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OK. I've acquired a lot of new CDs lately as general population seems to be dumping what they have in favor of online music services.
I've noticed that new CDs sound really good on my new DAC. So, I am ready to weed out older CDs whose sound I don't like. Well, I insert my old CD player output in the stream instead and it sounds OK with the older CDs!
Just got me to wondering how that I use to, in the 80's, enjoy CDs on a SONY 507ES, for instance, a early multi-bit DAC. Whereas, my current CD player, the pulse stream XA7ES, I am now using for late 80s recorded music.
My current DAC is nothing special, but it is current and appears to be leaner, with much better timing retrieval than the SONY, so I always prefer this with CDs made in the late 90's and 00's, for instance.
So, one needs a bevy of CD players, DACs to enjoy the music? No?
Follow Ups:
"OK. I've acquired a lot of new CDs lately as general population seems to be dumping what they have in favor of online music services."
I guess they haven't been impressed with how CD sounds with their music. (Almost all of it is overprocessed.)
"I've noticed that new CDs sound really good on my new DAC. So, I am ready to weed out older CDs whose sound I don't like."
Even if you otherwise like the music?
"Well, I insert my old CD player output in the stream instead and it sounds OK with the older CDs!"
I think older CDs generally sound better, because the mixes/masters were better..... But I encounter good sounding examples of both.
"Just got me to wondering how that I use to, in the 80's, enjoy CDs on a SONY 507ES, for instance, a early multi-bit DAC. Whereas, my current CD player, the pulse stream XA7ES, I am now using for late 80s recorded music."
Maybe you like the "Sony house sound".....
"My current DAC is nothing special, but it is current and appears to be leaner, with much better timing retrieval than the SONY,"
Newer DACs are no better than old ones, from a "timing" perspective.....
"so I always prefer this with CDs made in the late 90's and 00's, for instance."
My belief is that the later player doesn't pass through the annoying artifacts of the processing that's prevalent in recent pop releases......
"So, one needs a bevy of CD players, DACs to enjoy the music? No?"
I use one player for everything.... And it's 1990s vintage.... But almost none of the new music I listen to is "mainstream". With non-processed music, I haven't found any notable correlation between the age of CDs/releases and recording quality. (Except for remasters, which 90 percent of the time I prefer the initial CD release over the remastered one.)
Todd,
What you are saying about older CD's is consistent with what I am hearing on my system. I have been very surprised at just how good some of the older CD's sound. Even some that I used as demo disks, before I even owned a CD players, have more information on them than I was able to get off of them with the first few generations of CD players.
I have done some comparison with the latest Stereo remixes of the Beatles to the earlier Parlophone mix CD. Actually, I was doing this because of your posts on these recordings that you made quite a wile ago. They sounded very different to me. The newer mixes had a lot of detail and image specificity (Abbey Road). But the older CDs sounded more blended, like a live performance. I also have the mono box set, but I thought that the stereo would be more even to compare. I could see how someone could prefer either one, and to be honest, I have not decided which one I prefer, but there is an obvious difference.
Dave
I have both new "Beatles Box Sets"..... The stereo version sounds horrid, the mono only somewhat better.....I also tried the Dr. Ebbetts Beatles CD set.... Generally an improvement over the new Box Sets, but most are not as good as the best early releases..... But if one wants to get a decent Beatles set without much picking and choosing, I'd recommend this set.
Even the early Beatles releases are a crapshoot.... One Parlophone copy might sounds boring and compressed, another will sound incredible..... (This could explain why there is so much disagreement over what releases sound better.) There are a lot of "flavors" of early releases.... (Different copies of the same album are stamped at different plants.) Finding a good one is hit and miss.
I don't find older versions to sound "blended" per se.... Some of the newer released stereo versions sound like the separation was "enhanced", in a bad sort of way.
Edits: 06/08/15
I have some of the Dr. Ebbetts Beatles CDs and they are a lot of fun. They sound very good too. I have been a Beatles fans since I first saw them on Ed Sullivan. So I have quite a few pressings of their LPs, with even some bootlegs, and Mobile Fidelity Pressings. I have had pretty good luck with Parlophone but my German Apple White Album is my favorite White. I didn't buy the stereo Box, but managed to pick up a few of the new stereo mix individual albums at thrift stores. I didn't find them horrid, but they were different enough that I can comprehend why you did. There is a hifi quality about then, but I still find them interesting to listen to and will keep them in the collection. I have the Mono Box and the EP Box too. I am a Beatles collector so sound is not the only motivation.
Dave
I did a demonstration for someone, who thought the Box Sets were the best sounding releases on CD.... We chose a song at random, "Piggies" from the White Album..... He was used to the boxed sets, so we played both first, then the Parlophone.....
