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In Reply to: Toshiba 3990 pauses between tracks? posted by TomLarson on November 24, 2006 at 20:23:45:
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 ?
Follow Ups:
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.
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 .
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 ?
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
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