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Bought a Toshiba 3990 today for 50 bucks and am astonished how good it sounds out of the box, un-broken in, untweaked. But here's my question: In playing a cd--Stereophile's new Diabelli Variations-- that, on my other player, plays 'straight through', on the Toshiba, it pauses for a "second" after each track, seemingly cutting off the tail end of the music and making the disk very 'halting'. This cd has, on the main piece, 33 tracks, all fairly short. What has always happened on other players is that there is maybe a second or so at the end of each track where the music fades out (naturally) and then the next track starts immediatelly. And so the music flows as it ought to. The Toshiba, by stopping between each track makes it almost unlistenable. For a majority of disks--most pop disks, most classical disks even, this would be unnoticable. But some pieces--Diabelli amongst them--the music does not stop, or if it does, there is no pause (in live performance for example). But the Toshiba stops, then starts. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a setting someplace for it? Thanks!
Follow Ups:
Tom...some more info on your curious query...Sometimes you find your answers to questions by indirection. Ask yourself what you would do if you had to copy your classical CD?
This same question comes up with ripping/copying CDs for backup purposes many people will elect to remove the silence deliberately and not make a perfect clone. The forums at HydrogenAudio get into the quirks and operational aspects of burning software. However, it seems the best answer to your "classical music" question is that from this post on "gaps" and "cues".
To provide for cueing ability most CD's have a track of silence while some classical CD's will embed music in this cueing track. It appears that some DVD players assume that silence will be in this track and use this track to do some housekeeping and cause silence...thus messing up classical CD which do not encode silence but music to give the impression of continuous uninterrupted playback. A question best asked of Toshiba.
Do a search on this forum with the words "+cue" and "+gap" yourself. There are many experts on this very topic, there.
cheers,
PeAK
I tried one of these critters about 2 yrs ago when the craze was at full tilt . The bass sounded weak and the high end was... ? Last week for giggles I put it back in as a transport only feeding a NOS - Dac . Since I last tried this thing the bass in my system has improved immensely (mye stands,crossover mods , wings ,E-Foreplay preamp ,etc). The bass on the toshiba was still weaker than the AH Tjoeb 99 that I use as a transport and I think I finally heard what I don't like about the high middle range . THere is a very narrow band of frequencys that seem to be just mia . When the singers hit this narrow band it sounds kinda bad , I like everything else about the sound of the 3950 but those two items . I only slightly miss the extra bass slam , but once identified , the discontinuousness ( is that a word ?) of the high middles sticks out like a sore thumb and become verrrrry fatiguing , especially since the rest of that range is so smooooothe. I believe Todd Kreiger said he believed this was caused by the ASRC circuitry used by this dvd player and several others .My qustion is , have they fixed this problem in the the 3990 , or are the high middles still weird ?
Joe
JB,
Sorry about not getting to around to answering to your two queries, below:
"The bass on the toshiba was still weaker than the AH Tjoeb 99 that I use as a transport and I think I finally heard what I don't like about the high middle range . THere is a very narrow band of frequencys that seem to be just mia . When the singers hit this narrow band it sounds kinda bad , I like everything else about the sound of the 3950 but those two items"
"Does the 3990 have better bass than the 3950 ?"
Using Copland's "Fanfare for the common man" and some Norah Jones to compare a just plugged in 3950, the 3990 is:
- No longer has middles MIA
- Has fuller/prattier bass
In direct comparisons of the two units, I found the sound from the 3950 is smooth to the 3990's welcome additional detail, I can understand your MIA description. With the 3990 as a transport for both the internal dac and the external DAC (dAck 2.0) the sound was defintitely fuller sounding in the two areas (middles and bass) that you queried. In addition, the 3990 transport seemed to bring out the tangible character of the two DACs with less effort on my part. I think I now understand why my evaluation of the 3990 has been extended to 3 weeks. The engineers at Toshiba have improved upon a classic and also made it much quieter mechanically. Again my reservations about my comments are about a 3950 that has been unplugged for the last 3 weeks. Hope this helps and curious to hear what you find...if and when...
PeAK
Quote:
"My qustion is , have they fixed this problem in the the 3990 , or are the high middles still weird ?"
