BentonF
Member
Dear Members,
This is my first posting. I’ve been reading this forum quietly and learning from a distance. Unlike other forums, I’m attracted to this forum by the objective and science based approach. It’s quite a misery having to wade through all the other forums which are written by audiophiles and entirely subjective with all the usual guff about being able to hear all sorts of things that I’m pretty sure they are imagining... I’m in the medical profession and know next to nothing about electrical engineering, nonetheless I loved physics and astronomy at school and spent a little time in medical research so am aware of some of the principles of blind testing etc. I’m perhaps more interested in what is measurably better and perceptible than subjective findings. It is also interesting to learn about new advances in audio technology and I read about Amir’s career at Microsoft. I also follow B&O Geoff Martins blog but have to admit I get lost eventually in the more technical aspects of his writings.
So to kick this off, I recently read the following article by Mr. Lampizator and could see some efforts by him to put testing equipment to various transports to see how well they produced a tidy square wave but was a bit frustrated by why he feels he has a compulsion to stick valves in every machine’s orifice he finds.
http://www.lampizator.eu/lampizator/TRANSPORT/CD_transport_DIY.html
From your collective experience in the field, do transports make a difference to sonic quality and fidelity or are bits just bits?
He heralds the Spectral CD transport as one of the finest examples but is it really any better at reading the pits on a CD and outputting a signal than a $300 NAD, Onkyo, Sony CD or DVD player...? Why does a Spectral cost $20,000 and what does this box do that a machine a fraction can’t do? I’m struggling to see how the bits or timing of the bits could be more accurate between machines.
How does one assess a CD transport’s electronic/sonic merits?
Have any of you tested and heard some these more astronomically prices machines such as the Spectral?
.
This is my first posting. I’ve been reading this forum quietly and learning from a distance. Unlike other forums, I’m attracted to this forum by the objective and science based approach. It’s quite a misery having to wade through all the other forums which are written by audiophiles and entirely subjective with all the usual guff about being able to hear all sorts of things that I’m pretty sure they are imagining... I’m in the medical profession and know next to nothing about electrical engineering, nonetheless I loved physics and astronomy at school and spent a little time in medical research so am aware of some of the principles of blind testing etc. I’m perhaps more interested in what is measurably better and perceptible than subjective findings. It is also interesting to learn about new advances in audio technology and I read about Amir’s career at Microsoft. I also follow B&O Geoff Martins blog but have to admit I get lost eventually in the more technical aspects of his writings.
So to kick this off, I recently read the following article by Mr. Lampizator and could see some efforts by him to put testing equipment to various transports to see how well they produced a tidy square wave but was a bit frustrated by why he feels he has a compulsion to stick valves in every machine’s orifice he finds.
http://www.lampizator.eu/lampizator/TRANSPORT/CD_transport_DIY.html
From your collective experience in the field, do transports make a difference to sonic quality and fidelity or are bits just bits?
He heralds the Spectral CD transport as one of the finest examples but is it really any better at reading the pits on a CD and outputting a signal than a $300 NAD, Onkyo, Sony CD or DVD player...? Why does a Spectral cost $20,000 and what does this box do that a machine a fraction can’t do? I’m struggling to see how the bits or timing of the bits could be more accurate between machines.
How does one assess a CD transport’s electronic/sonic merits?
Have any of you tested and heard some these more astronomically prices machines such as the Spectral?
.