily confused:

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I was just curious to see what was offered on these expensive models - I'd have thought that you'd get posher knobs and displays and perhaps better A to D conversion, but was surprised to see them claiming that the player would be adding something to the recording "intelligently".

---

Hi,

Yes, it does sounds like a load of old bollocks.... But if you look a bit more closely it’s not quite as daft as it might seem.

I recently went through this ‘de-code the ad-speak claptrap’ exercise twice - once for audio gear and the other for a TV. The TV companies were making similar claims about the ‘intelligence’ of their rendering engines, algorithms, or whatever. In that case, like with audio, it's not only about the build quality of a box of components. The TV needs to be able to make all sorts of decisions about how to present the data - decisions about the depth and quality of the colours, the degree of contrast (including how to convincingly fake the blacks) issues with movement, etc. Add this to the fact that the data comes in a number of different formats - i.e various different types of broadcast, inputs from a games console, a DVD player, a computer, etc and the nature of the design does make a big difference. Some makers are reputed to handle various aspects better than others, but it’s simply not possible for them to guess 100% right 100% of the time to suit 100% of the customers. It’s about who does the best job most of the time, depending on the viewer’s tastes .

Initially they all looked much the same to me, but after reading up a bit more on the subject, and spending time in front of the different screens my eye became used to picking which TV did a better or worse job, and when. They all did a roughly ‘OK’ job, but some were good at one aspect but relatively poor at another. I had to do a fair bit of work to get to the stage where I could actually see why I was making the choice, but it was worth it. It’s better to do this before you lay out the money and take it home, and then start spotting the weaknesses bit by bit over the next few weeks... I ended up buying a reasonably top end model, but by then I knew just why I wanted it and what I was getting that was worth a few dollars more.

It was similar with the audio gear. Just as the TV is faking the impression of real objects, colours, and movement, any audio gear is alway faking the sound. If I’m listening to a cello concerto on CD it’s never going to be exactly the same experience as being in the room with a real cello and an orchestra, even though it might be just as enjoyable in its own way. So I don’t much care how the equipment is making its choices, so long as I’m happy with the result that reaches my eardrum. Everybody in a long chain has added their opinions, choices, preferences and guesses to the mix - from the designers of microphones, amps and pre-amps, pickups, mixers, etc through to software programmers and audio engineers. So if the CD player engineers want to have a crack at augmenting the signal then I’ve absolutely no problem with the concept. My only concern is with whether I agree with the outcome of their decisions or not.

I Googled your quote and identified the machine, and it turns out that it’s one of the ones that I ‘auditioned’. It was from Cambridge Audio (which is not the same brand as the Arcam that Ariosto talks about, although both have a connection with the same city). I thought it did an excellent job. It was solidly built, the tray moved swiftly and smoothly, it felt good to use and to look at, and the sound was quite clearly many classes above my old CD player. For some it would definitely have been too much money to spend for the extra quality it offered, but for others it would have actually been too low end.

So, yes, there is a difference. No, the claim of some sort of enhancement isn’t complete rubbish (although somebody could certainly argue convincingly that it’s neither truly intelligent nor worth their paying for). As always, it boils down to whether you can pick any difference, whether the difference then means much to you or not, and the all important matter of whether you’re well off enough not to worry too much about the cost of your toys....

Cheers,

Chris

Quote Chris Charles:

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Quote John Willett:

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Sorry, I'm still laughing at £400 being expensive.

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+1

It's the same all the way through music and audio gear. If you can afford good studio monitors, better amps, decent instruments etc then they really DO sound better to anybody with a good ear, and they're often better in quality in other ways too. But if you're satisfied with cheaper copies, and can't tell the difference, then there's no reason to spend big money just for the sake of it, and that's absolutely fine too.


Chris

---

I'm afraid all this stuff about "if you can't hear the difference" is so much subjective bollocks! It's used by salespeople all the time to try and sell more expensive gear. In blind tests it has been shown, if my memory serves me correctly, that it is virually impossible to tell between moderately priced good gear and over the top very expensive good gear.

The more expensive but unreliable Arcam rubbish I bought may have been capeable of giving me a fraction more detail from the CD (and I mean a fraction), but that was at the expense of the big open sound my cheap DVD player manages.

Sop don't talk about "ability to hear" but think more about the subjectivity.

EDIT: P.S. THE things that make the most difference are at the recording end - the hall accoustic, the correct mic placement, the mics used and the quality of the performance have a huge bearing on the end result. Exotic hi-fi junk can only make a diffrence of a fraction of one percent, at best!!

