Been reading a lot here on memory card players, but question if it will help me to upgrade my digital audio playback in terms of quality. Does it make any sense to build a card player and dump all CD's on memory cards if high quality is the objective. Read carefully: high quality is the objective! Of course very handy to have small devices, portability etc, From a quality perspective, good CD transport and good DAC (I2S connected, buffered, reclocked, etc etc) will yield the same quality. Even if one can obtain the source recording on a memory card. All of this in 44.1KHz domain ofcourse. Just follow the chain of jitter . . . Or did I miss something?
There is no jitter "introduced" when transferring digital files, only upon playback. So ripping the CD to hard drive and copying to an SD card gives you an SD card with a file indistinguishable from the file on the CD.
At that point, the logic goes like this:
a) I can fit 5+ albums on a 4GB SD card, which is reusable and fairly cheap.
b) Transport is now entirely solid state, no issues with motors, laser tracking, balance, alignment etc.
c) Resulting transport can be tiny compared to a good CD transport as a result of removing the mechanical concerns (no need for hefty precise mechanisms or vibration damping etc)
Since it's often suggested that tweaking mechanical factors affects the sound of a transport (I don't really believe this, once the digital stream is bit perfect, I doubt tweaks which -might- be affecting jitter will make noticable differences), making these factors irrelevant should yield a "more perfect" source.
At that point, the logic goes like this:
a) I can fit 5+ albums on a 4GB SD card, which is reusable and fairly cheap.
b) Transport is now entirely solid state, no issues with motors, laser tracking, balance, alignment etc.
c) Resulting transport can be tiny compared to a good CD transport as a result of removing the mechanical concerns (no need for hefty precise mechanisms or vibration damping etc)
Since it's often suggested that tweaking mechanical factors affects the sound of a transport (I don't really believe this, once the digital stream is bit perfect, I doubt tweaks which -might- be affecting jitter will make noticable differences), making these factors irrelevant should yield a "more perfect" source.
Good CD transport and clock inside the DAC + recklocking signals is all you need.
What bothers me with memory card players is that they have poor user interfaces, at least the DIY ones.
When I compare to my mobile phone, it shows all the interprets, album titles and track titles, plays random and whatever...
Also a memory card player should have a word clock input if used with an external DAC.
Last but not least, the cards are so small, you can not write anything on them except card number.
I am surprised these haven't been more popular.
Playback only here,
AMERICAN AUDIO|MEDIA OPERATOR|MEDIA PLAYER 1U RACKMOUNT | CPC From This Range&MER=e-bb45-00001003
Have seen ones that record too, on very reasonably priced but appeared to offer only analogue inputs, no SPDIF etc.
Playback only here,
AMERICAN AUDIO|MEDIA OPERATOR|MEDIA PLAYER 1U RACKMOUNT | CPC From This Range&MER=e-bb45-00001003
Have seen ones that record too, on very reasonably priced but appeared to offer only analogue inputs, no SPDIF etc.
"Idiot Proof" design with mic input.... a modern alternative to the old continuous tape players used for muzak in stores and lifts
I would bet that someone/somewhere sells pre-recorded SD cards of 'lift music'.
Andy
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Now there's a marketing opportunity
I would seriously consider a decent "recorder" as I use Minidisc for recording from radio at times and a solid state replacement would be ideal.
I agree... very high quality is possible.
I was just looking up Minidisc... has production finished ?
And the price of solid state recorders etc is way over the top... guess it is a niche market though, look at HD-R1
Tascam Division - TEAC Europe GmbH
What we need is someone like Cambridge Audio to come up with a product.
"I think of it this way. Reading the actual CD is at least afaik the weakest link.-Bas Horneman"
Page Title
The conclusion on p.59 is also of interest,as is the whole of issue 80.
Unfortunately the earlier issues referred to ,no longer seem to be accessible via Google, only by purchasing. I have seen a few of the earlier issues previously.
Page Title
The conclusion on p.59 is also of interest,as is the whole of issue 80.
Unfortunately the earlier issues referred to ,no longer seem to be accessible via Google, only by purchasing. I have seen a few of the earlier issues previously.
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Exactly!
Even when at sometime it`s possible to fit an entire CD-collection in high quality (lossless) formats on memory, it`s pointless trying to access a few hundret folders with a few thousand files through a 'relatively dumb' user interface and a tiny display.
It seems that all those nice and comfortable user interface features are reserved for Ipod, cellphone, MP3 player or PC users only.
I dont´get it that standalone high quality audio gear and a userfriendly interface don`t appear to be something worthwhile, neither DIY nor commercial.
One of the two reasons I gave up using my iPod with the Alpine stereo in my car. The GUI is very hard to use. (The primary reason is it does not sound very good.)
I use the excellent J. River Media Center on my media server..
If the Cd is the original/primary source by which you obtained the recording, then the Cd has to be "played" at some stage, in both systems.
Whether it is played once, to copy the data to another storgage medium, or whether you play it everytime you listen to that music, makes no difference.
All standalone audio CD players 'play' the data out of RAM, so they too are solid state playback devices, but with very small memories - that get filled up every couple of milliseconds.
The difference MAY come about because you are using a different design and brand of disc transport if you copy to an EEPROM card. But that is due to model specifics, not methodology.
Maybe it is because one needs very advanced programming skills and also a group of people to do the job, the task may be too big for a small business.
Oh but they are! Many people are under the misconception that a CD player plays directly from the disc, like a record player. Not at all.
A CDROM drive, and an ordinary audio CD player recover data off the disc in exactly the same way. Information theory shows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to make an error free digital recording, that's where error correction and error concealment come in.
A poorly engineered transport may require more activity on the part of the error processing circuits. But a well engineered CD-only player will do better here than a cheap CD rom drive.
Both systems dump the data into solid state memory from the disc where it is stored temporarly (in the case of CD audio) or long term (as in the case of EEPROM cards). Timing inconsistencies in the subsequent data manipulation are the origin of jitter.
It depends entirely on the design of the digital circuitry in the player. If your SSD is of impeccable design, it will help. If it's cheap and nasty, it will make things worse.
Oh but they don't!. With a CDROM drive you can use software that may read a sector 82 times. Tell me. In which way is that the same as an ordinary CD player?
An extract from EAC wiki.
"In secure mode, this program reads every audio sector at least twice. That is one reason why the program is so slow. But by using this technique non-identical sectors are detected. If an error occurs (read or sync error), the program keeps on reading this sector, until eight of 16 retries are identical, but at maximum one, three or five times (according to the error recovery quality) these 16 retries are read. So, in the worst case, bad sectors are read up to 82 times! "
Jitter in the actual recovered signal is a function of the DAC clock. So "solid state" won't increase (nor decrease) the jitter. Use what's convenient.
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