While the Parlophone copy was playing (a stereo mix, BTW), he was visibly stunned..... The improvement wasn't subtle, it was huge. (If I had to describe the difference, the Box Set track sounded like a "recording of a recording", relative to the Parlophone copy.)
I have the new stereo mix, the mono box and the older jewel-cased Parlophone White Album. I will give "Piggies" a try on all of them. Were you comparing the stereo or the mono box set?
Dave
"Were you comparing the stereo or the mono box set?"
Both....
I forgot that I uploaded the wav files for comparison. The differences are easily heard, but not as dramatic as playing the CDs themselves.
"The differences are easily heard, but not as dramatic as playing the CDs themselves."
This would imply that the CD mastering/pressing is partly responsible (other than remastering). This was one of the marketing reasons to promote Blu-Spec (BS!!!) CDs.....
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
All CDs are 16/44.... All the fancy mastering in the world can't get around that limitation.
And "asynchronous" mastering for CD, using 24/192 masters, IMO degrades the signal, relative to direct 16/44 A/D from the original analog.
"The differences are easily heard, but not as dramatic as playing the CDs themselves."
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
"But the older CDs sounded more blended, like a live performance"Yes, 'blended' is a good word to use. I use 'glazed' sometimes.
IMO, I like the newer detailed mixes better. But, you are right, that a live performance is often like that.
Edits: 06/08/15
Just buy a Chord 2Qute dac and be done with it.
"A lie is half-way around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
-Mark Twain
NO
My Metrum Hex sounds great with everything
Alan
My Metrum Octave was the breakthrough that made all CDs sound good. After decades of thinking that there were many bad CDs, it turns out that instead, there are many bad DACs (as in delta-sigma) and CDs are fine. A good transport helps (I use a ~20 year old one of those that a friend picked up to let me hear how much better the Sony S7000 is than my Oppo BDP-83 as CD transport).
It seems that this message is slow getting to many people, but even Schiit came around. See their comments on delta-sigma DACs:
"When doctors are trying to diagnose whether you have gas or cancer from MRI results, or when the military is trying to ensure a missile hits an ammo dump and not a nunnery next door, they don't use "24 bit" or "32 bit" delta-sigma D/A converters. Instead, they rely on precision, multibit ladder DACs, like the Analog Devices AD5791. This allows them the bit-perfect precision they need for critical applications, rather than the guesswork of a delta-sigma."
"When doctors are trying to diagnose whether you have gas or cancer from MRI results, or when the military is trying to ensure a missile hits an ammo dump and not a nunnery next door, they don't use "24 bit" or "32 bit" delta-sigma D/A converters. Instead, they rely on precision, multibit ladder DACs, like the Analog Devices AD5791. This allows them the bit-perfect precision they need for critical applications, rather than the guesswork of a delta-sigma."
Let me play devil's advocate. The other side of the coin of precision is interpolation. Precision R2R ladder chips may be used for guided munitions, but interpolation is used in spy satellites.
I've read that the camera in a spy satellite orbiting the earth doesn't have the resolution needed to read the numbers on a car's license plate. It can resolve the car, and even the plate, but not the numbers on the plate. They use fractal mathematical equations to interpolate what the numbers on the plate should be, and it works. Remarkably the level of resolution is infinite. The amount of fine resolution may be meaningless, but there is no end to it.
I mention this because I think the DSEE software on the Sony HAP-Z1 is on the verge of doing something like that. They state that DSEE was designed to fill in lost low level detail on recordings that have been quantitatively compressed. Something about "fade." I really wanted to give DSEE it's own thread.
They say you can only run fractal equations on super-computers. Desktops keep doubling in computational power every so many years. I wonder if one day we will have desktop computers with enough computational power to run fractal music playing software that can fill in low level detail that the original medium was not able to capture, or maybe it will be used to repair old tapes that have been damaged by age. I wouldn't be surprised.
If fractals interest you then I recommend, "Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Colors of Infinity." Linked below. It really deserves to be seen on the big screen, and if you are so inclined, with a good buzz. The soundtrack is by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. It even delves into Jungian psychology and shared consciousness.
I've come to the opinion that ladder dacs and PCM were two technologies that were made for each other, and DSD and one bit sigma delta dacs are two technologies that are made for each other.
I would very much like to try a 20 bit ladder dac one day. Maybe in a year or two.
--------------------------------------------------------
Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
I did bring one of my CDs to a show and tried it on several multi-thousand dollar setups, and it did nothing for me. That was maybe eight years ago, an eternity in DAC technology, evidently.
I am trying to get a handle on what I like and dislike before going DAC shopping again.
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