Edited by Ariosto (12/03/09 08:59 AM)

Ariosto,
I think you must mean a "deaf" listening test...

Some people CAN hear a difference and WILL want to spend the money. Differences ARE present; you agree with this yourself.
So as has been said earlier, if you don't want to know if your CDs can sound better, don't listen to or buy anything new.
NOT really a great approach to sound for a musician or sound engineer, I'd say.

Oh, and how exactly do you come about your one percent figure?

I agree about the original recording, microphones and acoustics being the most important.

But I disagree with all the rest.

Listen to a CD on cheap equipment and the same on good equipment and there is a world of difference.

I have recently been auditioning Sennheiser's new £1,000 headphones - and the difference is so far better than my £350 headphones that I can't listen to the cheaper ones any more - it's not subtle, it's large.

The same is true for a lot of equipment.

I'm not saying be stupid and I'm not saying spend stupid money on snake-oil cables - but you *can* hear the difference, clearly, when you get good equipment.

--------------------
John - Sound-Link ProAudio
President - Federation Internationale des Chasseurs de Sons

I'm sure much of this is down to how good (or well trained) your ears are. It's the same with wine; some people wouldn't know the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £100 bottle. Some experts say that if you don't know what you're looking out for you're wasting your time on a bottle costing more than £20. To those who know what they're listening for and have the ears, there is probably a world of difference between cheap DVDs and a proper Hi-Fi. It's down to whether people really know and whether they care.

Edited by HandM (12/03/09 12:48 PM)

Quote Ariosto:

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I'm afraid all this stuff about "if you can't hear the difference" is so much subjective bollocks! It's used by salespeople all the time to try and sell more expensive gear.

---

Well, apparently you feel that it worked on you, and you're obviously still annoyed by that. Fair enough. But that doesn't mean it works on everybody else, or that nobody else can pick a difference. I certainly could, without a shadow of a doubt.

Before I went through the exercise of replacing the gear that has served me well for more than decade I thought that all CD players were much the same, and that I'd really only need to look at replacing the amp and the speakers. But when I tried a different CD player with my original setup the difference was clear and obvious. You didn't need to be an audiophile or have bat-like hearing to pick it. At the time, it took me by surprise, and - believe me - I wasn't looking for reasons to spend more money.

So when I went shopping I paid more attention to the CD player than I otherwise would have. Now, that's not easy to do in practice. In a shop situation picking the differences between any components is tricky - whether it's speakers, amps or players. You can't take your own lounge-room or studio with you, and you can't quietly run through your CD collection and concentrate in an ideal way . And you can't do all that with an unlimited number of permutations and combinations of equipment either. But, you can narrow the field down with a bit of research, and by listening to friends' rigs, and so on. Then you can take your own carefully selected music with you and deliberately focus on specific areas to help you make informed choices. Sometimes you can even arrange home demonstrations - as I was able to - with borrowed components.

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but if I can clearly hear the difference from one CD player to another - without any doubt whatever, and testing between more than one steup - then I'm quite sure that plenty of others can too. I'm no audiophile, and I'm careful about what I spend money on. Really.....

You say ""that it is virually impossible to tell between moderately priced good gear and over the top very expensive good gear. " but that depends very much on what you call "moderately priced good gear" and what you think is over the top. What I now consider to be "moderately priced good gear" is probably now a fair bit more expensive than you would. And I've still got my own version of that "My price point is right, and anything above isn't really worth the money..." feeling. It's just not at the same spot yours is. I feel that the sort of player that John Willett talks about above would probably be wasted on me but (perhaps fortunately...) I didn't get the chance to hear them anyway, so my money was safe...

You see exactly the same argument with all manner of gear. People with reasonable mid-priced guitars for instance (like me) tell themselves and each other that buying expensive instruments isn't worth it. And that's fine until you actually get the chance to play a really good up-market one, and then.....well, sometimes you really CAN see why you have to have it...

There were plenty of other things I would have liked to put the CD player money towards, but the difference was so clear to me that I felt it was well worth the money. I still do.

Cheers,

Chris

Quote HandM:

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I'm sure much of this is down to how good (or well trained) your ears are. It's the same with wine; some people wouldn't know the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £100 bottle. Some experts say that if you don't know what you're looking out for you're wasting your time on a bottle costing more than £20.

---

That's a good analogy.

