What don't you like about Red Book CD digital?

[Audio Flynn]

Most average voices, kick drum and toms, bass guitar, and non pipe organ are relatively nice to listen to in digital.

Yesterday I listened to a non audiophile but interesting LP; Brain Salad Surgerey by ELP. It was a gift of 35 ealy 70s lps from a customer of mine.

Too heavy on the synthesizer in the mix but some instruments were really well reproduced in the vinyl.

My reference is my nearfield listening to live drums(recent with my daughter playing) and guitars(some recent but a few thousand hours of listening in the late 70s and early 80s).

Using just Bran Salad Surgery as an example...

Greg Lake's Guitars on LP sound quite real, just a little high end tip on the accoustic guitar.

Snare drum perhaps was recorded a bit too compressed due to the fact Carl Palmer hits his drums harder than 98% of rock drummers. But more real than any redbook CD I have for Rock. Maybe the snare on Patrica Barber's Blue Note recordings come close.

HIGH HAT is the most evident instrument that lacks definition in CD only second to ride cymbal. Whether foot operated or stick operated the hight hat by Carl Palmer was REAL even on a well worn vinyl LP. CD high hat sound to me is very thin and lifeless; regardless of the recording.

Is this poor CD mastering?

In part but some cds can be provide better realism.

Is this excessive jitter?

I am working on understanding how EMI makes jitter worse. And home modding to reduce the effect of EMI.

Is this lack of upsampling?

Do upsampling DACs lead to bliss?

Does this digital lack of realism get wholely cured by DVD-A or SACD?

My few DVD-A have only been played on the RB-5s with SS amplification. There are gains; but it "feels" like something is jittery or wrong.

Digital audio is really only a 20 year old technology. Very young. We have much to learn.

[leok]

The system I now consider my "hi rez" setup is the RF-7s with cleaned-up crossovers and the SET.

Through that system I compared CD 8x interpolation 20 bit from my Sonic Frontiers TransDAC and the 192k sample/sec 24 bit upsampling from my Philips DVD 963SA. The TransDac sounded a little "scratchy" in comparison. Instruments and sound-spaces sound more real played on the Philips.

Then using just the Philips I compared upsampled CD to SACD from hybrid disks that have identical material on CD and SACD. The SACD generally sounded a bit more realistic, but it wasn't a real big deal. There also may have been a bit more dynamic range.

What really impressed me, and continues to impress me is just how good upsampled CDs sound now that I've cleaned up what they're played through (player, amp, speakers). I think the medium gets a bum rap because it can push equipment its played through to the point that flaws are exposed .. and that applies to players, amps and speakers. What I think most people are hearing, and blaming on CDs is playback equipment flaws.

I am refering to well mastered CDs. There are planty of CDs that are mastered poorly and they are really bad. They have also given the Red Book medium a bad name.

Leo

[Audio Flynn]

What really impressed me, and continues to impress me is just how good upsampled CDs sound now that I've cleaned up what they're played through (player, amp, speakers).

Leo,

The upsampling option is a option I have not been able to hear.

There is a GW Labs(I think it is the name) jitter box with upsampling but there have been very few reviews on it. Around $ 399 retail list I think.

If I recall correctly Paul Parrot has the Phillips. I am not sure it is the same model but maybe similar.

With 700 redbook cds in my collection I continue to look for a low cost way to improve the playback.

[leok]

There are a couple things I think are important in a cd player.

One is the output buffer. Most players or DACs use an op-amp, which is really just a little ss amp with global feedback .. complete with crossover distortion. The solution is tube or class A ss output stage. Tube units are a little expensive. The Philips 963 uses class A ss. I noticed the CEC player offered by audioadvisor.com uses class A ss out. There are probably others. Does your DAC have upsample and class A options? Without a decent output stage you simply may not be able to hear the advantages of upsampling and longer word length for interpolation.

The other is upsampling (maybe good x8 interpolation is just as good, but in the case of my TransDAC it's not (that could be the op-amp output and/or the 20 bit word length). The upsampler you mentioned raises the sample rate and data word length for interpolation, but it needs a DAC capable of 96K s/s at 24 bits to be effective.

