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Posted by Romy the Cat on
09-15-2011
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fiogf49gjkf0d I know, I know some of you clicked this thread in anticipation that I will reveal a new “secretive” CD transport that Sounds great. I wish I might...
What this thread all about is about application of a common sense to the subject of digital transports. A digital transport read the disk and outputs binary data. Digital has within itself the error flags, many transport read with errors and better of them do not read with errors. We discard those read with errors, let it to be 50% of the “bad” transports. Those that do read with no errors still sound very different. I know that now we are thinking about digital interfaces, location of cloaks, type of clock synchronization, the topology of DACs and the way how data acquisition happens in the given DAC. Still, I would propose that all of it irrelevant. It all of cause very relevant in total sound of transport/DAC tandem but still with ANY DAC better sounding transports produce better sound. The most reasonable question would be: where is the quality of transport sound come from? We all understand why transport might sound bad but why some of them sound good? That is the question.
The irony is that transports the designed to sound better do not always sound better. We know the transports with astronomical price tag and with very sophisticated internals that are not so good performers sonically. Did you ever ask yourself why? I spoke today with a friend of mine who knows digital very well and he assured me that with his expertise in digital he can defeat any statement that would propose any single reason why one no-error reading transport sounds better then another. Even he admits the transports sound differently but he insists that there is no explanation to the phenomena.
If so, if the sonic character of a transport is not truly predictable characteristic then can we call it random success characteristic? Well if it is the case then why we shall not proposed that there are some $100 CD transports that sound great. If we know that rice and amount engineering do not assure Sound in CD transports then the rate of success in transports is equally distributed among $100 CD transports and $30,000 CD transports.
So, I would like to know what contemporary $100 CD transport sound good. I ask about the contemporary as the nowadays transports have much more powerful lather and able to read what the 20 years old transports are not able to read (CDRs for instance have less reflective power then commercial CD of 20 years back).
The Cat
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Posted by el`Ol on
09-16-2011
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fiogf49gjkf0d Some find the first generation Playstation (1000er series) great.
I tried one with two different power supplies (original and after-market) with totally different sonic results. I think with enough knowledge for tweaking it I would have found a solution I really like.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
09-16-2011
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fiogf49gjkf0d  el`Ol wrote: | Some find the first generation Playstation (1000er series) great.
I tried one with two different power supplies (original and after-market) with totally different sonic results. I think with enough knowledge for tweaking it I would have found a solution I really like. |
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Interning, I do not even know what the Playstation is. If the first generations of that Playstation were good CD transport then it might not too useable as only recently we got the CDR and CDW that do not reflect any laser. I look up onlisd and it looks like Playstation come to the existence in 2011 and it might be a bit too old. If that Playstation sound good then it in addition has to have very powerful laser to be able to read many of today’s very bad reflecting CDWs.
My interests in this subject are not about just discovering a cheap CD transport. There are truly great CD transport out there. The TL0 and Forsell transports for instance are lights miles more interestingly sonically then most of the transports out there. Still, it looks like the “accomplishments” of those transports are … mechanical. How idiotic it is! I am very sure that electronically non of the best sounding CD transports present change, so I wonder if the contemporary much smarter and much faster methods of data acquisition and processing in transports can do the things that would make sonic advantage of old 40kG transports with vacuum suspension irrelevant.
The best case that I would envision would be some kind of ligh and simple external optical driver that would be connected to PC and would able to deliver to the computer Sound Card the data stream of the quality compatible to let say TL0. I know there are a lot of people who feel the CRW and DVD drivers in regular PS are just fine or even better then best dedicated audio CD transports but this is NOT might observation. What I observed was that PS optical driver are horrible sonically, particularly of you ask them to do direct, real time play.
Still, it shall not be so. A CD transport outputs in the end juts binary data and it shall not be so difficult to make that data to sound ambitiously. I do not know if we know what make digital stream to sound better or worth. Someone shall have this statistics, I am sure….
The Cat
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Posted by Jorge on
09-16-2011
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fiogf49gjkf0d I have a Fosell transport for some years now I upgraded from a CEC TL-1 which was miles behind...
