What if EAC twice reports a track quality of 100%, says that no errors occurred, copy was OK, CRC checksum is identical, file size identical, audition giving a zero output signal after deduction of both waveforms even up to –150db and more?
Kindly tell me how and where to apply a blue, green, red or whatever LED + transistor and I’ll redo the test.
/Hugo
Kindly tell me how and where to apply a blue, green, red or whatever LED + transistor and I’ll redo the test.
/Hugo
Attachments
EAC reads and rereads until it is pretty sure there are no errors. This is not the same a listening to the disc on the fly. When you're playing back a disc with most players, there's only one chance to get it right. That's the sort of condition where the extra light is claimed to be beneficial.
I think you need to use blue LEDs. At the time the commercial player came out they were pretty expensive, so they had to use blue.
Here's a tip for the uninformed: Jon (Numb)Scull was the guy at Stereophile who used to reviewed the most expensive equipment made. None of it was ever quite right until he threw a few Shakti stones, mpingo discs, and other similar audio voodoo products around the room or equipment. After seeing that nonsense I could not believe anything he had to say about anything.
The target market for the players that had the extra lighting was the average Joe with a wallet full of recently inherited money. What your average Joe with a lot of recently inherited money in his pocket apparently doesn't know is that CDs have built-in error correction that actually repairs lost data. It doesn't matter if the playback machine drops a few bits here and there. They will be recovered by the error correction hardware working in conjunction with the error correction coding on the disc.
CD and CD players are so last century, but for some reason audiophiles will try to keep dead formats alive forever- just look how many people still mess around with vinyl records. Right now streaming audio off a computer server is the way to go. CDs? What are those?
You can do the test, but you'll probably enjoy watching reruns of "Gilligan's Island" more. In either activity the value of your accomplishment will be about equal.
I_F
I think you need to use blue LEDs. At the time the commercial player came out they were pretty expensive, so they had to use blue.
Here's a tip for the uninformed: Jon (Numb)Scull was the guy at Stereophile who used to reviewed the most expensive equipment made. None of it was ever quite right until he threw a few Shakti stones, mpingo discs, and other similar audio voodoo products around the room or equipment. After seeing that nonsense I could not believe anything he had to say about anything.
The target market for the players that had the extra lighting was the average Joe with a wallet full of recently inherited money. What your average Joe with a lot of recently inherited money in his pocket apparently doesn't know is that CDs have built-in error correction that actually repairs lost data. It doesn't matter if the playback machine drops a few bits here and there. They will be recovered by the error correction hardware working in conjunction with the error correction coding on the disc.
CD and CD players are so last century, but for some reason audiophiles will try to keep dead formats alive forever- just look how many people still mess around with vinyl records. Right now streaming audio off a computer server is the way to go. CDs? What are those?
You can do the test, but you'll probably enjoy watching reruns of "Gilligan's Island" more. In either activity the value of your accomplishment will be about equal.
I_F
Must be nice to live in the first world....
Internet costs here to download the equavalent of a little more than 4 CDs worth of data is about $100... thats without paying for what you download....
Who needs all this trouble... why can't things just be easy?
I want indestructable titanium LPs... yeah, with built in dust repelant action....
Internet costs here to download the equavalent of a little more than 4 CDs worth of data is about $100... thats without paying for what you download....
Who needs all this trouble... why can't things just be easy?
I want indestructable titanium LPs... yeah, with built in dust repelant action....
Err... Bits is bits. As mentioned above, every CD player has error correction hardward and redundant recorded data that lets it produce perfect data no matter what. Unless the CD is so damaged it will be very apparent.
Proof: If I load, say, 100Mb of software from a 3rd copy of a CAD program, that program runs flawlessly on my PC. Bit-perfect reading. That's a 20$ PC CD drive...
Jan Didden
Proof: If I load, say, 100Mb of software from a 3rd copy of a CAD program, that program runs flawlessly on my PC. Bit-perfect reading. That's a 20$ PC CD drive...
Jan Didden
Expecting bit-fixes from green light is seriously naive. Even with cdp error correction. With EAC it's just stupid.
If the green light improves sound quality it is more likely through reducing pit jitter or reducing the amount of work the servos do and the corresponding ps modulation.
I once had a Studer cdp with a green light. Sounded so bad i shudder to think what it would have been without the light.
If the green light improves sound quality it is more likely through reducing pit jitter or reducing the amount of work the servos do and the corresponding ps modulation.
