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In Reply to: I suspect we are now talking about subjective perception ... posted by Christine Tham on May 10, 2006 at 15:50:35:
"I don't mean to slight either your listening preferences or Alex's design skills, but if you prefer DSD converted to PCM on a specific player then it's probably for euphonic or player specific reasons rather than the sound actually being "better"."I have no argument against that, it makes perfect sense to me and I agree...but it's also almost an universal consensus of all APL owners, in regard to their players. (Unless I'm mistaken, one can't do that with the Meitner system).
"There are myriad of possible reasons why on a specific player and/or DAC it may yield a subjective improvement. For example, the clock on the 3910 probably has higher jitter for DSD rates, and converting to PCM may make the issue less pronounced. Filtering ultrasonic noise may improve playback depending on your amp/speakers (it did on my old system). You may simply prefer the sound of the decimation filter. The DAC itself may be better at PCM than DSD (not surprising given it's probably a hybrid architecture)."
I don't have enough engineering knowledge to say whether that may, or may not be the case. I can tell you though that conversion to PCM sounds better, more natural, and more organic to me, - whatever the heck I'm listening to...
And, sure, it's a given that it's a subjective choice: as EVERYTHING is in high end audio's artistic interpretation. A designer decides to use Hovland caps, or no caps, or go buy the special super duper oil and build her own caps: they're all artistic, subjective choices...
In this particular, I think, (if I'm not totally mistaken), that an APL owner forgot to reset their player back to Source Direct DSD after watching a DVD and reported to other owners that the PCM conversion sounded much better to them...
Cheers,
"The men who own the city make more sense than we do: their actions are clear, their lives are their own"
Follow Ups:
I wasn't sure how you were going to react to my post, so thanks for taking it in the spirit that it was intended.I do agree that subjective impressions are the heart of why we enjoy music - at the end of the day we have to enjoy the music, regardless of theoretical objections. However, subjective impressions can also be misleading - as Ted pointed out, some people seem to *like* jitter, and upsampling filters, PCM "ringing" artefacts, etc..
If the majority of APL owners prefer to listen to SA-CDs converted to PCM, then that is a valid mode of listening. However, it may be a result that is very system specific, and can't be generalised into "therefore DSD converted to PCM is a good thing under ALL circumstances"
Since you like stories, I can offer two short ones.
Once I visited the home of a well known SA-CD basher who used to frequent this forum. This person used to say that SA-CD sounded dull and the high frequencies don't have the crispness of PCM. Well, guess what, I listened to his system and he is right! On *his* system, it is clear that SA-CD high frequencies sounded terrible! However, that is *not* the experience I have listening to SA-CDs on Ted's or mikel's or even my system.
Another short story: at one stage CDs actually sounded better than SA-CDs on my (old) system. It surprised even me, but it was unmistakeable. High frequencies sounded dull and smeary, and lack the punchiness and crispness of DVD-Audio or even CD.
After some experimentation, I discovered the reason. My amp did not handle the ultrasonic noise generated by DSD very well - simply applying a low pass filter made it sound much better. On that basis, I upgraded my amps and now SA-CDs sound just fine.
So I'm not surprised that many APL owners may prefer the sound of DSD converted to PCM. But at the same time, I personally would prefer not converting and solving system specific issues with DSD playback directly.
Cheers Christine...Right...
I do have a tendency to be a bit vociferous in my overzealous support of artistic considerations in the high end.
Honestly, - I do believe that there is more of an "objective-like" analysis available, - at least to the point where most of us would agree that SACD has more info available. We may not agree that we prefer a certain flavor, = Krell's vs. Musical Fidelity for example, - their unique interpretations of what they each think is "good" SACD.
And, also, after reading many of my posts in this thread: (apologies for being too ubiquitous), one could get the impression that I'm saying that SACD implementations are equal on average to redbook, or even not as good. This is not my belief, = as I believe on average that most SACD recordings are generally BETTER than their redbook counterparts. With a few notable exceptions, SACD in stereo, just isn't worth spending the extra money for most of us....
If it comes along for the ride, beautiful.
Personally, - I'm thinking of downsizing. And if I do, I'm getting a redbook only CDP, a nice $2K set of standmounts that have great synergy with the CDP and a great tube amp, where the three together minimize each others shortcomings and emphasize each others positive attributes.
SACD certainly will not be in the mix, as my downstairs neighbor gave me a Toshiba DVD player and that'll cover my world. I'll sacrifice a close to a SOTA system, but I'll be in Italy a couple of times a year more, and that'll go a long way towards forgetting about the detail, resolution, organic beauty, and amazing soundstaging: a little step back, with cash in the pocket..
I hear you, and do not dispute, or discount the weight of what you say when relating both the differences in PCM vs DSD as possibly being unique to the APL and also, = the person's system whom you visited actually sounding better with PCM. I've had similar experiences as the most important IS the whole system, and different components react differently in different situations: it's all about complete system synergy.
I've heard too many great, individual components, sound what I view as crappy, when matched with what I view as the wrong mate.
Cheers Christine..
"The men who own the city make more sense than we do: their actions are clear, their lives are their own"
Hey you are not writing a book about living in Tuscany, are you? :-)The market for those kind of books may be a bit oversaturated ...
If you are downsizing, I would recommend going for hard disk based system, a great DAC, amp and speakers. 500GB drives are now in the retail market, which means 2x 500 GB = 1TB which should be more than enough to house your entire CD collection, DVD-Audio plus every LP digitized to 96/24. Of course, SA-CD is not in the picture either, except when the CD layer is ripped.
That would be *my* desert island selection. Although I'm not sure 1TB is enough, maybe 2 TB with redundancy.
We have a 2 Terabit server in the basement running lossless ITunes. I dumped 700 ceedees down and my neighbor dumped 100. I have cat5 running up to an IBook which runs USB out to a converter box that converts to the APL digital input...Sounds pretty darn awesome...Not so much a fan of Tuscany, I prefer the crowded, dirty, south where North Americans are afraid to go... :-)
"The men who own the city make more sense than we do: their actions are clear, their lives are their own"
HowdyYou said "... (Unless I'm mistaken, one can't do that with the Meitner system)." Tho this isn't quite the same I found it interesting:
One of my friends who can't stand vinyl and thinks something is missing in my system was over and I had a thought.
I hooked my player up with the SPDIF digital interconnect instead of the ST glass fiber interconnects and played a CD for him.
The difference? Whether the CD to DSD conversion was being done in the transport or the DAC. Since both are implemented by Meitner and (tho I don't have direct confirmation from EMM Labs) I believe they are identical up converts. So the real difference it the amount of jitter caused by the SPDIF interconnect.
Guess what? He liked the extra jitter better!
So I used my CD jukebox as a transport instead and he liked that better.
I'm not implying that you or other APL customers resemble my friend or that this experienced is in anyway the same as yours but I was surprised that anyone would prefer more jitter :)
-Ted
.
"The men who own the city make more sense than we do: their actions are clear, their lives are their own"
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