I've heard bad versions of the the 3950 and good ones improved further by the Swenson mod (via internal Auricap to existing jacks) ...but the 2006 update appearing as the SD-3990 is, as someone else put it, a real gem " stock " on redbook and great on the compatability front with compressed video for those who listen with their eyes...
To my ears, the 3990 provides dynamics and detail in a totally natural fashion that has me relistening to my collection of CDs...latest was "Take Five" (Dave Brubeck)...just spectacular ensemble playing.
PeAK
Hi PEaKI was actually using the 3950 as a transport so the Swenson mod would not come to play . Two disc's that the problem really came in into fine focus on were Daryl Hall - Can't stop dreaming and Anreas Bocceli - Amore . These two sing alot in the same range and occasionally when a certain note was being hit there would seem to be a very narrow band of frequency that was missing . Or at least that was what it sounded to my ear . Other than that it is an excetional unit that would be my reference transport if it didn't have the problem . Just wondering if that's been fixed in the 3990 or not .
Thanks for all your hard work and information .
Joe
I think the 3950 used external DACS (Burr Brown) that could either take the upsampled datastream directly ( PCM downsampling : OFF) or could be downsampled (from 192 KHz) to 48 KHz PCM. With the 3990, this downsampling option has dissapeared and the unit auto-magically decides to feed the internal DAC a stream of its choosing.
I'm evaluating the unit for a non-audiophile friend who wants a simple unit with good sound and thus have not used the unit as a transport (yet) but I know improved isolation helps the unit even with an external DAC. Did you experiment with either of these in the heydey of the 3950 ?
PeAK
Yes I did . I cut adhesive backed tile down and put in everywhere and ended up taking 70% of it back out ( syneristically , it sounded over damped with that much in it , or maybe I didn't care for the sonic signiture of the tile) . This was at a time where I was using the unit with the swenson mods as a cd player not a transport . I had 3.3 uf auricaps to the preamp .
PEaK sez:
"I think the 3950 used external DACS (Burr Brown) that could either take the upsampled datastream directly (PCM downsampling: OFF) or could be downsampled (from 192 KHz) to 48 KHz PCM. With the 3990, this downsampling option has dissapeared and the unit auto-magically decides to feed the internal DAC a stream of its choosing. "Does this mean it no longer uses asyncronous rate conversion ? This is the animal that Todd K. says "causes the problem" that I hear ?
Does the 3990 have better bass than the 3950 ?
TIA
Joe
Quote: "Bought a Toshiba 3990 today for 50 bucks and am astonished how good it sounds out of the box, un-broken in, untweaked"
Ditto for me. I noticed your posts regarding the Theta/MSB DACs but the interesting thing is that the architecture of the dual differential DAC paths is reminscent of the early Theta DACs that did this using discrete parts versus doing it "integrated" on one Zoran chip. Results should be better matching. I'm on my 3rd DAC but it was a friend's MSB DAC that got me started ( well received and reviewed in Stereophile/Soundstage around 2001)...this Toshiba is simply several cuts above that standard...stock! What are you running the 3990 into?
Back to the farm...I poked around this morning and found this description about
the makeup of a typical CD using gaps and tracks. I guess in a classical CD, these gaps are encoded in a way that seems seamless...I do not have any CDs with this "gapless encode" and need a definitive link about this and how playback should be accomplished.This may have to due with the Zoran chip and their might be some hidden menu to allow gaps to be removed.
PeAK
In the previous post, I said"
"I guess in a classical CD, these gaps are encoded in a way that seems seamless..."
On re-reading the EAC link I posted above, it seems as if gaps are very short tracks of played in normal play order but ignored by selecting specific tracks. The page suggest that there can be music/fade in these gaps. It seems as if DVD players with their high spin rates and oversampling into local memories would require some finite synchronization time (i.e. a gap) to catchup between tracks. Just my two cents.
