CD players are back ?

[MetalNuts]

On 1/7/2019 at 5:33 PM, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Should we say CD Players are back-wards?

 

I am sure there is a reverse button to make it move backward and a forward button to make it forward.  If you so desire, there should be an eject button to make it escape.🤣

[ajay556]

12 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

I appreciate your response, but the "..one explanation may be.." from that article is simply not credible.  It makes no sense in relation to how digital communication (and in this case, spinning discs vs servers vs streaming vs fill_in_the_blank) actually works.

 

A much more credible explanation for this alleged "..softly spoken preference.." is the subjectivised, biased, art & wine culture of the audiophile review.  In other words, it's not the technology and engineering, its whats going on in their heads that explains this "preference".

Well most of audio (and any other technology)  does not make sense to engineers  - like power cables, audio cables, quantum mechanics etc...we are still in infant stages of how electronics really works and that is why technology improves every year as we learn more. So the best way to understand  -  is to listen - otherwise we will be blue in face talking in theory especially since this is not an IEEE forum but an audio forum.

[Miska]

9 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 See my 2nd post on page 3 of this thread. Even the original would sound better than many members get from PC/Server playback.

 

Ahh, the PS-Audio one? Not very useful for me, I would need to put my HQPlayer Embedded computer between that and a DAC. Totally doable, either with AES or coax S/PDIF, but I fail to see the point why I would do that?

 

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 See my 2nd post on page 3 of this thread. Even the original would sound better than many members get from PC/Server playback.

 

After pursuing all the technobabble and audiophile speak, I have concluded that Direct Stream "PWT" is a standard disc player/file server with a proprietary transport layer protocol between itself and any other Direct Stream DAC.  Nothing to see or "hear" there...

 

 

 

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, ajay556 said:

Well most of audio (and any other technology)  does not make sense to engineers  - like power cables, audio cables, quantum mechanics etc...

 

I think I am going to make this sentence my signature 😋

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, crenca said:

A much more credible explanation for this alleged "..softly spoken preference.." is the subjectivised, biased, art & wine culture of the audiophile review.  In other words, it's not the technology and engineering, its whats going on in their heads that explains this "preference".

 

Umm, when you alter how the system operates, then you are changing the menagerie of interference effects that are "in the room" - since no-one actually measures this, most are flying blind; so, keep shifting the deck chairs until the furniture stops falling into the water on every wave.

 

Waving your hands around and saying that technology should have this under control ain't the same thing as actually having it so.

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Ahh, the PS-Audio one? Not very useful for me, I would need to put my HQPlayer Embedded computer between that and a DAC. Totally doable, but I fail to see the point why I would do that?

 

 

You mean you would deny yourself the "Advanced Digital Lens" which "focuses digital data"?  You don't know what you are missing!  HQPlayer would be an even better product if it only had focus.

 

Indeed, all of Audiohpiledom could use a little more focus... 😋

[Miska]

Curious device in fact, after bit of searching found pictures of it. Seems to be based on some multi-format player motherboard (the black one). You can see the motherboard inside has the original connectors and then PSU and output board are hooked to it. Based on the motherboard color and style, I'm wondering if this is one of the devices based on Mediatek/Oppo platform?

 

 

 

[The_K-Man]

34 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 See my 2nd post on page 3 of this thread. Even the original would sound better than many members get from PC/Server playback.

 

Instead of making someone sift back through pages of a thread, or more sweetly telling them to 'Google it!', please just do all of us a favor and state what 'PWT' stands for.

 

Thanks in advance.

[The_K-Man]

At the risk of sounding like 'Rambling Al' Bielek here, I'd like to present some historic background on the CD players themselves:

 

Back in the late 1970s, when Philips, et al, were collaborating on a digital disc based playback standard to replace, or at the very least supplant, vinyl and other analog playback platforms, the audio and computer industry insiders, the "Rockefellers", "Ismays", so to speak, of those sectors, secretly proposed the centralization of all legible, audibile, and visual media.  

