OP
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I think this is an interesting video about Transports and how they "can" sound different. Paul from PS Audio.
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Measurements & What We Hear?
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Another great example of how Paul doesn't understand the technology, indeed interesting.
Ken1951
Addicted to Fun and Learning
I remember the first CD player I ever heard. It was at the owner of the audio chain I had worked for and several friends still did. He had it playing a classical CD through an all Mac system, twin MC2105s powering Mac ML2Cs I believe. I thought, along with everyone else there, that it sounded exceptional. Clean and clear.
My first CD player was a Magnavox CDB-650. It's not first-generation, but it was very early--certainly back into the 80's. It makes all sorts of compromises, but it still sounds excellent. These sell for a lot because there is a myth they they were imbued with some magic dust. As good as it sounds, it's not any better (or worse) than any of my other CD players. There's no way in the world I'd be able to identify it in a controlled test with my other players (an early-90's Denon, two early-90's Tascams, a late-90's Cambridge Audio player, a recent Cambridge Audio transport, and an early-00's Naim Audio player).
Some work better than others, but that's the machinery, not the audio.
Rick "the Maggotbox currently needs a belt" Denney
solderdude
Grand Contributor
Our friend has it the wrong way around.
There is a fixed clock (it is not derived from the disc). The disc is spun to the required speed (which changes constantly). The lands and pits are NOT the read bits but signal a transition from a series of 'bits' (but not audio) that can consist of 3 to 11 consecutive 1's or 0's. The disc speed is derived from the minimum bit 'length' which is 3 in a row. For that a PLL is used. From that signal (Eight to Fourteen modulation) there are strings of bits read in a memory.
From that moment on the clock is fixed. That signal is demodulated and de-interleaved and control + audio bits are extracted.
Those get processed and if needed corrected (C1 and C2 errors are fully repairable) and then are go in filters and others stuff, get converted from serial to parallel or get converted.
Tracking and foxussing is not the same as error correction in the digital realm.
I only have seen very, very few completely scratched CD's in my collection where so call CU errors were present. These are flags for Uncorrectable Errors.
found a nice tutorial here.
The man clearly has no idea how CD storage works.
Paul is correct that a $29.- transport is crap compared to any decent transport but as long as the retrieved data is 'correct' and the used clock in the transport has low jitter it's all honky dory. Of course, then he can't sell his expensive transport and DAC anymore so he has to invent some nonsense that sounds believable.
audio2design
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And fortunately, knowing "what" happens, at least at a bulk level, at audio frequencies, is many magnitudes more than sufficient for characterization of a cable no matter what some charlatan may say.
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Interesting but we are only considering things that could affect SQ for this forum.
Are the 2 sources putting out the same signal. Some players can switch from PCM to bitstream. (my PS4 has an HDMI audio priority setting that goes from linear PCM to bitstream Dolby to bitstream DTS) If one players putting out PCM lossless and the other is bitstream AC3 there will be an audible difference. Some discs have multiple audio tracks, lossless, ac3, DTS are you sure your listening to the same track of both machines?
Not BSaudio again. Look him up. He's an ex con, used car salesman. And if he believes his own lies he's a moron, quite likely. Lets stop encouraging him and not post his videos.
So your a recording engineer? I would suggest YOU listen to those blind before making such a statement. An actual ABx test or your just another opinion and your not the first. And math is not engineering.
Excellent PDF on the compact disc that you posted.
Future politician?
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I want to congratulate you for quantum tunneling underneath the cognitive limit.
ekperaphael
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It brilliant how he manages to say nothing in so many words.
Geert
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Because we are no longer 'back than'. Science has evolved. There's no reason to think we have black holes in our knowledge about sound and basic electronics. You can make up all kinds of believes, bus as long as you can't support them with a controlled test there's no reason for scientists or engineers to bother.
I would add that in terms of observable science, quantum mechanics, etc., only subtly change what is important in the physical world. Without Newton, we can't design a dynamic machine very well. Euclid (okay, I'm approximating) was enough for statics, but not so much for dynamics. With Newton, we know enough about dynamics to design most machines. But Newtonian formulations can't explain all of what we observe in space--it does explain most of it. We've learned stuff in the last century plus that helps with that. But that stuff that allows us to understand space in all its vastness really isn't all that important for designing a physical machine.
What has improved in the design of machines is extending what we can analyze using first principles, for which the math can be hairy, versus what we can estimate well enough using numerical methods in computer programs. Computer analysis has made brute-force modeling possible, and that has changed everything far more profoundly than new physics theories.
It's the same for electronics. I'm not sure there is much that is not fully defined about the electromagnetic domain than by Maxwell's equations, which are definitive. We haven't observed anything at all that suggests those equations are not exact (at least not that I've read about). But our ability to use numerical methods to evaluate circuits and transducer behaviors has dramatically improved, so that we don't have to take everything we do back to Maxwell's equations, which can be mathematically hairy.
But here's the reason for saying all this: The reason we looked for something better than Newton is because we observed behaviors that Newton's physics could not explain. These observations were not feelings. They were not even subjective. They were carefully gathered and measured data by a large number of scientists, supplemented by theoretical developments by other scientists that were motivated by those careful and repeatable observations.
Nobody paid much attention to the work of Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, who mathematically predicted the background radiation of the Big Bang at Johns Hopkins in the late 1940's. But it was Penzias and Wilson who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for observing (by process of elimination) that radiation in the early 60's. Measurements validate analysis, and without those measurements, analysis can never be fully persuasive. But nobody will make measurements if the observations are non-specific arm-waving and feelings.
Rick "who studied with Robert Herman in grad school" Denney
