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In Reply to: RE: A very technical curiosity - how to assess the quality of a spdif stream ? posted by jbcortes on May 19, 2015 at 02:27:06
Hi and sorry to have been not clear
I am sure that great and expensive transports like your Esoteric are really great because, as you say, all the issues have been carefully studied and faced in the design, careful parts selection and so on.
But i am not completely sure that, for instace, a cheap but very good way to play a cd does not exist.
I am not an expert but as someone i think did, to use a cheap cd rom to fill a 1 GB buffer and then read with good clock from that buffer should not be that difficult and expensive.
And that stream could be very high quality spdif signal for an external dac. There can be different ways to achieve a similar result i mean.
I would be willing to wait for that buffer to be filled.
I am waiting for a br player said to be a very nice transport.
I am curious to hear ... very.
Kind regards,
bg
Follow Ups:
Hi,
> I am not an expert but as someone i think did, to use a cheap
> cd rom to fill a 1 GB buffer and then read with good clock from
> that buffer should not be that difficult and expensive.
Early PC based "Memory Players" did precisely that and got good reviews. I never experienced those, because at that time I was already on file based for digital.
Before that, the only platform that used read CD "asynchronously" were very early (first gen) DVD Players that lacked a separate laser and chipset for CD-Replay. It meant they were no-go for CDR, but some CDRW+ blanks recorded did work.
I owned one, from pioneer, which incidentally featured the same HD "Legato Link" DAC chip as the Stable Platter Pioneer CD-Player used by Tom Evans for the legendary EIKOS modification.
I had a lot of fun modding this unit, it was extremely responsive to tweaks and once I was done made both an exceptional Player via analogue out (using LC Audio Zero Feedback "Zap-DFilter" anlogue after the DAC - fully balanced) and via digital out (a reclocker plus 16.XXXMHz clock that also fed the CD Playback with separate PSU etc) into DAC's.
I had it beat the Eikos via both analogue and digital outs and among others a Teak VDRS Transport as well as Pioneer Stable Platter, CEC Belt Drive etc. The Mechanism was an early plastic DVD one, plastic drawer, cheap and nasty as they go.
The key was that the CD was read as "Data Rom" and stored in RAM before leaving the DVD Chipset. On errors it would re-read (it was fun to watch this one with damaged CD's with the Top Off). It was possible to stop the disk for a moment and playback would continue, if the disk was released sufficiently quickly to restart reading before the buffer ran dry, playback would be uninterrupted.
Later DVD players put in effect a full CD Player back in, cancelling all the good stuff.
I sold the unit many years ago in a cleanout, a year or two it came for sale and was still going like a trooper (unlike many early SACD Players). So I think that there is some merit to your ideas. No need for 1GB, IIRC DVD had 16MB RAM...
Ciao T
At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to untolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?
Hi and thanks a lot for the very informative and valuable story.
Actually it is what is done now with the computers. Files from cds are ripped, stored and played-back from a solid memory.
One of the main reason to abandon cd players is the reliability of the mechanisms and the very different performance between cd players/transports.
Honestly i liked very much the huge cd transports ... just beautiful.
But really needed ?
Anyway a really complex field this one. No easy solutions at all.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
What makes the VRDS-NEO SOTA, and possibly the best transport, has nearly nothing to do with any software/firmware whatever.
A big, powerful, overbuilt, accurate motor, a magnesium clamping mechanism the size of the disc, an incredibly quiet, power supply, first rate connectors, wiring....
You cannot mitigate hardware corner-cutting with better software design. The VRDS-NEO proves that error correction has clear limitations.
The essence of great sound is HARDWARE.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Hi and yes i understand the exceptional design and build of the Esoteric.
I still wonder if different approaches can also be very good at a cheaper price, just that.
Like for instance, as i asked above, a cheap decent cd rom reading the tracks and storing them in a buffer memory from which the bits are read and played-back with high precision.
Morevover a mechanism can always develop mechanical problem.
To replace a cd/dvd rom is almost no cost.
Less than the price of a cd let's say.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
I understood your point. I've been looking for cheap solutions for a long time too.
The problem is digital is an extremely complex world, more so than analogue, with crazy little elements having a major influence on sound. Just burn one of your commercial CDs on a high-quality CD-R like a Taiyo Yuden and you will discover the CD-R will very likely sound much better. And that's just from the same CD, same 0 and 1s.Now imagine that every part will have an influence on sound, and that's where the problem begins. Part selection, design work, etc... are bound to end up being expensive. That's why a lot of manufacturers using CD-Rom drives produce expensive machines, because they just can't stuff one in a box. Too many elements influence sound.
The best solution to get something cheap, I've discovered, is to buy a well-designed machine which is from an older generation. You get great design at a fraction of the price. And I don't really believe, despite marketing hype, that digital has advanced that much. I believe you can achieve state-of-the art sound with a 10 year-old machine. My UX-3 is 10 years old, so was my previous YBA CD1. They weren't cheap but they weren't crazily expensive either.
JB
Edits: 05/19/15
Hi and thanks a lot for the valuable advice.
I have abandoned the optical medium that i still have of course in my musical archive
But this is off section ... let's say that i get up from the sofa much less nowadays when i listen to music... and it could not be a good thing.
I have become more lazy.
Thanks a lot again.
Kind regards,
bg
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