I hate to say it but those Chorus-IIs could use the crossover caps conditioned also. There's no way I could hear the differences I described until I conditioned the caps in both the RF-7s and Chorus-IIs. However, I had installed unconditioned Hovlands in my Chorus-IIs and older stock caps you have may actually be better than unconditioned Hovlands.

Can you audition a real good upsampling cd player?

Leo

[3dzapper]

Leo, When this comes and my wife asks "what did you waste money on now?" I'm going to tell her Leok made me do it! I had no choice, I must see the difference in caps.

Rick

[Parrot]

Audio Flynn,

I have the Philips SACD-1000. I got it for almost nothing, but it originally listed for $2000. It and the newer, less expensive Philips units do share some things, but differ in others. The SACD-1000 has discrete output stages (HDAMs) instead of cheap op-amps, and that likely accounts for a lot of the quality difference.

I have not heard the 963-SA myself, but have read lots of posts about it. The 963-SA has the same transport, I believe, and is superior on video (newer chips). But it has a far inferior switching power supply, and its surround channels DACs are not as good as the ones for the front channels.

Both machines upsample regular CDs to 24 bits.

You can get a used SACD-1000 for around $600. But there have been quite a lot of them with problems. The problems have pretty much been ironed out now, and can be fixed, but for a long time Philips was just full-refunding people who sent their SACD-1000s in for repair, because they couldn't figure out what the problem was. (Mine, luckily, has had no problems.)

The 963-SA is built to a considerably lower price point, so certain sacrifices had to be made. I am sure that it is an amazing piece for its price range, though. Maybe the differences are more subtle in reality than some have said. Few people want a few hundred dollar unit to sound better than one they paid several times more for.

I think you would find that SACD took care of some or even most of your complaints about CD audio (I mean when playing SACDs). But nothing can overcome inadequate quality mixing and mastering.

[MrMcGoo]

Redbook CDs sound good if the mix is good. Too many recent releases use too much digital compression. The folks in the "music" industry compress many CDs into about a 3 db dynamic range so that the CD sounds good on a boom box.

Upsampling helps a little bit on good CDs, but there is no substitute for a center channel. PWK got it right when he designed three channel systems. The idea of three channels has been around since the 1920s.

I usually prefer multi-channel music that was originally recorded with 24 bit words. The sample rate (48k or 96k) seems to make little difference. As long as the multi-channel mix keeps inappropriate sounds out of the rear channels, it can sound better than any redbook CD IMO.

(Just so you know what I am using that gives me these results, I run the Reference 7 7.1 system with the RSW-15. The universal player is the Pioneer 47Ai hooked up to the 49TXi via Firewire with a B&K amp. The Pioneers are set up for 8X over sampling.)

Bill

[Audio Flynn]

Leo,

I will have to review you previous Cap conditioning threads.

No recollection of how complex that was.

--------------------------

"music" industry compress many CDs into about a 3 db dynamic range

Very sad Mr. McGoo I really like old Santana. I think Supernatural was so compressed. Only if it has the dynamic range and bite of the early Carlos.

[leok]

3dzapper,

I'll be interested in your results. If you have plastic caps in those speakers I expect you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Paul,

I really wanted a Philips 1000. I didn't see any available last summer. Also, I did want the cd upsampling of the 963. CD performance got pretty poor reviews in the 1000, which lowered my interest, but I never heard it myself. Is upsampling (as in 96 or 192 K s/s, not 24 bits) an upgrade for the 1000? I thought the 1000 was something more like x8 interpolation.

Leo

[Parrot]

Hi Leo,

I had a friend get my SACD-1000 for me when a store in Miami had a super blowout closeout on them. I can't remember when that was exactly, but it's been quite a while.

I think CDs sound fine on it, but I've never owned any fantastic, killer, high-dollar CD player. I listen vastly more to SACD and LP than I do CD.

On the upsampling, I'm going by what a modder said in another forum, and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

There are a lot of people who mod the SACD-1000, including tube outputs and all that, sometimes running into the thousands of dollars. Mine is in stock form, which most of the modders say sounds like crap. But they would say that, wouldn't they?

[Audio Flynn]

Leo,

Point.

I may have to do the CAP conditioning although my ChorusII have over 1000 hours in the 1.3 years I have owned them.

BUT

I find them(Chorus II) effortlessly real, pleasant, and unfatigueing with my phono set up.