 

The idea was to de-clutter peoples' homes and lives from dozens to hundreds or even thousands of pieces of physical media - books, records, reel to reel and cassette tape, video cassettes, and even personal photo collections - by digitizing all of those things and storing them on a remote storage system, a digital warehouse hidden safely away from major city centers or industrial concentrations.  Once the public were up to speed on, and used to this whole remote storage thingamabob, they could profit in the $billions by requiring subscriptions to such services, or by charging monthly access fees.  Cha-ching!   Did I just state that entertainment and electronics industry insiders and up n ups from FORTY years ago knew that the 'Cloud', and physical-media free access, were around the corner?  You're damn right I did! 

 

But they realized that they were putting this digital cart several lengths ahead of the horse, at least by the tech standards of the era of bell bottoms, Lite Brites, huge cars and the discotheque.  So they needed a stop-gap solution for the short-term, before what we call portable media players and the Cloud came to fruition.  That solution was the Compact Digital Audio Disc.  Or 'Redbook', or CDDA for short.

 

This shiny new gem could be stocked in double quantities on retail store racks compared to lp records, and promised, and delivered, an audio platform of such wide and flat frequency response, impossibly low total distortion, and deep signal to noise ratio.

 

The problem was not the disc format itself, but the danged players!  Because of industry higher-up knowledge of the impending internet, digital access to audio, video, still image, and printed text media(books and newspapers), they suggested to manufacturers to NOT build the players to specifications that would have resulted in the new CD players lasting at least several decades before even beginning to wear out.  That's right!  If the original late 1970s-early 1980s players were built to tolerances EASILY  and CHEAPLY OBTAINABLE, those players would still be in service now.

 

Instead, CD, and later laser video disc and DVD players, were intentionally engineered to give only five-ten years of glitch-free service, before the lasers gave out, or the mechanical movments would start to gum up or fall apart.

 

How do I know all this?  I work in the Donated Goods sector of the Retail industry.  We get in, on a weekly basis, DOZENS of CD, DVD, or Blu Ray players, or CD boomboxes, or CD alarm clocks.  Out of every ten of such donated items only half of them even turn on when plugged into the juice, and barely half of those even recognize, read, and play a disc!  Some play the first two tracks on a CD, or the first 20 minutes of a feature film, before dissolving into skipping fits, or stop playing altogether.  Out of ten machines, that means only ONE or TWO  actually work and can be priced and put out on our sales floor!

 

Well, thank heavens for that plaid and paisley-era foresight into the cloud and digital streaming of popular music, TV shows, and movies!

 

And now you know, as Paul Harvey proclaimed, 'the rest of the story'!

 

Good day?!

[audiobomber]

33 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

How do I know all this?  I work in the Donated Goods sector of the Retail industry.  We get in, on a weekly basis, DOZENS of CD, DVD, or Blu Ray players, or CD boomboxes, or CD alarm clocks.  Out of every ten of such donated items only half of them even turn on when plugged into the juice, and barely half of those even recognize, read, and play a disc!

But how do you know about the industry deliberately wanting to go through optical discs before transitioning to the cloud? Sounds bogus to me, like most conspiracy theories.

 

Sony and Philips wanted to make money with the next new thing. CD was a gold mine for them. When it started to stumble, they tried and failed to repeat their success with higher resolution optical discs. Internet music has not been a windfall for them.

[crenca]

51 minutes ago, Miska said:

Curious device in fact, after bit of searching found pictures of it. Seems to be based on some multi-format player motherboard (the black one). You can see the motherboard inside has the original connectors and then PSU and output board are hooked to it. Based on the motherboard color and style, I'm wondering if this is one of the devices based on Mediatek/Oppo platform?

 

 

 

 

PSAudio is a small "audiophile" company, so yes they are repackaging commodity parts/platforms (hardware).  On the software side, they apparently have a small amount of unique code, which "focuses" data to such a point that they are able to "extract"...something...which leads to something...which audiophiles can then "hear" but which measurements, engineering, and science is ignorant and blind due to their own arrogance and obstinate "objectivism"...

 

The more I think about it, PSAudio is going about this the hard way - they should just sell audiophile power and USB cables for which science has yet to understand 😋

[sandyk]

57 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

 

Instead of making someone sift back through pages of a thread, or more sweetly telling them to 'Google it!', please just do all of us a favor and state what 'PWT' stands for.

 

Thanks in advance.

 Don't thank me in advance because I won't be obliging you in such a small thread.

You should have at least have read the 1st page to see what the OP wanted from this thread before even posting replies .