I use an EAD 7000 III DAC which I kept after having both the 9000 and the 7000, the mian difference between them is the preamp section of the 9000, so the 7000 has a more direct flavor more raw in a sense that I liked better with my system, I have been a bit dubious about it but I really like what it does in my system and every contender I brought has not been able to give me the sound I like. Anyway a couple of months ago a friend brought over a modded Denon multiplayer, I dont remember the model (I could look it up), it was highly modded, we were testing it with a projector and its Blue Ray capabilities, he then insisted we listened to a music Cd on it, which we did and it was surprinsingly nice, I wanted to try just the DAC section of it, but we couldnt since there was no input for it, but it did have a digital output we tried with my EAD dac. Well the sound was very good even compared to the Forsell, now keeping things in perspective, the Forsell is still better doing a lot of wonderful things and details where it counts, but the Denon was not left behind in the dust. If I was going for a second system, I would get the modded Denon, and it can play anything out there...
Just a note, the Forsell plays any Cd. CDW, CDR with no problems, I hated the CEC TL-1 because there were a lot of Cds it just would not read...
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
09-16-2011
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fiogf49gjkf0d | Jorge wrote: | | Anyway a couple of months ago a friend brought over a modded Denon multiplayer, I dont remember the model (I could look it up), it was highly modded, we were testing it with a projector and its Blue Ray capabilities, he then insisted we listened to a music Cd on it, which we did and it was surprinsingly nice, I wanted to try just the DAC section of it, but we couldnt since there was no input for it, but it did have a digital output we tried with my EAD dac. Well the sound was very good even compared to the Forsell, now keeping things in perspective, the Forsell is still better doing a lot of wonderful things and details where it counts, but the Denon was not left behind in the dust. |
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Yes, those types of the success stories are exactly what I had in my mind. It is very highly possible that some kind very mediocre consumer level CD, DVD or BlueRay players that no one even to think to evaluate for serious audio applications being observed more diligently would demonstrate very good level of performance. I do not think it will happen with DAC parts of the CD played but the CD, DVD or BlueRay player with digital output might juts do it as transports. It would no problem for them to play anything as the nowadays lasers are very strong to be able to work from low reflective CDW. Remember my Synopsys digital cable? It was $21 that was sold at each gas station at the time and it delivered sound that no other cable was able to touch in my view. I still use Synopsys for all my SPIDIF connections. So, I would like to discover, of offer you to discover a consumer player that makes good digital transport. So, grab your children boom-boxes or the stereo from your family rooms that you use to record those stupid sport games and to try to use them as source to drive the DACs from your audio playback. It is possible that some of your Sony, Philips or Samsungs will do much better as transports then your Marks Levinsons, Spectrals of Burmesters….
The Cat
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Posted by jessie.dazzle on
09-17-2011
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fiogf49gjkf0d
Romy wrote:
"...I know there are a lot of people who feel the CRW and DVD drivers in regular PS [CD and DVD drives in regular PCs] are just fine or even better then best dedicated audio CD transports..."
I am one such person; well not exactly; I must stipulate that:
1) I do not use the computer's CD/DVD drive and I do not transfer the data stream via optical interface. In my case files are read from a multi-drive, mirrored and striped RAID array feeding an asynchronous USB DAC. The RAID array is not physically part of the computer that accesses the data and it is configured to accommodate multiple symultaneous read requests; each drive has a 64MB buffer (I know I know; the demands in reading music files are not high and these read capabilities are over-kill). Power supplies for both the DAC and RAID array non-switching. I'm not sure this matters but the computer that accesses the data is an older Mac using Motorola processors; what might matter is that it is not used for anything else; it is loaded with the minimum of applicatoins; really only what is necessary for music playback. The library is accessed and managed using iTunes.
2) My "reference" CD player is not a CEC TLO transport + external DAC; it is an Electrocompaniet EMC I + internal DAC (the EMC I does also have an optical out for use with an external DAC; I currently do not have a DAC that will take an optical data stream).
"...What I observed was that PS [PCs] optical drives are horrible sonically, particularly if you ask them to do direct, real time play..."
I recall that you once briefly tried a Wavelength Brick (a small USB DAC that runs in "adaptive mode"; see definitions at link below); I have never heard this DAC but it has the reputation of giving good results for the money, if somewhat soft and lacking in detail when compared to Wavelength's upper end models. If I were on the same continent, I'd be willing to make the trek to Boston so that you could update the experiment by comparing a CD transport + optical against a hard drive + asynchronous USB. Maybe there's someone in the Boston area that has the equipment you could borrow (ideally a Wavelength Cosecant V3 and if not, then an Ayre QB-9)...
USB: Synchronous/Asynchronous etc:
http://www.hifi-advice.com/USB-synchronous-asynchronous-info.html
jd*
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