From: dud@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (William F. Dudley Jr.)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: A Golden-Ear perspective on CD players.
Keywords: flame bait, CD accuracy
Date: 6 Apr 92 15:14:02 GMT
Organization: AT&T

The following was written by a good buddy of mine, who I believe is
a certifiable golden ear.  I thought his perspective on CD's was
refreshing and it certainly is well written, so I am posting it for
your laughing and dancing enjoyment.

If you would like to correspond with the author, email him at
the following address: 
    anrosen%idss.nwa.com@uci.com
He can't get net news, so don't bother trying to flame him by posting.
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		  Buying a Compact Disk Player
			Adam N. Rosenberg

    The amazing thing about the compact disk (CD) is not that a bunch
of very smart people eventually got decent sound out of it.  The
amazing thing, to me at least, is that new technology was able to
replace completely the older, cheaper, more reliable, established,
and superior technology.  I attribute this to the power of marketing
and wonder how many other excellent products we would have if people
made their own decisions about the products they buy.  Only recently
has the CD achieved sound quality beyond the "novelty item" level,
yet it has been years since I could walk into a "record store" and
buy a phonograph record!

    The Physics of the CD start off pretty simply.  Each second is
divided into 44000 samples with 16 bits per sample for each of two
stereo channels.  (The 16 bits are mathematically derived from 28
bits on the disk itself to make the error rate essentially zero.)
That means that frequency response starts at zero and runs as close
to 22000 Hz as you are willing to pay for.  While getting to 12000 Hz
is pretty easy, getting anything over 18000 Hz requires some fancy
filtering and lots of computing power.  There are some pretty nice
sounding cassette decks with no response over 16000 Hz, so this isn't
necessarily bad news.  The problem is that while analog errors are
harmonic and musically unobtrusive, errors made in extracting high
frequency information from not-too-much-higher sampling rates are
dissonant like somebody hitting a frying pan everytime the music gets
loud.  The same percentage distortion is much more grating on CD.

    And depending on how awful you can stand your music, you can have
as close to 90 dB dynamic range as you like.  At the 90 dB level
claimed by many CD advocates, the lowest level is just one bit and
there is only a rasping sound to tell you that something is playing.
If you insist on telephone quality, then you have 60 dB left for your
so-called dynamic range.  And a phonograph record 60 dB below its
maximum usable signal sounds a lot better than a telephone.

    This is not an issue of noise.  After all, a CD has no noise
while analog media are inherently noisy.  This is merely how quiet
can a signal get and still sound musical.  Analog signals can be far
below noise levels and still be acceptable while the digital lower
limit is a signal floor rather than a noise level.

    So what should we expect of CD technology.  First, we expect
perfect reproduceability.  Every CD player should sound the same and
the mastering and mixing process should not degrade signal quality no
matter how many generations of duplication are involved.  Second, we
expect no noise and clean sound.  And third, we expect low level crud
that gets worse as engineers try to get full audio bandwidth or
dynamic range comparable to a phonograph record.

    In 1984 I had my first exposure to two alternative sound
reproduction technologies during one weekend.  I heard my first
genuine Victrola with a crank and a horn.  This was a nice unit with
adjustable speed from 75 to 90 revolutions per minute and a horn over
a meter long.  The owner played me some acousticly recorded Caruso
records (where he bellowed into a horn connected to the cutting
stylus) and some electronically recorded Gigli records.  (At least
they were "direct-to-disk.")

    The other new technology I heard was a Sony Compact Disk player
at Chestnut Hill Audio.  It was played through some top-of-the-line
Acoustat speakers with a pretty decent amp.  (In the same room were a
few good turntables including a Linn Sondek LP-12.)  Jack Rubinson
was jumping up and down extolling the virtues of this "second
generation" unit where all the bugs had been worked out of the first
generation and the technology was "finally perfected."

    It wasn't close.  The Victrola had a warmth and true-to-life
quality that was clearly absent in the CD.  I was moved by what I
heard out of those old 78 RPM records.  It fell far short of today's
phonograph technology or even today's cassette technology, but there
was music coming out of that ancient machine that evoked emotion.
The CD had sizzle, boom, intertransient silence, but no emotion.

    Early this year I heard a CD player that sounded like music.
Its owner actually preferred it to his phonograph system.  While it
didn't evoke the emotional response that I got from a record on his
VPI turntable (of the exact same performance), it clearly was "in the
audiophile league" of sonic performance.  We listened to it for hours
and I never had to run for cover.

    My current system contains the following components:
	Linn Sondek LP-12 (Valhalla) Turntable
	LOCI Phonograph Tonearm (*) (+)
	EK-1 Cartridge and Phono Stage (*)
	Lots of classical, folk, jazz, blues, and popular records
	Revox A77 Half-track (38 cm/sec) Open Reel Tape Deck
	A large shelf of live tapes I made ten years ago
	Aiwa M700 Three Head Cassette Deck (*)
	Three cases of live cassette recordings I made ten years ago
	Electron Kinetics Eagle 7A Amplifier (*)
	Quad Electrostatic Loudspeakers (*)
	Advent 300 Tuner and Woofer Amp
	Fried "B" Subwoofer
	    (*) Equipment I know is out of production
	    (+) The tonearm I patented, manufacture, and marketed

    I have eschewed the CD disk technology on the basis of poor
performance.  I decided to revisit that outlook and audition CD
players with the expectation of buying one.  Besides buying my first
piece of audio gear in six years, this would give me a chance to get
to know the hifi stores in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

    The best systems separate the CD playback process into the
"transport" that whirls the disk around, shines a laser onto it, and
extracts the digital stream and the "digital-to-analog (D/A)
converter" that turns these data into an analog audio signal.  There
are boxes that perform both of these functions just as there are
receivers combining tuner, preamp, and amplifier.

