Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners CD Players? Do they sound different?

jdm,

Did you have them connected via a digital cable of analog outputs?

I had them connected via analog. My Kenwood reciever doesn't have digital inputs. I had my friend patch the Denon and Kenwood into his system on analog as well, although I believe his CD player was connected via toslink.

- Jeff

chesseroo, I believe you are right! The problem is he is so obstinate on the subject of audio, I generally avoid the subject unless I really need his help. I've tried playing ignorant and just asking him to educate me on some aspect of his hobby, but he gets kind of impatient with "dumb" questions. He's a real live electrical engineer (as opposed to me, the aerospace engineer "rocket scientist" - haha), and he's not much of an educator. He overwhelmed me with spark chaser technobabble when I asked him about cables/interconnects. I'm intelligent, but I only had a few credit hours of EM theory - and that was 15 years ago. I don't use that stuff on a daily basis so the knowledge is mostly gone now. You know, it's really a very strange thing because he is quite the awesome engineer (specializes in microwave antenna design), but he has very strong subjective (non-scientific) opinions about his hobby. Oh well, I mostly just play tennis with him during warm weather and he is a good natured opponent. Like I said before, he really is a fairly nice person, just not on the subject of audio, so I don't want to be hard on him. I thought the story I related about the CD player was amusing (and somewhat relevant to the thread at hand) and thought you all would enjoy it.

you could buy a Krell CD player for 10,000$ or you could use that for a down payment on a house.

Buy a player with decent price. Stay away from something that's $100 because it's probably not durable. A Panasonic DVD player will give you excellent video quality and will send 1's and 0's for audio no better than an exotic player to your receiver. Use a decent fiber optic, if not, a good coax cable, and you're set.

Go out and buy these for pure digital hook-up. They are GREAT and you can not beat the price! I bought two for my DVD and PS2. Being all glass, be careful with them! But better then any at this price. You would have to spend $100's more to match them! Good Luck!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1499&item=3010129647

In reply to:

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I had my friend patch the Denon and Kenwood into his system on analog as well, although I believe his CD player was connected via toslink.

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Your friend is a fool. He paid that much money for a device that performs no different than any other CD player with a digital output.

When using a digital output, the player is basically no different than a CD-ROM in your computer. It's sole job is to spin up the disk, read the little pits, describe those pits as 1's or the lack there of as 0's and send it down the cord. Obviously, this isn't a complicated process.

The only signal that cable carries is either high level or low level. So long as the player and cable don't introduce so much jitter or skew into that signal as to make a high level look like a low level or to miss time them, the receiver will get the exact same signal.

Jitter and skew are so microscopic at the speeds that CMOS based products typically run that CMOS devices don't even spec them. We spec jitter and skew on our products because they run at 12GHz.

Anything that meets the JEDEC spec for SPDIF will be just as good at transfering those 1's and 0's as anything else. Using analog outputs is a different matter as there's the issue of converting the digital signal to an analog one, but a digital transfer is total dependent upon whatever finally decodes the signal into an analog source. In the case of your spend happy friend, that's his pre-amp.

Semi-on writes:

"Your friend is a fool." I used to find this site a friendly place to hang out and discuss Axiom speakers and other sound equipment. You and Chess are changing the tone of this site pretty dramatically. Personally, I find it offensive and don't post here as often as before. Being rude doesn't make you sound any wiser.

Lighten up.

Were his friend here, I'd certainly be kinder to the individual and explain his error to him in a nice manner. However, he's not here so I don't see a reason to concern myself with his feelings. The last time you whined like this, it was the same situation.

There's no reason jdm can't be made aware of his friend's foolishness.

This "friend" acted like a jackass, trying to dismiss jdm's hardware in favor of his obviously superior and significantly more expensive gear. The idiot did so while using it in a purely digital mode completely nullifying whatever difference may have been there. I don't like people that attempt to use their material possessions to demonstrate their superiority and I'm sure as hell not going to baby them when they make completely ridiculous and ignorant statements, especially when they're doing so to put down others.

I wholly agree with 2x6spds. Not so long ago neither posters here nor their "friends" were whiners, idiots, fools, jackasses, ridiculously ignorant, or in need of babying.

I'm an opinionated American that calls people on their stupidity and I have no interest in changing that fact. I suggest you grow a thicker skin as your delicate nature won't suit you well on the net. If someone is a jackass, I'm not going to lie about it. I'll call them on it.

However, I fail to see how this applies to Chess. While he's certainly ascertive with his thoughts, I can't recall him ever directly questioning an individual.