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Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

RE: he's not completely wrong ...

"They have not suffered from the same subjective problems which has seemed unique to CD."

I don't think you've got the scope quite right, I think they are unique to quantization. Back in the day when LP record QC went to Hell Telarc records were one of the few that remained OK. And then they started using digital mastering... The pressing quality was still fine, but the musical qualities no longer were. I suspect that that was a pretty clean instance of getting to hear the result of changing a single step in the chain.

That was then and today's converters are a far cry from the early ones as is our knowledge regarding the subjective importance of the new factors (although still incomplete). At the risk of stating the obvious, we humans are seldom willing to wait for perfection prior to adopting new technology and that usually means initially standardizing on the "just good enough" rather than holding out for "this is great!". So we plump for trying the new vaccine hoping that the side effect risk is lower than that of contracting the disease.

In my case I got so pissed off at the 40% failure rate of LP's that I stopped buying anything but Sheffield Labs. Well, let's just say that while my tastes aren't as broad as some that that really pinched. So I was receptive to a new medium and was a very early CD adopter. In fact I'm listening to the very first one I bought as I type this. Perfect sound forever! Better than perfect actually because my current chain is better than my original CDP-101...

Sure, if they had delayed the initial release six to nine months so that the servo systems could be worked out further they could probably have been initially 48KS/s which I think would have made a large difference for critical listeners right out of the chute. More resolution wouldn't have since the A/D's du jour were sweating to hit 14 bits monotonic. But that was then and this is now and we all know that Redbook leaves something on the table, but so did all previous media. And since if everything goes well it can sound quite good it's becoming apparent the the main thing it doesn't have is any tolerance for imperfections in the chain at either end, especially in the time-domain. I have experience with detected IFM in a completely unrelated field (avionics) and it is amazing how little it takes to be audible, especially if it's correlated with the signal. It's just unnatural so our brains cringe when they hear it...

So yes, CD is a flawed medium but so were all of it's predecessors in the consumer arena. And like them a good one can be very enjoyable (in my opinion) but going to a higher resolution can be better yet and also improves your odds of getting satisfaction if things aren't perfect.

Regards, Rick


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