[sandyk]

Crenca

 Which part (if any) of this forum and it's contents do you like, (other than the stuff you yourself post) and which (if any) of it's advertisers do you not consider as " snake oil" peddlers ?

 IIRC,  the owner of the forum has pretty well summed up your attitude to the entire industry already, on more than one occasion .

[The_K-Man]

16 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Don't thank me in advance because I won't be obliging you in such a small thread.

You should have at least have read the 1st page to see what the OP wanted from this thread before even posting replies .

 Spoken like a true 21st Centurian.

 

God Bless you.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

Curious device in fact, after bit of searching found pictures of it. Seems to be based on some multi-format player motherboard (the black one). You can see the motherboard inside has the original connectors and then PSU and output board are hooked to it. Based on the motherboard color and style, I'm wondering if this is one of the devices based on Mediatek/Oppo platform?

 

 

 

Miska

 The one that I heard originally also had analogue outputs. IIRC, that is the area my friend did some small mods.

There is a full review of this earlier model from Australian Hi Fi complete with quite a few measurements.

 

Alex

 

http://i.nextmedia.com.au/avhub/australian-hifi_reviews_2012_2012-03_ps_audio_perfectwave_pwt_pwd_review_lores.pdf

[The_K-Man]

47 minutes ago, audiobomber said:

But how do you know about the industry deliberately wanting to go through optical discs before transitioning to the cloud? Sounds bogus to me, like most conspiracy theories.

 

Sony and Philips wanted to make money with the next new thing. CD was a gold mine for them. When it started to stumble, they tried and failed to repeat their success with higher resolution optical discs. Internet music has not been a windfall for them.

 

Because circa late '70s, the technology for that gap-filler, the CD, was relatively well within grasp.  The cloud, and streaming, and nano-circuitry for portable players, not so much.

[Daccord]

3 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

 

Because circa late '70s, the technology for that gap-filler, the CD, was relatively well within grasp.  The cloud, and streaming, and nano-circuitry for portable players, not so much.

It was behind the grassy knoll.

[The_K-Man]

On 1/6/2019 at 6:35 PM, ajay556 said:

There are sever

Bit perfect (which includes clock)  does not exist in real life  music - -if computer was bit perfect then innuos would not be selling 15k computer transports. There is only less bit imperfection with  better power supplies and clocks. A simple computer is completely bit imperfect.

 

A red book CD player is clocked to take,  neither 44,100.3 nor 43,099, but precisely 44,100 readings, or samples, per second off a CDDA disc.  Within each one of those 44,100 samples read, there are over 65,500 values for each sample, from -65,500 to 0dB full scale.  That's over 2.8million value points per second.  Pretty precise if you ask me!  

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

6 hours ago, sandyk said:

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

are you from Ostrichalia??

 

 Your remarks like this are tiresome and show just how petty a person you really are.

IIRC, diecaster has far more knowledge in the digital area than you ever will.

 

 

Insults and snide remarks based on nationality are usually a sign that the person has lost the debate and /or the plot 😏

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

Ahh, the PS-Audio one?

 

Yes.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ps-audio-directstream-memory-player-universal-transport

 

 

[Hugo9000]

I would never buy anything from PS Audio after reading their bullshit about their DMP.  Sorry, liars, your product is nothing special regarding use as a 'transport' for SACD.  Denon was offering affordable players that were permitted by Sony & Co. to output raw DSD via their DenonLink.  Denon did this as far back as 2005.  So PS takes innards from Oppo, substitutes a few things and then pretends they are "one of the first" to do something that has been done for well over a decade...blech.  Of course, certain types of "audiophiles" and the "press" let them get away with this because a brand like Denon is considered "junk" and unworthy of notice lmao.  If your product is good, let it stand on its actual merits without lies and distortions.

 

Of course, a PS Audio apologist might point out that their product is only a transport, while the Denon units all had onboard DACs that could also output analog multichannel and not just the raw digital DSD via Denon Link 3rd, so the Denons were all "players" and not "transports" haha!  If anything, however, it makes Denon all the more remarkable for negotiating with Sony to include such a feature on mainstream products with reasonable prices, and at such an early date.

 

From May of 2005:

https://usa.denon.com/us/news/archive/7

 

There were also players that could output DSD over HDMI long before PS Audio's product came out, going back to 2012 or earlier, but I don't recall which brands.