With the old Scott origonal Phono section, 10 year old JA Michel, and a mid fi Grado cart.

The MSB Link DAC II is better than many mid fi options but it still misses the last 15% of something.

[leok]

Paul,

I've been under the impression that the 1000 SACD capability is among the best and certainly better than the 963. It occured to me that with the 963 vs the 1000 the drop in SACD performance and improvement in CD performance may be why I find the two as close as I do.

Rick,

Maybe you can audition a good SACD player. If the problems go away, then I'd say it's the source. I do think a good CD player will keep the value in your CD collection. If the SACD player has the same problems as cd, then its probably your amp and/or speaker.

Leo

[WMcD]

I don't doubt that there are different mixes. That encompases the original vinyl, normal CD even when they first came out, careful work by MFSL, and now SADC. Some are disappointing, some are magnificent.

However, I was there for the peak of vinyl in the early '70's. Eight track and cassettes were coming to the fore too. All were vastly inferior to what we had, later, in CDs from a standpoint of technical matters of frequency response, dynamic range, and immunity to damage.

I know some of my brothers here go ga-ga over vinyl. I don't quite get it. A fresh record on a very sophisticated turntable does sound good. It sounded good in 1970 too. But pops, scratches, dust, inevetiably detracted.

I don't miss the old days at all.

Gil

[Audio Flynn]

Gil;

But pops, scratches, dust, inevetiably detracted.

I agree to a degree.

===============

Pops and dust can be fixed; scratches not.

When I get a used 30 year old LP that is not scratched or scuffed and get all the crud out of the gooves with the VPI record cleaner; even my wife thinks it sounds majic.

She hates the turnatable and the record clreaner for WAF reasons.

Magic LP of the night was a frreebie from a friend this week.

Elton John "Honky Chateau"

nice and thick and heavy; maybe a first issue.

She liked Mike and the Mechanics too; rareley does she go for a CD unless it is a Blue Note or DG mastering job.

[whell]

I've got both vinyl and CD, and I've found that both have their advantages and drawbacks. Its hard for me to say conclusively that one format is "better" than the other, but they do sound different.

As far as CDs, one of my latest is the Blue Note release of Van Morrison's "Whats Wrong With This Picture". It is truly a joy to listen to. Listening through RF-7's with the Monarchy's doing the amplification, and an older Adcom CD player with Class A output, sounded like old Van was right there with us in the room.

[Fish]

To hear what redbook is capable of listen to Steely Dan "AJA "remaster.,this cd sounds as good to me as any of my dvd-a or sacd or the original lp.The point is I think its all in the mastering,upsampling does help most disc but can make a few sound worse.If the artist/label were very critical and had the capability the music will sound great forever on most any format,if they really didn't care it will never sound great on any format even with all the tricks applied.I have Blood Sweat and Tears on sacd and it has many problems that evidently can't be corrected.

[coda]

Really like listening to redbook CDs thru the Sony SCD-777ES, maybe it's the upsampling. As for adding SACD capability, there's an established camp that seems to prefer players with dedicated audio-only chips, versus the single and universal chips supporting mixed-signal components offered as of late.

As for the digital disc format in general, some may find this read interesting,

DAISy SACD section

In the end let your ears decide.

[leok]

Are Friends Electric

Interesting link .. it will take some time to read. Thanks.

[Audio Flynn]

Just finnished listening to the Remastered Steelley Dan "AJA"

Roger Nichols at Digital Atomics did the remastering.

It is world class benchmarkable for CD. A great fit for my Link DAC

One of the best cymbal and paino realism I have heard on CD. Patricia Barber "Companion" is a close second.

Too bad so many Cds we have spent our hard earned money on sound like we were ripped off after detailed listening.

=============

And the links are very informative from "friends"

Will take some time to read.

[AndyKubicki]

Audio F, go pick up the DVDa of Brain Salad Surgery and compare that to the vinyl. I haven't had the chance to do it yet, we listened to almost all of a 4 record set of Handel's Messiah last night. The new version on DVDa of Yes' Fragile and ELP's BSS knocked my socks off more so than when I first started comparing Red Book to Vinyl. It is mostly the mix and master that matters, but get the best mix, master and medium and you're in audio heaven. Look at my "It's all in the Mix and Mastering Thread".