Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo How much difference does a good CD player make ??

Graphs and comparisons interpreted with relation to the extremes of human hearing, please.

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Saturn,

Again - we know that any laser/transport can communicate a CD bitstream to a receiver (as I mentioned before - even the $30 CD-ROM drive in a computer is bit-perfect, if it wasn't - data would be corrupted).

So (1) any CD-P is capable of sending a perfect (or very nearly so) bitstream to a receiver. That's a given based on how well even cheap CD-ROM drives can deliver perfect data (even at 16x the speed of redbook audio CDs), which, mystique or no, is all that happens during a read of a CD and output to a digital out (TOS or SPDIF).

If your gear sounds different than these cheap CD-Ps, your gear must be sending a different bitstream than the cheap CD-P (which under (1) above, we proved was a perfect or near perfect signal).

Therefore, if your signal differs from the perfect signal, your equipment must be coloured.

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You are incorrect in the assumption that I use my receiver to process the bitstream.
I use my CD player which has its built in DACs and pushes the anolog signal to an integrated amp. My HTPC has a REv 7.1 which has its own DACs and pushes the anolog signal into another input of the integrated amp.

So you statement about "your gear sounds different than these cheap CD-Ps, your gear must be sending a different bitstream than the cheap CD-P " is an incorrect assumption since I do not send a digital bitstream but an anolog signal.

In another thread someone listed links to other players which was connected to a recording devices which records amplitude, waveform and jitter. And to my eyes all look different.

I can see this coming from a mile away.

Your going to say that those measurements can not be heard by the audible ear. I say some can be heard. I have listen to many I mean MANY CD player and sound cards and multi player and most sound the same...SOME a few some do sound different when you have them A-B.

So you wanted measurable proof .. then those links show it. What those measurements not good enough for you?

Yeah all these CD player are equal.

Looks like the top one and bottom one are screwing up the signal. That flat one would be the way to go, right?

Hey BigWill;

Well it seems that way. Lets go and buy a SCD-XA9000ES SACD player ...its only umm ... $2999

Last post was just showing that not all Cd players outputs the same way hence maybe I heard a difference. Be it good or bad it is seemingly different. Will my ears able to detect it..I dunno..I have not compared any of those against each other personally. I have compared others though.
Have the people who believe "All CD players sound alike" actually tried out what they believe in instead of regurgitating other people dogmas..some have some havent.

fluke, there are several things wrong with this post.
Other than the knowledge you provided having been discussed to death already on this forum, nothing new has been gained.
Jitter?
Do a search and read some of the replies from sushi and Semi-On.

You statement about audio signal sampling compares an audio vs. video signal sampling rats which are not the same. You cannot talk about sampling rates b/w the two with similar or different results. Video sampling is higher than audio for obvious reasons. Video capturing requires huge amounts more data.

Saturn,
One must compare apples to apples and we both know that comparing tubes to solid state is not equivalent.

Don't get stuck on the words out of context thing that Alan brought up the other day. People are not saying ALL cdp sound the same. Obviously if some have tubed outputs then by their very design they SHOULDN'T sound the same.
Keep within the context of the discussion.

Take a Musical Fidelity solid state cdp and listen to it vs. the $150 Denon from Walmart. Get 50 other ppl to do the same, but in a general blind test, even if at home. Do these same Stereophile electronic tests that so many ppl like to refer to and then come back and we'll check out some results.

saturn, did the site you sourced those graphs from measure the outputs from any consumer level players? I would be curious to see how the various players compare.

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Take a Musical Fidelity solid state cdp and listen to it vs. the $150 Denon from Walmart. Get 50 other ppl to do the same, but in a general blind test, even if at home. Do these same Stereophile electronic tests that so many ppl like to refer to and then come back and we'll check out some results

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How am I going to get 50 ppl to do that. Also I have not seen proof anywhere that this has been done as you described. I see people saying test have been done in NRC in Ottawa but I HAVE NOT SEEN PROOF that it has occured. I just get heresay that this EE or this scientist said ... blah blah...

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Don't get stuck on the words out of context thing that Alan brought up the other day. People are not saying ALL cdp sound the same. Obviously if some have tubed outputs then by their very design they SHOULDN'T sound the same.
Keep within the context of the discussion.

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Well people HAVE BEEN saying all should sound the same.
No one should by an expensive player over a cheap player. Everyone should go out and buy a walmart brand since no one can tell a diffrence between that and a Krell SACD playing Cd's.

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BrenR:
If your gear sounds different than these cheap CD-Ps, your gear must be sending a different bitstream than the cheap CD-P (which under (1) above, we proved was a perfect or near perfect signal).
Therefore, if your signal differs from the perfect signal, your equipment must be coloured.

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Johnk:
it's nearly impossible to intelligently discuss an audio topic with those who ignore well-established principles of audio engineering science and instead mindlessly repeat the mantra "Just trust your ears".

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Demasoni:
I'm sure many people will disagree with me, but IMO for music listening you probably won't hear much difference

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Based on my statements it seems I have been proven guilty as charge and I have to prove my innocence and justify my point.

Bigwill: Sorry Stereophile has links to those graphs pointed out by Fluke. But they only measure the exotic priced stuff. I looked around for a generic player review but did not find any.

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How am I going to get 50 ppl to do that. Also I have not seen proof anywhere that this has been done as you described.

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Who said science was easy or fast?
It is not.
And again, this is why the science method does not suit the home audiophile. It becomes disregarded and ultimately disrespected. The typical user believes they can do the listening w/o controls and be perfectly accurate in their assessment. This just is not possible, but try explaining that to them.
Eeech.
Earfuls of "i know what i heard".
At that point it is just our human ego responding in a not-so-surprising way. Sometimes i wonder which is the greater drive for man, greed or pride.
Hmm, now that i think about it, lust is probably pretty high on that scale too.

Anyways, you could cut down the 50 ppl and detailed electronics test to say 3 or 4 ppl to make things easier for the home user, but the honest and properly setup blind test part is still highly necessary!!
The question is, if you come back here tomorrow and say you performed just that type of test, would anyone believe you?
Hence why one must continually go back to the idea of finding research in science journals which have been peer reviewed, .....etc etc etc
Oh what a tangled web....

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I see people saying test have been done in NRC in Ottawa but I HAVE NOT SEEN PROOF that it has occured. I just get heresay that this EE or this scientist said ... blah blah..

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Floyd Toole published a bunch of stuff in the early 80s in science journals. Ian and Alan played a part in the research and/or the writing of the layman version of those articles in AudioScene Canada (later Audio/Video Canada then Sound Canada magazine, later Sound&Vision) which Alan edited until 1996. I don't believe that these articles which dispelled some of the audio myths went over very well with many audiophiles (or companies for that matter).
Since then, in house tests at Axiom have continued but probably on a lesser, more informal scale (Alan can chime in if he knows of anything that continues at the NRC) but this information may not have been published. Axiom certainly has enough employees along with the equipment setup to do blind tests of equipment, but why bother? It is time consuming (as mentioned) and may not be of any benefit to the company. (e.g. why would Axiom publish material saying all cdps sound the same? How does that help their bottom line?)

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Everyone should go out and buy a walmart brand since no one can tell a diffrence between that and a Krell SACD playing Cd's.

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Are we talking about SACD vs cd here or just cd vs cd?