[diecaster]

11 minutes ago, Hugo9000 said:

I would never buy anything from PS Audio after reading their bullshit about their DMP.  Sorry, liars, your product is nothing special regarding use as a 'transport' for SACD.  Denon was offering affordable players that were permitted by Sony & Co. to output raw DSD via their DenonLink.  Denon did this as far back as 2005.  So PS takes innards from Oppo, substitutes a few things and then pretends they are "one of the first" to do something that has been done for well over a decade...blech.  Of course, certain types of "audiophiles" and the "press" let them get away with this because a brand like Denon is considered "junk" and unworthy of notice lmao.  If your product is good, let it stand on its actual merits without lies and distortions.

 

Of course, a PS Audio apologist might point out that their product is only a transport, while the Denon units all had onboard DACs that could also output analog multichannel and not just the raw digital DSD via Denon Link 3rd, so the Denons were all "players" and not "transports" haha!  If anything, however, it makes Denon all the more remarkable for negotiating with Sony to include such a feature on mainstream products with reasonable prices, and at such an early date.

 

From May of 2005:

https://usa.denon.com/us/news/archive/7

 

There were also players that could output DSD over HDMI long before PS Audio's product came out, going back to 2012 or earlier, but I don't recall which brands.

 

I don’t think anyone here cares about your disdain for PS Audio. Your wall of text looks like a vindictive rant. 

 

The only PS Audio product I would consider buying is their DirectStream DAC and that was designed by Ted Smith who is an absolute genius and not a PS Audio employee.

 

I would never buy a CD player from them. I don’t think I would a CD player from anyone as I much prefer streaming ripped content. 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

 

On 1/6/2019 at 8:24 PM, ajay556 said:

CD transports/player are making a come back? Kalista, CEC, hegel cd players have the lowest jitter noise ratio ever seen in digital playback system.  

Since this is a Audiophilestyle forum  now - other sources are not taboo anymore. Keep in mind computer was never designed to play high-end audio - Till today it's more of a convenience - dollar to dollar vinyl and CD player have better sound quality. Just take a peak in japan, France, Korea etc...they are hard core audiophiles and they are still buying CD players and of course turntables.

 

 

7 hours ago, ajay556 said:

This is my point from the review...thats it

In an era of streaming network-attached digital music sources you might think the time for listening to music as played from spinning silver discs is past, but that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, if you have read between the lines of commentary from many of our reviewers you might have noticed a quiet trend; namely, a softly spoken preference for the sound quality of music played from discs as compared to the sound of the same music played from network-connected players or servers. It’s hard to say what accounts for this preference, but one explanation may be that top-shelf disc players are able to harvest audio data from discs with very few read errors (and thus minimal intrusion from error detection and correction algorithms) and can likewise present that data in as jitter-free a manner as possible. If that’s the case, then high-quality disc players may still enjoy a worthwhile performance edge vis-à-vis typical streaming solutions, meaning our prized disc collections might in turn have a new lease on life

 

One should ask at this point is there any data on CD player sales or other indicators that reflect an increase prevalence of CD players? Like vinyl I don't think they have ever been gone.

[Miska]

6 hours ago, crenca said:

PSAudio is a small "audiophile" company, so yes they are repackaging commodity parts/platforms (hardware).  On the software side, they apparently have a small amount of unique code, which "focuses" data to such a point that they are able to "extract"...something...which leads to something...

 

I totally understand why they do it that way. And many others too. I think this playback computer is one of the platforms running Linux. Nothing wrong with that. But as I was calling out that it is also a computer, and nothing wrong with that either! Being a computer is not bad. Having SMPS is not bad (just check out Mytek Brooklyn or Benchmark DAC3). It is all about how things are done.

 

I use following kind of platforms to run my software, yes, computers too, and I'm claiming that it doesn't make them any worse! Two of these even have SATA connectors, so I can build "memory CD player" out of those using DVD/BD-drive, or connect SSD/HDD to the SATA and DVD/BD-drive to USB. Plus they have network streaming capabilities. And they are able to do surprising amount of DSP stuff!

And I'm 100% happy to call them computers! It doesn't make them worse, it makes them better!

 

Maybe there are still some old style CD players being made somewhere. But the PS Audio device is not such, and it is likely better due to being computer and not despite it.