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Posts: 1908
Joined: February 2, 2001
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I doubt you will be as truthful with the name of this reviewer, but here goes.... But rather than just listing listening experiences with different generations of HDMI interfaces, I should briefly highlight instead, my listening experiences with the implementation of audio rate control (arc) within digital audio interfaces. 2001 - Sony H.A.T.S. or iLink (IEEE1394) as implemented on the Sony LISSA stereo system. One of Sonya's earliest implementation of a bi-directional digital audio transmission system where the receiver dac act as a master controlling the speed of the digital data being transmitted from the source to the dac. As the data arrives at the input of the dac, they are buffered and reclocked before being sent into the DAC to be decoded. I heard the demo at a technology fair in Amsterdam. Months later I received a whole sample in my office to play with, due to some collaborations I had with sony then. Cut the story short - when audio rate control was activated (Sony called this "HATS ON"), music has that natural nimble flow, soundstage spaciously recessed deep into the back of the speakers, clearly focussed image localization. When audio rate control was deactivated (HATS OFF), soundstage height collapsed, and come forward. Ambient cues were sharply reduced, and imaging focus became vague, and the overall feel of the music became lethargic. I remember that I had used the word "sour" when I was asked what was my first impression when HATS was off. I played with that stereo system on my office desk for a few months. In 2003 - i bought the Pioneer DV-S755Ai and VSX-A10i combination, intending to test out the singular IEEE1394 connector between them. Again, this was a bi-directional digital audio interface, with the dac in the receiver acting as the master controlling the speed of the data transfer, and buffering and reclocking the data arriving at the input of the dac. Very nice sound, especially with the arc activated. And sounding "sour" when it was not, with collapsed sondstaging, blurred imaging and generally very uninvolving sound. In that same year, I received samples of the Sony SCD-XA9000ES and the TA-DA9000ES combination, which, similar to the Pioneer, the iLink IEEE 1394 digital interface between these 2 units facilitates audio rate control to suppress the potential jitter that would occur when dsd/PCM data is transmitted. On this very transparent system, driving a wide variety of speakers, including a pair of Wilson 7s on a few occasions, we could hear the damaging effect of jitter very very clearly, whenever "HATS" was turned off. My colleagues and i certainly couldn't sit still and listen to the music for long, so utterly unmusical was the whole experience. You see, by this time, we had gotten so awared of deleterious effects of jitter on the digital audio, so much so that it took merely 10 secs for us to recognize the presence of interface induced jitter. Besides the SCD-XA9000ES that year, Sony also provided us with a DVD player, the DVP-S9100ES with the iLink IEEE1394 interface output and a very earlier implementation of the HDMI interface output. Naturally we put both these to the test. Needless to say, iLink sounded best, by a mile, especially when HATS was activated. But if HATS was turned off on iLink, then both sounded equally shitty. Now the Sony TA-DA9000ES was highly flexible, was able to assign both it's iLink input onto any one of its other av inputs, including HDMI. so this was what we ended up using most of the time - we use the iLink for audio transmission, and the HDMI for video transmission while watching a DVD movie on the DVP-S9100ES. even though we could only get compressed audio from the DVD-video discs, I remember at that time, that the film sound reproduction had that spacious, blossoming soundstaging that floats holographically outside the speaker cabinets and imaging height were never truncated unlike bluray movies playback via HDMI that we get nowadays. I had that Sony combo in my home theatre for a year, before replacing the receiver for another Sony model, also with iLink HATS ON/HATS OFF function. On the many occasions that friends and relations come to visit, I make it a point to demo the sonic differences that can be had activating and deactivating the HATS function. The audience never failed to spot the sonic differences. Most of them are novices, and I think they rather watch the movies interrupted..... But I think they got the point - what is new is never always better - and HDMI might sound very high tech and fanciful, but unlike iLink, it lacks the sophisticated digital audio control technologies necessary to bring interface jitter under control for proper appreciation of music and film sound. Fast forward to the year that blu ray was introduced. My office was the first in south east Asia to receive a working sample. After using it for a training session for Sony sales people, I was tasked to hand carry it to places like Australia and Hong Kong to help Sony people there launch the format. I also was tasked to create a bluray demo disc which the retail people in the whole Asia Pacific regions can use. But there were no BD authoring houses set up at that time in that region, so we had to engage a production company in the USA to create the demo disc, and i had to travel to San Francisco at the time of near completion of the demo disc to proof check the masters. That was how I was able to meet up with Jazz Inmate in person, and I invited him to join us in the session at Dolby Lab. After the first Sony bluray player, the BDP-S1, we received subsequent new generations of hirez video players which relies solely on the HDMI interface for both audio and video transmission into home theatre receivers. In all these case, while playing back reissues of older movies on bluray disc vs their earlier releases on DVD discs, played via older HATS equipped systems, we noticed that soundstaging for bluray film sound were always shrunkened and listless in comparison, even though they might have "more meat on the bones". Now you see, all there years playing with digital audio interfaces have taught me that when there is high jitter degradation, soundstaging size, perspective, depth and height will always be the thing to suffer. In comparison even with a cheap, factory supplied 75ohm digital coaxial cable, we find that in many instances playing stereo music, HDMI can sound worse. I thought at that time - is this what newer technology is supposed to give you? Better video quality but poorer sound? Or more conveniences (as in 8=>1 fewer number of cables) but 3 steps back in sound compared to what we used to have with the iLink? My prayers were to be answered later. I was the first to receive the HATS equipped SCD-XA5400ES in south east Asia, as usual. I played around with it together with the partnering HATS equipped STR-DA5400ES for a couple of weeks to prepare for training to Sony guys. This combo was a godsend. When HATS was activated, I could hear again that sweet, effortlessly flowing music that I used to experience with HATS ON iLink systems. Again, the soundstaging is wide and spacious, deeply recessed when there is ample space behind the speakers, and sonic images float holographically outside the boundaries of speaker cabinets. Imaging is precise and sharply delineated, with plenty of air between the notes to help create that effect of multi layering that characterize a good recording. And again, when HATS is turned off, there is the very noticeable creeping of that "souriness" into the presentation, a wholesale collapse of the soundstage, and acres of gaps started appearing in the spaces between speakers, rendering each speaker channels as lonely islands lost at seas. Sadly, Sony never made an equivalent bluray player that utilizes similar audio rate control going forward. Charles Hansen at Ayre obviously recognizes the importance of audio rate control as an effective way to suppress the deleterious effect of interface induced jitter that he went ahead to include that function into his highly expensive DX5 bluray player. Will the DX5 work smoothly with a Sony HATS equipped receiver? I don't know because I haven't tried it. but one thing is for sure, subsequent bluray players I have tried in my system including previous and current oppo players outputting digital audio on HDMI still exhibit that "sourness" and retarded soundstaging that I had noticed with poorly implemented digital interfaces all those many years since. If your room is large enough to accommodate all 5 speakers being placed at equal distances and you don't have serious room acoustical problems, it always sound better avoiding HDMI connectivity altogether, and use the analog outputs from the sacd and bluray players instead.
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