PeAK
THanks for the research. My other player is a Pioneer 563a dvd (and sacd etc) machine and it plays the disks in question without the pause. And as far as I can remember, I set nothing special in the setup. I have not yet hooked up the Toshiba to a tv to run through the menus--I don't do dvds in this system. I did take a look at the cd as it played through the pioneer and the piano stops playing, the music fades (not long of a fade) and the pioneer stays on the same track but with the elapsed time still increasing, maybe one, two seconds. Then the next track begins immediatelly--bamb. On some cd players Ive had--I think the one in my car at the moment--you can actually see a negative time, -3,-2, -1...between tracks. I will take a look at the Toshiba menus today. I just don't get how the Toshiba can sound this good this cheap. In the quote from the Stereophile article in a lower post, Aktinson says he personally would spend the 'extra' $1,950 to get the somewhat better sound of the Moon player (or whatever) he is reviewing. OK,that's fine, but if Toshiba can do something close for $50, someone out there--the old Mod Squad, the new ???--ought to be able to do it using this machine, charge $500 and still make a huge profit. The main thing the Toshiba is reinforcing for me is how sick the hi end industry is. It's become a rich man's game...and Im not so sure any more, even if I became a rich man (Ha) that I would play it. Since you asked in one of your two posts, my Toshiba goes into a very old Cary preamp that I paid $340 for on audiogon, then into a Hafler Transnova amp that I paid $600 on the 'gon and to 20 year old Vandersteen 2C speakers that I DID buy new (but got a discount) way back when. For the hell of it I pulled out some old tweeks--the mapleshade brass weights and some imitation rollerballs and started to use them with the Toshiba--rather than gunk up the inside with calk at this point. Also, something I never do, I bought a two year warranty at bestbuy for $12.99,figuring, hey...it means I'll get a new one for two years if it breaks. Again, thanks for the info.. I will check out your links after I eat breakfast!!!
Good points Tom. I felt compelled to pen a few words during your breakfast break:
Quote: "
Point 1: I just don't get how the Toshiba can sound this good this cheap.Point 2: In the quote from the Stereophile article in a lower post, Aktinson says he personally would spend the 'extra' $1,950 to get the somewhat better sound of the Moon player (or whatever) he is reviewing. OK,that's fine, but if Toshiba can do something close for $50, someone out there--the old Mod Squad, the new ???--ought to be able to do it using this machine, charge $500 and still make a huge profit.
Point 3: The main thing the Toshiba is reinforcing for me is how sick the hi end industry is. It's become a rich man's game...
Some answers:
- Point 1-Good but cheap : The use of a single clock eliminates many of the low frequency jitter beat issues from multiple clock/crystal designs back in the 90s. The use of static memories needed to buffer and build video line data in the DVD transport stream also provide a degree of isolation from jitter induced by the transport servoing/tracking/seeking hash. There are other details but I also think Toshiba engineers know how to listen.
- Point 2-Atkinson's 3950 review comments : I personally felt similar to JA about the unit and needed to get to the next level. His only route is $$$ and for "some" it is a cap/op-amp upgrade route. Would have been nice if he had tried it as a transport or stuck some rollerballs on it. Getting someone "there" to listen to a modified unit is not their mandate...evenly slightly modified would put his $1950 number in a new perspective but it is based on the $$$ route at his disposal and beckon call. There are outfits/companies(RAM, Underwood) that will put out warrantied upgraded units in the $500 range.
- Point 3-Sickness and $$$ game : CD is a 30 year old format with constant refinement and Moore's law (doubling of transistor count each 4 years) of increasing transistor count to help it sort out the vinyl to CD quandry. Kudos to Toshiba to being able to play in the features war(slow, angle, A-B repeat, menu, subtitle, 16:9, composite, component out) but its great to see they got the L/R audio jacks (and video)at a very decent level. Still I rather pay another $10 for 20% more quality than what a Walmart economy supports. Is there no middle ground? THX and multi-channel has bloated the basic one size fits all family entertainment set but I bet not many of those get just 2 channel sounding right...imagine trying to get 7 speaker's right for music. For video, it's just immersion and more speaker's cannot hurt...just don't use the word fidelity in the same breath.
cheers,
PeAK
Glad to hear that the 'newer' Toshibas are still sounding 'surprisingly good' On the older ones swapping out the coupling caps and removing the opamps made significant difference.. Read: at least as good as the Better 'Stereopile' recomendations :-) Caveat Emptor applies in spades in Audio Weenie land
Agreed on the oft hyped 'internet mods': Caulk, weights and other mutilations.. only for the truly dim.
Dunno about the pause/skip.. these $50 units do have oddities in their programming.. no arguement there , but it's likely going to cost $2000 to get similar sound.. sans.. the quirks.
