Pop Survey: Latest Marigo CD Mat. Better CD Rips?

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oltos

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Much has been written by users
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/120229-finally-affordable-cd-transport-shigaclone-story-492.html https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/the-amazing-new-marigo-evolution-signature-mat
Do you really need a CD mat?
Tweakers' Asylum

reviewers

Millennium's M-CD-Mat Carbon CD Damper Review - Dagogo | A Unique Audiophile Experience
Marigo Audio Signature 3-D Stabilizer v2 CD Mat Review - Dagogo | A Unique Audiophile Experience

Marigo Ultima Signature Mat Making every digital disc sound great! Review By Wayne Donnelly

and “former” (dissatisfied?) users on this mat.

https://www.hifishark.com/search?q=marigo

FS - Marigo Labs EVOLUTION SIGNATURE CD Mat 50% Off!!

And now there’s this latest version.
Clear Transformation Signature Mat | MARIGO AUDIO LAB

But the big question remains: Why should user experiences seem to vary?

The above “pro” reviewers didn’t cite any problems or performance inconsistencies.
And would the design of their disc transports vary that much from most users?

I haven’t yet tallied the yeas and nays among users at the above forums to conclude if this $200. tweak
would be a credible risk. Marigo Audio Clear Transformation CD-MAT | highend-electronics, inc.

But I’d be interested in user experiences with the newer versions of the Marigo CD mats, especially for CD ripping.
 
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Baka

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cbdb

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First clue. Over $200 for a thin piece of plastic that probably costs them a nickel to make. Second clue, pro reviewers are liars, who make there money by advertising (lying) for the people who make this garbage. That's why they all have different opinions, they have to make them up. Third clue, learn how a cd ( digital audio) works. If there was a problem these things fixed, it would not come out with a different freq. response or more dynamics. Fourth clue, no data. It would be trivial to show and compare the bits coming off the cd before and after. And the makers know all this or are stupid.
 
kevinkr

kevinkr

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I was given one many years ago, and was never quite sure whether it did anything or not. It didn't cause a problem with any of my existing CD players unless it somehow interfered with the mechanism.

I built a complicated version of the Shigaclone some years ago and found the mat was effective for reducing the effect of ambient light on the player servos. (In very bright daylight without it would sometimes refuse to play) I also used a Herbies which probably did a better job of blocking ambient light.

Other than that I can't say. Never did any sort of formal testing to see if it had an effect on servo performance or eye diagram SNR..

I think any rips performed without it would be completely indistinguishable from those performed with. Save your money and purchase a CD drive noted for good performance on damaged disks.
 
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oltos

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Calvin said:
....If I were D.T. I´d call those Fake News ... and for once D. T. wouldn´t tell a lie.... Calvin
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D.T.?

cbdb said:
If the bits are identical so is the sound. If people want to believe something else, its there money there giving away. People selling this crap will say anything to sell it.
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But could the compared bit rates of ripped CD tracks when using and not using the magic insert measure identically and yet sound different? If so, then can the flawed sound of the CD track rip without using the magic insert be all or mostly due to jitter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter#Mitigation And if the main culprit is jitter, can't most DACs in the ~$4K range all but eliminate any audible effects of it?
 
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cbdb

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oltos said:
D.T.?

But could the compared bit rates of ripped CD tracks when using and not using the magic insert measure identically and yet sound different? If so, then can the flawed sound of the CD track rip without using the magic insert be all or mostly due to jitter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter#Mitigation And if the main culprit is jitter, can't most DACs in the ~$4K range all but eliminate any audible effects of it?
Click to expand...

When you rip a cd and play it back off computer etc. The timeing comes from the computer. The jitter of the CD has nothing to do with this play back. ( most computer will rip a CD at 10x or more speed, timing (jitter) has nothing to do with it, it's the same as flying a word file from a CD) if the bits are the same and you play both files on the same hardware the sound will be identical.
 
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oltos

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kevinkr said:
I think any rips performed without it would be completely indistinguishable from those performed with. Save your money and purchase a CD drive noted for good performance on damaged disks.
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The early Plextor drives (e.g. the Pyramix DAW approved PX716) like my PX760, that died last year, were champs at CD read performance. How believable claims are that Plextor drives are no longer what they were? I couldn't find any definitive reviews on this one Plextor SSD Storage Solutions | Products | PX-891SAF Apparently, the drives last approved by Pyramix are from Sony. Merging Technologies | Support - Recommended/Required PC configuration But Sony stopped making optical drives some time ago, when they pulled out of the pc (VAIO) business. Death of the optical drive draws closer, as Sony pulls out | Alphr

I don't buy CDs often enough to rip select track too often. I'd rather download 24 bit versions of favorite albums if available Homepage | HDtracks - The World's Greatest-Sounding Music Downloads But when ripping I currently have an old Panasonic BD burner in one desktop and an equally old Sony BD burner in another desktop. I use Exact Audio Copy. I rip each track individually to uncompressed WAV files and use EAC's Secured mode which re-reads any possible errors Perhaps 55% of the time EAC reports that the track had zero errors; otherwise it says that it was 97 to 99% perfect. None of my discs had audible pops. What burner and what extraction software do you find works best? The most popular among these forums seems to be EAC and dbpoweramp. In the event that one of my optical drives dies, what currently produced drives might you recommend?
 
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oltos

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cbdb said:
When you rip a cd and play it back off computer etc. The timeing comes from the computer. The jitter of the CD has nothing to do with this play back. ( most computer will rip a CD at 10x or more speed, timing (jitter) has nothing to do with it. It's the same as playing a word file from a CD) if the bits are the same and you play both files on the same hardware the sound will be identical.
Click to expand...
So does this mean that most of the jitter is due to clocking errors differences (errors) between the computer and the (external) DAC? If yes, then can most higher end DAC's re-clock the data coming from the computer, thereby eliminating at least that source of jitter?
 
lcsaszar

lcsaszar

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Joined 2004
ALL external DACs are doing it. The difference between them is the quality of the clock recovery circuit, that extracts clean clock signal from the data stream. Usually a PLL circuit is used for this task, which is inferior to a dedicated quarz master clock. The problem is the single serial path between the transport and the DAC. There is no separate wire for feeding high quality clock to the DAC.
 
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