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In Reply to: Re: Toshiba 3990 pauses between tracks? posted by PeAK on November 25, 2006 at 06:10:09:
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.
Follow Ups:
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.
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?
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