I once had a Studer cdp with a green light. Sounded so bad i shudder to think what it would have been without the light.
But what about his French wife, Kathleen? She and her Frenchness had to be mentioned a minimum of 5 times per review. Maybe if you got yourself a French wife, you could hear these wonderful things yourself.
Me, I have an Irish wife, so I can't hear any of this stuff.
As Jan implies, one wonders how a computer can possibly work....
Netlist said:
Isn't this a bit contradictive?
No, seriously, if the data is corrected anyway, I can't think of an external factor that would influence the sound enough to be audible. Unless of course a badly scratched CD or a mechanically stressed drive.
/Hugo
Hugo
The data is correct. Maybe not 100% of the time but enough for any bad bits to have practically no effect on sound quality. If there is a physical explanation
it can only be jitter. Or PS induced noise, which at the end also manifests itself as jitter.
analog_sa said:
I have always understood the idea was to reduce the amount of work done by the system not to correct bad bits.
Green pens and stick-on green labels were supposed to have the same effect.
Heavy add-on pucks were supposed to reduce the vibration effects achieving similar results to those cdps which play disks upside-down on turntables.
Can you hear the results of those???
Also what about special cds which play a certain sound to 'demagnetise' the entire audio chain??
Or come to that - oak cones v sorbathane?
The guy did not say he believed in the theory, just that he wanted to test it and was asking for ideas and criticisms on his methodology.
Give him a chance - it MIGHT work !!!!!!!!!
Andy
I would think a plain recording into a PC from a CD player using a serial port and compare with a file ripped from the CD would probably shed some like.
I would also think that any error during laser pickup that cause the head to move more often than normal would create load on the power supply which would also effect sound even though there is error correction in the CD. So this might effect DA and analog section of the player while digitally the data is still correct.
I would also think that any error during laser pickup that cause the head to move more often than normal would create load on the power supply which would also effect sound even though there is error correction in the CD. So this might effect DA and analog section of the player while digitally the data is still correct.
While I have not heard the YBA CD player, about the same time period I have tried CD Backlight and lining the edge of CDs with a Dark Green permanent marker pen among a myriad other things and I can say that some of these affect the sound positively, some more than others and sometimes the combination effects are very good.
Go ahead with the experiments. Bathing the underside of the CD with Blue light and lining the edge with Green would be interesting IMO.
Go ahead with the experiments. Bathing the underside of the CD with Blue light and lining the edge with Green would be interesting IMO.
If the power drawn by the servo mechanism doing whatever it must to read a disc is enough to cause bit errors, it is a very poorly designed system. So poor it would never make it to a commercial product. These things are designed by engineers, not dopes.
Even if the system were so poorly designed that normal operation of the servo mechanism could induce bit errors, the error correction would fix it.
As for jitter? Hmmmm. I never saw YBA publishing any light on/light off numbers, most likely because there wasn't any difference. If I recall, the guys that reviewed the player at Stereophile didn't bother trying it without the LED either.
If you are an engineer tasked with fixing the problem of jitter caused by modulation of the servo power supply, do you A) fix the power supply, or B) try flooding the disk drawer with blue or green light to see what happens?
Here's a rule of thumb to determine whether something is "engineered" or "marketed": if there aren't any numbers, there isn't any engineering. The presence of numbers alone isn't enough to indicate that there is engineering involved. A lot of numbers are "marketing" numbers. It is up to the intelligent/experienced observer to determine whether the numbers are meaningful or not. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether the numbers are meaningful or not, as in the case of jitter. Presented with two jitter numbers how does one decide if the difference between them is significant or audible (other than to listen)?
Jitter is the solution to many marketing problems. Everyone understands distortion, but few understand jitter or even know what it is. The distortion problem was solved long ago, but who knows about jitter? When presented with no numbers, just a claim about improved jitter (which is easily measured), you can bet the marketing department has run out of ideas to differentiate their product from everyone else's.
Anyway, all this is moot. CD players are as relevant as 78 rpm record players. The format is dead. Time to move on.
I_F
Even if the system were so poorly designed that normal operation of the servo mechanism could induce bit errors, the error correction would fix it.
As for jitter? Hmmmm. I never saw YBA publishing any light on/light off numbers, most likely because there wasn't any difference. If I recall, the guys that reviewed the player at Stereophile didn't bother trying it without the LED either.