I'm no wine buff, and my wife and I mostly drink wine at the modest end of the scale. A few years ago - just out of interest - we paid about 5 times what we normally pay and bought a bottle of red with quite a reputation and history to the name. It was a total disappointment and a real waste of money. Perhaps it was a bad year, and ridiculously overpriced because of the demand attached to the name, or maybe we just couldn't pick what its special characteristic was supposed to be, but it tasted no better than our regular drink..

Some time later we tried again - with a different one that was about 4 times our usual price. It was absolutely superb, and this time we totally 'got' why it was worth what we paid. We now still get it very occasionally.

As you say, education makes a big difference, and also one bad experience doesn't mean the whole game is crooked. The more I listen the better I hear. The more I drink the better I am at discerning the differences. Education can be such fun at times...

Cheers,

Chris

I think I would agree with you that it is often very hit and miss. But John Willet's idea of good gear costing 10K or more got me laughing at him!

I agree about instruments though, and as an ex-professional string player I would of course opt for a Strad, if I had half a million or so kicking around. On the other hand a lot of Strads are buggers to play, so I might opt for another great Italian instrument.

Cheap gear is of course cheap - most people probably only spend £400 on CD, Amp and speakers. As it is I have a hi-fi set up which is nearer £3,000 - but I'm sure JW would sneer at that too. What I don't get is the same stuff coming out at £15,000 and really not sounding much better, if at all.

My biggest gripe is expensive (ish) British Hi-Fi which is totally unreliable.

Can't tempt you with any of these then...

The Most Expensive Speakers List

Mind you, I don't expect I could tempt you with my violin either - that only cost AUS$200. Sounds like it when I play it too...

Cheers,

Chris

That list is a hoot, thanks Chris!
My favourite is the Audio Note AN-E Sogon.
Looks like a simple two-way system but I suspect you're paying for the gold ingots the simply must be used inside them.

Quote sonics:

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Some people CAN hear a difference ... Differences ARE present;

---

Prove it.

--------------------
Nik
Godin, Axon, Tonelab, Repeater & the skin of my teeth!

Quote Shingles:

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Quote sonics:

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Some people CAN hear a difference ... Differences ARE present;

---

Prove it.

---

To save time, why don't you try and prove that nobody can hear a difference, and that all units give exactly the same result. Then we'll tell you where you're going wrong...

Cheers,

Chris

Few people here would argue with statement that different microphones suit different voices. We might not all make the same choices but I think we'd all agree there are audible differences.

Surely inverting the arguement implies that different playback systems will suit different ears. Which suggests that we all interpret the results differently anyway, even listening to the same media in the same listening environment. So essentially we're comparing subjective results & yet somehow expecting a definitive answer.

The human brain is essentially the end-stage A/D converter & from there on in it's ALL smoke and mirrors!

--------------------
Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

Quote Dynamic Mike:

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Few people here would argue with statement that different microphones suit different voices. We might not all make the same choices but I think we'd all agree there are audible differences.

---

This is a slightly more complicated comparison, as mics seem to be used in different ways according to the voice/instrument/band/orchestra being recorded.

Personally I've never changed mics to suit different things and have used a small group of mics to cover everything. My feeling is that if a singer, instrumentalist or whatever sounds bad on a specific mic, then changing the mic may only make a small difference, and they will still sound bad.

Where mics can be used and swapped differently is to try and minimise room colouration - if a room is bad then an improvement can be made by using a more directional mic rather than an omni, and closer miking to lose more of the room.

But Hi-Fi equipment has to play all the music you ask it to deliver, in a given accoustic. This is why my gear is tailored to the sort of thing I listen to most, chamber music, orchestral, and some Jazz.

I have heard demos on very expensive CD players, for example, when buying speakers. (£2,000+?) I don't know what difference the CD player made, but I remember thinking the speakers sounded even better at home on a cheapish CD player, but I can't say whether this was my room accoustics being better than the demo room or not.

It is a very subjective thing. (For instance I rejected all of the speakers that were reccomended by the shop audio salesman, and ended up with a totally different choice within the price range I was considering. But then he may have been a poor judge with my CD examples of classical music).

Quote Chris Charles:

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Can't tempt you with any of these then...

The Most Expensive Speakers List

Mind you, I don't expect I could tempt you with my violin either - that only cost AUS$200. Sounds like it when I play it too...

Cheers,

Chris

---

Great link Chris - did you notice that the more expensice they got, the more ugly they were?

I suppose that is so the little woman will hate them and allow you to build that `special` listening room you have always hankered after....

