OK, so the experiment has narrowed the problem down to the CD player, not preamp or amp or speakers. However, it seems like a big jump to go from "the CD player is sounding bad" to "digital interference mechanisms". If the sound really does degrade over time, then yes, it can be measured, and thermal issues are the most likely cause.
Yeah, if the rest of the arm is up to the load, it will work, if not the geometry will change , i did the same on the Jelco, i have on one of my tables, amazing how much the headshell moves around after a few hrs at speed.
Upgrading the plastic headshell bolt ... ...
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Of course the ultimate mechanism may be thermal in nature, but the trick is to track it down, to pinpint precisely what the relationship is, in what part of the circuitry. To my mind it is unlikely to be thermal in the normal sense, since the 'resetting' takes a matter of only seconds, I haven't done precise tests of whether there is an absolute minimum time period; and then the slow degradation takes up to, say 10 minutes to fully manifest. Most digital sound that I hear around the traps is always in this degraded mode, it has a signature combination of slightly unpleasant edge, and deadness to the sound.
Yes, it will be measurable, but I suspect that the normal techniques will be struggling to pick it up, it may be too 'well hidden' amongst the expected components so to speak - if it were fairly obvious it would have been picked up by now, since it occurs so often. In essence, the spectrum of the upper range and higher frequencies alters - a form of distortion is occurring.
This will also happen when playing the music loud. The sounds starts to sound dull after awhile. But, it isnt the electronics.
THx-RNMarsh
Anything is possible, but there has to be some pattern. My old Yamaha battleship player had various peculiarities in this area, and a cheap Marantz that served as a fill-in at one stage, many years ago, was very prone. But I'm using a PC desktop, with normal DVD player, for CD replay at the moment, and it doesn't show any of this behaviour ...
This was just moderate volume, about the usual that audiophiles go with. That other member has got it in for me now,
... he had never noticed it himself, because it is quite subtle, and occurs slowly - I demonstrated the effect several times. "Well, I'll be ... !!" he says, giving me a dirty look ...
It's not just mass, it's inertia. For my tonearm, I would need to add about 6-7 grams of effective mass to accommodate a DL103R. Since moment of inertia goes as 1/r^2, just gluing 6-7 g to the headshell will work- but you've now got a new interaction with the imperfect rigidity of the headshell-arm interface. So the mass has to be distributed, and in order to overcome the inverse square, it will have to be quite dense once you move away from the headshell.
For the frequency and intensity of the laser used in audio, I'd like to see a non-comic-book cite for these "changes."
IME, which is far less with servers, the latter are much better - the 'why' to me is fairly obvious, in a general sense: the sheer quantity, complexity of electrical circuitry is vastly greater with digital, which also relies on very high speed signal processing - the analogue way in comparison is horse and cart simple ...
I suspect some of the time that people are using the "mind can fool you" excuse to avoid confronting the fact that reality is a bit more complicated than they'd like to deal with at times - simplifying cause and effect mechanisms takes a bit of the pressure off ...
Actually the playback of music is pretty easy for the digital circuitry, and that same digital circuitry works in many more arduous situations.
Analogue is not easy, it is much more prone to being degraded by noise, hence why so much has moved to the digital domain for transporting data from a to b, sensors etc. etc.
I would put forward the hypothesis that it is actually the extra detail in digital music that some find trying, compared to the more relaxing laid back presentation of music from vinyl, and this could be a possible explanation for this digititis that some claim....
That should put the cat amongst the pigeons
I don't think reality is complicated, it just is. As to the mind fooling you, there is so much evidence, data and experimentation on trying to understand our senses, some of the Discovery documentaries' may enlighten you to the fact we can be fooled,. I live pretty much in the world of reality, it is a cold cynical place
Analogue is not easy, it is much more prone to being degraded by noise, hence why so much has moved to the digital domain for transporting data from a to b, sensors etc. etc.
I would put forward the hypothesis that it is actually the extra detail in digital music that some find trying, compared to the more relaxing laid back presentation of music from vinyl, and this could be a possible explanation for this digititis that some claim....
That should put the cat amongst the pigeons
I don't think reality is complicated, it just is. As to the mind fooling you, there is so much evidence, data and experimentation on trying to understand our senses, some of the Discovery documentaries' may enlighten you to the fact we can be fooled,. I live pretty much in the world of reality, it is a cold cynical place
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Whether doing the playback is easy or hard is not the point, it's how many gears are spinning to make it happen. Of course digital is the ideal way of doing it, the question mark then hangs over how well that mechanism works as a pure black box, affecting nothing whatsoever outside of its pure, digital domain ...
Personally, I've found properly done digital sound reproduction absolutely superb, as 'magic' as anyone could want - there is no clash between extreme levels of detail, and also being laid back; the "trying" factor comes into play when the ear/brain has to work too hard, is too stressed trying to deconstruct the sound, because there is too much extraneous 'noise' in the signal.
I had this happen to me earlier today: after tweaking there was an unsettling quality to the sound, no matter what I did I could not rid the "trying" element from the sound - very irked, I shut it down and forgot about it for some hours. Then, with some freshness to my approach I realised I had allowed a cable to form itself into a poor alignment - some of jneutron's adverse coupling would have got into the act - and that was the answer ... there can be a very tiny gap between the good, and the bad ...
Personally, I've found properly done digital sound reproduction absolutely superb, as 'magic' as anyone could want - there is no clash between extreme levels of detail, and also being laid back; the "trying" factor comes into play when the ear/brain has to work too hard, is too stressed trying to deconstruct the sound, because there is too much extraneous 'noise' in the signal.
I had this happen to me earlier today: after tweaking there was an unsettling quality to the sound, no matter what I did I could not rid the "trying" element from the sound - very irked, I shut it down and forgot about it for some hours. Then, with some freshness to my approach I realised I had allowed a cable to form itself into a poor alignment - some of jneutron's adverse coupling would have got into the act - and that was the answer ... there can be a very tiny gap between the good, and the bad ...
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