My $200 Pioneer dvd plays sacd and dvd-a and does not have this pause-quirk thing (see other post below for one person's explanation). I agree with the 'caveat emptor'.... the mags have to have something to write about and I do believe that tiny differences are magnified like crazy. Plus, price is simply NOT an issue with them. They are out of touch and I'm thinking the next step in 'audio publishing' will be here on the net--not 6moons which strikes me as more of the same or worse--but something like AA...and these dialogues (and what happens in the Tweak asylum). So as long as AA can get 'sponsers' without those sponsers demanding 'censorship rights', maybe we have something! Thanks for the input.
Long before I caught on to AA, I had stopped reading the mags. They had become meaningless and seemed to be digging their own graves. With the high-end business dying, they pushed higher and higher priced items trying to capture the last dollar from the lone remaining consumer. The average guy that lusted after something he could afford (and it was a guy) was completely shut out from the reviews, so he moved on to something else, mostly computers/internet. They completely lost the younger crowd in the process. And they completely lost me as I didn't upgrade my system in 15 years.As for publishing on the net, it's already happening, and you are participating. Why do we need experts to tell us what to like? We have open discussion on the forums.
I picked up computers as a hobby at just the right time...my college degrees were in totally interesting but pretty much impractical areas with, as Frank Zappa once said, no commercial potential. The pre-ibmpc computer world was pretty interesting and through a lot of self-teaching and some luck I managed to make a career out of it (non-dot.com, non-millionaire--unfortunaltely!!). But I remember thinking audio was a dead end because there was not much to DO once you bought the stuff. (Listen to music of course, but that isn't audio). I agree with you that computers stole young people's interest from audio (I wasn't young when the pc craze hit--but younger than now). The AA forums get close to something that could for me replace the mags...I have done a bunch of Jon Risch things for example, and this Toshiba is another example. My current thinking, today, is, well, if Toshiba makes a great cheat cd player, I wonder what their cheap receivers sound like. If it is true that technology has changed (and it is), it is also true that big companies like TOshiba are picking up on the changes or making them themselves. In a hobby that essentially touts the past--lp's--which I still listen to sometimes, tubes--I have a tube preamp--even transistors over IC's--you aren't going to find innovative uses of the new and you aren't going to be able to catch the wave of change for your economic benefit--ie cheap! Thanks for the great post, it got me thinking in some more directions...if I come up with anything, I'll post it! Take care.
Tom,The most refreshing magazine that I've read to date is the one year operation of TONEAudio ...it addresses your points about TAS/Stereophile/6Moons. They have a re-known recording engineer (Steve Hoffman) lending his ear to help out with the sorting out some of the reviews. Beautiful mag to look at and to read.
They are bi-monthly and often feature reviews of classic equipment using real-world systems. Reviews are done on several different types of systems with one featuring home depot ( HD-14 ) recommended by Paul Seydor(TAS) and recording engineer Tony Faulkner
Thanks...you know, I have seen this some time ago but 'forot' about it (the 'forgot' doesn't really need quotes). I'll take a look again. Thanks for all the feedback.
Bare,
The previous generation 3980 had its share of reliability issues but the a similar output stage to the 3950. The reports of malfunctioning units still exists but has gone way down. Seems the 3980 had some specific chip issues.The caps upgrade path is no longer needed. Stock, the 3990's better improved sound(vs stock 3950) is due in large part to a new direct coupled output stage obseleting the requirement of these mods.
The op-amp is not stellar, but Toshiba engineers get really decent sound out of a 50 cent LM4558. Go figure! Of course for those blessed with the requisite skills, op-amp rolling would be a natural path to take.
Got a friend whom you want to experience the "modded 3950" sound without opening up the unit and violating the warranty: Try the SD-3990...YMMV
P.S. The unit does not power down on its own for those who wanted to disable it on the 3950. Reason enough to purchase one?
PeAK %^Q
Welcome to what many DVD players do with CD's...when listening to tracks not audio segmented but track segmented. I wish a way to turn this mute circuit "off" was ava. to the lay person.
Thanks...why is it that my Pioneer dvd etc player does this correctly??
the pioneer does not employ the mute circuit is all..
Thanks...well that makes all the difference for the segueing type cd...
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