    I armed myself with three CD's which were musical and wonderful
in their own right and were represented in my analog record
collection.  They were Cantate Domino (Proprius), Joni Mitchell's
Court and Spark (Warner Brothers), and Solti and the Chicago Symphony
playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (EMI).  I haven't played the
audiophile game in quite a few years, but I still remember how to
listen.  When I was in practice, I could identify what I liked and
disliked in each component in the audio chain.  On the other hand, I
have no experience with audible differences among CD players.

    The system I heard had a $700 transport and a $1300 converter.  I
heard a Philips transport and a Little Bit converter for about the
same money that sounded "okay."  Then I compared a Wadia $5000 system
and an Esoteric transport and Audio Research converter ($7500) that
were significantly better.  The Wadia system was clearly better and
both were quite respectable, but both had problems on loud female
choral passages.  The Audio Research had more problems with the solo
female in a reverberant hall.  After that I heard two units my
Micromega and their $2900 system had better bass, better highs,
better imaging, and better detail than their $900 system.  The only
problem is that the cheaper system felt better to listen to.  It
brought more emotion to the music.

    At this point the lightbulb began to glow.  What I heard from the
Wadia is better than 44000 samples at 16 bits ought to sound based on
my intuition.  And the more expensive Micromega would appeal to every
listening test an "audiophile" would use!  If there aren't enough
data on the CD, then maybe these players are being engineered to find
the "most musical" waveform that fits the bits.  Let us divide the
world of sound into musical sounds such as violins, vocals, and
woodwinds and noise sounds such as chainsaws, jackhammers, and
dentist drills.  While my phonograph might provide equally good
reproduction of music and noise, maybe these players are being
engineered to play musical sounds for all possible CDs.  Micromega
probably fiddled with electrical parameters in their expensive unit
to improve bass, treble, imaging, and detail for musical sounds.
The CD sound is, in some philosophical sense, engineered rather than
reproduced!

    The other realization I came to is that every part of the chain
is sonically significant just as in a phonograph.  The transports are
different, the mechanical support of the CD in the transport matters,
and the digital cable from transport to converter has sonic impact.
The only piece of equipment that has any business sounding different
is the converter since, as any New York cabdriver will tell you,
"bits is bits."  Folks have measured the transports and found the
error rates close enough to zero not to matter.  If two identical bit
streams sound different, and they really do, then the two things
being compared are not truly digital but rather are quantized analog
signals.  And all the other "digital" hype is up for grabs as well!

    I heard a Rotel transport with Proceed converter that a friend of
mine bought.  Finally Mel Schilling (of Music and Sound fame) played
me his MAS transport and Arthur converter which, for $2000 was as
good as the $5000 Wadia system I heard.  He also showed me the added
value of a mat on top of the CD.  The sonic improvement using the mat
was staggering.  This further supports my claim that the CD is really
quantized analog signal rather than any form of digital.  Further,
the Arthur has a lead-acid battery that charges when the unit is not
in use.  The battery sounded a lot better than the power supply did.
Mel says that audiophiles "in the old days" used to hook lead-acid
12 volt car batteries to their Dynaco PAS-2 preamps instead of the
12 volt pwer supply that came with the unit.

    I decided to buy the MAS/Arthur combination and Mel included the
"masTER mat" to put on top of the CD itself, a cleaning solution to
remove fingerprints and dirt from CDs, cables, and AC cords for the
unit, my EK-1, and my Eagle 7A.

    The stuff came the night before last and I put it together.
Well, how does it sound?  The MAS/Arthur CD system is sweet and
smooth with little or none of the typical "digital sound" flaws.
When the music gets too complicated for the Arthur, it just gets a
little "blurry" rather than becoming harsh as most units do.  It
certainly doesn't compare to my phonograph in sound quality, but I
didn't expect it to. I expect it to be something I can listen to and
enjoy on good source material and that it is.  It is about as good as
my phonograph run through my Aiwa M700 cassette deck.  And, unlike
analog front ends, it is quiet.  The only noise left when it's
playing is a 15 Hertz throb that goes away when I put the cat
outside. 

    The other phenomena I explored were the effect of the mat, the
battery vs. AC power supply, and the AC line cords for my EK-1 and
Eagle 7A.  All had a pronounced positive effect on the sound.  And
the good news is that my switched power strip contributed negligable
sonic degradation, so I don't "have to" put switched outlets into my
walls.

    In summary, I've been able to salvage decent sound out of the CD
for only a couple of thousand dollars.  In the process I've learned
much about the audible differences between CD players.  They are as
subject to "tweak-audiophile" phenomena as turntables, preamps, tape
decks, interconnect cables, amplifiers, speaker wire, and speakers.
By that I mean that everything matters:  the mat, the digital cable,
the power supply, and anything else you can think of.  The claims of
digital reproduceability and digital invulnerability may be horse
manure, but those willing to spend the money can get decent sound out
of the CD technology.

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To contact the author, email to:    anrosen%idss.nwa.com@uci.com
To contact the poster, email to:    dud@homxb.ho.att.com