What always tickles me with high end hifi is that by the time you can afford to buy this stuff you are usually so old that your hearing is probably so shot you can`t really hear the difference anyway.

--------------------
Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

Quote IvanSC:

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What always tickles me with high end hifi is that by the time you can afford to buy this stuff you are usually so old that your hearing is probably so shot you can`t really hear the difference anyway.

---

Conversely, all those youngsters listening to MP3 files on iPod and earbuds...what a waste of all those nice fresh ears. We should be training our ears and brain at that age, not feeding them rubbish!

Quote IvanSC:

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What always tickles me with high end hifi is that by the time you can afford to buy this stuff you are usually so old that your hearing is probably so shot you can`t really hear the difference anyway.

---

There's a fair bit of truth in that.


I see that slightly differently though. At 62 I’m starting to need the quality difference, because the cheap gear just doesn’t deliver. After all those years of listening I do appreciate the extra quality as well though.

I used to watch our old TV and - depending on what was being broadcast, and what else was going on at home, I’d often miss what was being said. Anybody over 50 probably knows the scene:


“I missed the punchline! What did he say??”....
”Uh, dunno, I didn’t catch it either, that other guy was laughing....”


When we bought the new TV it had much better sound, through its inbuilt stereo speakers. About half the missed dialogue came back into range. But when we hooked the TV up to our new audio system there was a quantum leap up again in quality. Not just the depth and general juiciness of the sound but the CLARITY.

Whereas with the old TV the dialogue would become a jumbled and poorly defined mumble as I moved further back, now that it comes through decent system I can clearly hear what's being said without increasing the volume even in another room. The signal is just superior in every way. Before, the only option was to make it louder, and loud bad sound doesn’t equal good sound.


The fact that good gear can produce better sound is beyond question for anybody with a pair of ears and half a brain. The real questions are about how small a difference an individual listener can actually pick up and which they can’t, whether they happen to like the difference or not, and how much they’re willing to pay to get it.


You can certainly fool your ears, as others have said. A friend of mine owns the local music shop and we were trying out some banjos one day to see if we could pick the sound variation between two differently priced models. We each played both and agreed that we preferred a particular one. Then we each played them again both again whilst the other person faced away and couldn’t see the instrument.

To our great amusement, neither of us could then pick the difference. However, neither of us are banjo players as such, we both mostly play guitar and keyboards. Once the resident banjo player and teacher arrived, the situation was different. He could hear the differences because his ears were much more tuned to the nuances of banjo sounds. AND he was able to explain in words what variation he could hear. And when he was playing the two his ability to bring out the qualities in the instrument meant that my friend and I could start to hear some of the difference better ‘blind’ too. Educating your ears is not a trick, it’s a genuine asset. I can pick a Strad from a $200 chinese fiddle, but I bet a pro string player like Ariosto can pick subtle tonal differences between higher end instruments that are much closer together in value, when I couldn't.



There’s no question that different CD players do the job differently. If my ears weren’t up to the job then the outputs could be monitored with test equipment and the variation shown on a screen. It boils down to whether the difference is noticeable and worth having to either me, or any other buyer.

If I had to try and compare units that are fairly close in performance, for instance a Cambridge Audio 640C and 740C, in a shop situation (or probably even at home) I could pretty much guarantee that I would NOT be able to tell the difference. But when I compared my original Yamaha with a more up-market product in my own lounge room - with no pressure to buy, nobody who could care less what I own, and not actually wanting to buy a new unit - the difference was so immediately obvious that upgrading was a no-brainer. I didn’t expect to be able to hear it, and I was definitely not looking to spend the money, but I’m very glad that I did.

When we upgraded we bought a new amp, new CD player, new speakers and, just out of interest, some cables of different quality. When I swapped the main components one by one with my other gear I had no problem whatever picking the differences - all clear, obvious, and well worth having. But with the cables I couldn’t tell the difference between an OK, but quite inexpensive one, and a high priced fancy one. Just couldn’t pick it at all.


Did I waste that money on the cable experiment? Quite possibly yes. However, somebody who claims to know more about that sort of gear told me that it isn’t always about what you hear, but also about what you don’t hear. In other words most of the time they’ll do a very similar job, but now and then the more expensive cables will deliver a cleaner signal for longer, under a wider range of conditions, or whatever. I’m not sure whether that’s worth it to me, but if and when I ever notice some crackle or weakness that I can trace to a cheaper cable then I’ll probably change my mind.... who knows...


Cheers,

Chris