If you are an engineer tasked with fixing the problem of jitter caused by modulation of the servo power supply, do you A) fix the power supply, or B) try flooding the disk drawer with blue or green light to see what happens?
Here's a rule of thumb to determine whether something is "engineered" or "marketed": if there aren't any numbers, there isn't any engineering. The presence of numbers alone isn't enough to indicate that there is engineering involved. A lot of numbers are "marketing" numbers. It is up to the intelligent/experienced observer to determine whether the numbers are meaningful or not. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether the numbers are meaningful or not, as in the case of jitter. Presented with two jitter numbers how does one decide if the difference between them is significant or audible (other than to listen)?
Jitter is the solution to many marketing problems. Everyone understands distortion, but few understand jitter or even know what it is. The distortion problem was solved long ago, but who knows about jitter? When presented with no numbers, just a claim about improved jitter (which is easily measured), you can bet the marketing department has run out of ideas to differentiate their product from everyone else's.
Anyway, all this is moot. CD players are as relevant as 78 rpm record players. The format is dead. Time to move on.
I_F
In the back of my mind i recall reading a review by KK in HFNRR on YBA. He didn't like the sound at all and the measured jitter figures were in the hundreds of pS.
So, the green light is not on its own capable of sorting a bad design. Doesn't mean the effect is not audible and beneficial in other (non-french) designs.
So, the green light is not on its own capable of sorting a bad design. Doesn't mean the effect is not audible and beneficial in other (non-french
) designs.
If something as simple as flooding the CD surface with blue or green light produced measurable/audible improvements, especially in such competitive markets, CD/SACD/DVD manufacturers would be doing it. With marketing schemes looking for every single gimmick to make improvements and edge out the competitor for sales dollars, it surely would have been done by biggies like Sony. With their resources, knowledge of the product (co-inventor, after all), and desire for market share, they certainly would have done it if it worked. You think a bunch of DIY’ers, even as skilled and resourceful as many are, have come up with some ground-breaking discovery that the big OEM’s have not? Doubt it.
This stinks of the old “300 MPG carburetor” some Jethro builds in his garage yet Toyota and Ford spend BILLIONS to eek out 5 MPG in economy improvements. If it could be done, they would have done it, rolled it out incrementally staying ahead of the competition, and dominated all markets.
As a realist and skeptic, I say go for it and give it your best efforts. But come back with numbers and measurements, not a bunch of anecdotal, “feel good” stuff like “. . . more sweet information. . .” or “. . . sounded continuous, like music. . .” fluff.
I believe French women do, statistically speaking, improve music quality by 1.414%, however (yuk yuk).
This stinks of the old “300 MPG carburetor” some Jethro builds in his garage yet Toyota and Ford spend BILLIONS to eek out 5 MPG in economy improvements. If it could be done, they would have done it, rolled it out incrementally staying ahead of the competition, and dominated all markets.
As a realist and skeptic, I say go for it and give it your best efforts. But come back with numbers and measurements, not a bunch of anecdotal, “feel good” stuff like “. . . more sweet information. . .” or “. . . sounded continuous, like music. . .” fluff.
I believe French women do, statistically speaking, improve music quality by 1.414%, however (yuk yuk).
405man said:
If you can statistically reliably determine whether the led is on or off in a double blind listening test, you proved that there is an effect (but not which is better).
If you cannot, you have proved only that in that particular test setup there is no statistically reliable difference, but not that there is no difference.
Jan Didden
In a double blind test, the tester and the one being tested have no idea whether the light is on or off at any given instant. Such a scheme prevents the tester from giving cues to the testee as to which condition is presented.
I think that having a pseudo random number generator setting the on-off pattern would be sufficiently double-blindish to call it double-blind, as long as the seed used during the test is different from any you used to test the pseudorandom number generator to ensure that it works. Of course, you have to make sure the circuit doesn't present any cues to the testee as to the status of the LED in the CD player during the test -don't put a light on the box to indicate what the output is doing!
You'd also want to present data indicating the "randomness" of the pattern generated by the seed used during the test.
I_F
I think that having a pseudo random number generator setting the on-off pattern would be sufficiently double-blindish to call it double-blind, as long as the seed used during the test is different from any you used to test the pseudorandom number generator to ensure that it works. Of course, you have to make sure the circuit doesn't present any cues to the testee as to the status of the LED in the CD player during the test -don't put a light on the box to indicate what the output is doing!
You'd also want to present data indicating the "randomness" of the pattern generated by the seed used during the test.
I_F
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