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In Reply to: Re: accurate with regard to? posted by Bold Eagle on February 23, 2007 at 20:11:36:
now you defined the term. But, frequency extension doesn't necessarily translate to creating a sense of real music. I would love nothing more than to spend under $750 to 1k and come out with digital better than my ancient Linn setup.
Follow Ups:
Waxing philosophical for a moment, I've thought for a long time that the key difference between CD and LP is the lack of euphonic coloration in the digital.Pretty much, the laser scans the track, the electronics read the 1's and 0's and they get converted into an analog waveform. There really is no chance for colorations to creep in-at least not to the degree that they can in phono. To be sure, there can be digital artifacts in the analog signal, and like any analog stage, there can be subtle colorations added by the line amplifier (or not so subtle colorations added by the designer in an attempt to differentiate his product).
But phono is a different breed of cat altogether. It's basically a mechanical system with a little electro-magnetic transducer that's mechanically coupled to it. It's loaded with places for resonances to occur. No mechanical system of any size is resonance free up to 20 kHz! So the whole system is full of damped (hopefully)resonances and a host of things that can generate spurious noise (bearings, belt flutter, record surface noise, motor noise, etc) Further, we expect the stylus to faithfully follow a groove molded into a plastic disk. And if we follow back in the process, the molds were made from masters cut on a recording lathe, which is another mechanical system full of damped resonances and spurious noise sources. Lots and lots of places for all those resonances to add subtle little colorations, and just enough low level noise and delayed signals (due to resonances in the record itself) to add the sense of ambience which is totally lacking in CD's.
To continue, I think a lot of the art of setting up a phono system is the selection of a turntable, arm and cartridge that have the most favorable set of colorations for your system, your room, and your taste. How would you ever expect the clinically accurate CD to compete?
How indeed! The answer for me was to build my system around the CD player and to introduce my subtle colorations downstream. Once I had found a CD player whose analog stage suited me, of course. They do vary quite a bit, some deliberately tweaked by the designer, some through ineptness and cost cutting. What the CD lacks, however, is the sense of ambience. The sound comes out of a black digital silence and it adds none of the artificial reverberation that LP's have.
The artificial reverberation is largely from the stylus pushing off against the groove and from acoustical feedback. The stylus pushing off against the groove wall sends compression waves across the record where they reflect from the edge and travel back to the stylus, where they are picked up as a delayed signal. You can see this for yourself by simply changing from a felt mat to a Sorbothane mat. The sound is deader and lacks a certain "life" with the Sorbothane. Years ago, there was a Canadian mat sold called the "Platter Matter" (AKA, the Dumpa mat-bad name!) Their literature had lots of nice oscilloscope photos showing the ringing that occurs in an undamped LP from the act of playing the record. There is also the component of reverberation from the sound from the speakers impinging on the record and causing it to vibrate. Again, the more the mat damps the record, the less the effect. And all this is added to the original material on the master tapes. CD's do not suffer (benefit?) from either effect.
so you use which component (Advents modded, Onkyo amp, or ?) to color your picture?I do agree with the good digital player aurally painting a perfect pic in very black silent space analogy.
My current favorite is a pair of modded Advents on 16" stands, an NAD C320BEE integrated amp, Rotel RCD-971 CD player, and an Onkyo T-4087 tuner. 32' cables of 12 gauge, fine strand "rope lay" SoundKing ($0.39/ft), and 12" custom made interconnects (25 pF).I alternate the Advents and NAD with my modded JBL L-110's (sealed cabinets, Advent Legacy woofer, low DCR inductor on woofer)and the Onkyo Integra A-8190 integrated. The rest is the same.
The Advents are smoother, more accurate, and go lower in the bass by 1/3 octave. They have a more natural sound and a more distant perspective. But the JBL's are more forward, more punchy, and more lively and sometimes I like that for a while, but always end up going back to the Advents.
I have two pair of Advents and occasionally go to Double Advents (stacked vertically), but with the mods, the Doubles are not as good as they were in stock form. I have considered rewiring the rear switch to allow going from stock to modded crossovers to optimize the Doubles, but I live in a multi-unit condo and the bass can be obtrusive.
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