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In Reply to: RE: A puzzling DSD vs PCM observation, I think posted by Disbeliever on January 24, 2014 at 00:12:23
Expensive. yes, but that's not the same thing. Please explain.
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Any time the playback equipment costs much more than the recording equipment, a good case can be made that the playback equipment is overpriced.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Although I can see some kind of outline justification for your point , it is difficult to understand how it can work in practice.
Presumably if one plays a recording with a dCS converter which has also been made using dCS converters that's OK. However that overlooks the other equipment that has also been used on the recording, the microphones, the mixer etc. The total cost of which for a traditional studio e.g. Abbey Road, will probably exceed that of most home replay systems (plus of course the cost of the studio build, recording staff costs etc.).
However if the next recording chosen for play has been recorded in a bedroom on a computer using some of the cheap but clever gear available these days then should one ideally switch to another replay rig using cheaper components?
Of course hifi replay equipment is also made to fit in with a domestic environment where plain metal boxes and black paint finishes may not be acceptable. This adds cost but contributes nothing to the sound. I could have saved a few quid by buying a pair of black studio ATC monitors but , I hope understandably, chose to buy the same item but with a beautiful rosewood veneer.
In reality the type of recording equipment is usually unknown to the person replaying the record. So all that we can do is try to optimise our replay chain in the widest sense and in its own terms. The result may sometimes exceed the cost of the recording chain and sometimes represent only a fraction of it.
The best stereo recordings are made with a few microphones, sometimes just a Blumlein pair, going through a microphone preamplifier to a converter. The big bucks of fancy studios are needed to produce processed recordings which can be fixed in post production to sound very good, but the really excellent recordings are made directly in such a way that they are what they are, and with skill and luck these will be excellent (but only on a properly set up high quality playback system). In any event, I was comparing the costs of converters, not the cost of other components in the record - playback chain. If you throw in microphones, then you have to throw in speakers, etc., for an apples to apples comparison.
One other pricing consideration is marketing strategy. Many companies produce two product lines based on the same technology, directed respectively to the professional audio marketplace and to audiophiles. It is common for these companies to charge considerably more for the same "guts" when put into a fancy looking case and sold to consumers. There are various reasons for these price discrepancies, but the most likely explanation in any given case is that they get away with higher pricing when selling to non-technical customers who are more easily fooled and who view their components as badges of social status (Veblen goods) rather than as working tools used in a business. (I have not looked at dCs pricing, so I don't know if they are playing this game. I do know there are other converter manufacturers who have done this.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I take your point about apples v.apples.In regard to your final query about dCS pricing, there was a point some years ago when they were producing two versions of the same products, one for studio the other for home use. Virtually identical internally the home use version was far more expensive. However the cost differential (about 2K GBP inc. tax)was entirely caused by the luxury chassis that this version had. There was little mark up involved as the raw chassis from their supplier(s)I found out was a pricey item. Of course if you didn't want it then dCS would have been happy to sell you the plain vanilla studio version.
JA makes the point on Sterophile's review of the latest product ( Vivaldi) that the fact the transport costs so much is due to the factory gate price of the mechanism that they use from Esoteric.
One also pays for the fact that no proprietary DAC, EFM decoder chips etc. are used. All code is unique to dCS.Of course you need to accept that the dCS coding is superior fro this point to have value.
Then there is the updating facility which is available because of the above. This weekend dCS sent me the CDRs to upgrade my player to allow:
- The Transport to generate Dual AES encrypted DSD and the DAC to accept it - an alternative to 1394.
- The DAC's inputs will now handle up to 24/192 plus DSD in DoP format on single wire interfaces, up to 24/384 plus DoP on Dual AES.
- The Upsampler's inputs and outputs (single wire or Dual AES) will handle up to 24/192 plus DoP.
- Word Clock Inputs will accept up to 192kHz.
Cost of these upgrades? Nothing. This adds another dimension to consideration of value v. expense.
Edits: 01/26/14
Some years ago, I concluded that the dCs consumer products are oriented to people who follow the "more is better" philosophy of (over) engineering, not the KISS philosophy.
My take on the dCs "stack" architecture is that it made sense in the 1990's when more processing required more computers, but makes no sense in the 2010's when processors are arbitrarily faster. I can see spending lots of money for a high quality DAC, but not for anything earlier in the stack. This is especially true of the disk spinning / laser mechanisms. There is simply no reason for such gadgets to be powered up and spinning at all while listening to music, IMO. Since the data on "coasters" can be copied to other forms of digital storage it is absurd to spend lots of money on mechanisms that wear out. Nothing in my signal path spins when I am listening to music. The audio data is sitting in RAM memory. Over the years I have replaced several CD/DVD drives on my computers and never paid more than $50 for a replacement, never used more than a screwdriver to do the job, and never wasted more than 15 minutes. I am not impressed at all by expensive spinning mechanisms used to read digital media. IMO, if one enjoys watching impressive rotating machinery play music one should get a Studer tape machine or a top shelf LP playback where there is a real connection between mechanical construction quality and sound quality.
As to AES encryption, I presume this somehow relates to DRM. I don't do any form of DRM as I consider it evil. For this reason I have never purchased an SACD, nor will I ever do so. (If I didn't live in a Fascist country with a law that makes breaking DRM a crime then I might have purchased SACDs and ripped them to my computer so I can play them out of RAM using a DSD DAC.) IMO, the inclusion of DRM is one of the main reasons why SACD has failed in the marketplace. Fortunately, the DSD digital format has now been liberated.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Fair enough. Then for your needs, should you fancy dCS (I appreciate that you don't) you just don't buy the transport. It's not compulsory.
Yes, DSD is now free from those (Sony imposed) restrictions. dCS being part of the consortium of companies that made it so.
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