Generally i´d agree that it is not of importance in the usual reproduction of music at home, but in the case of horn loaded compression drivers this unlinearity of air is a factor as sound pressure at driver exit/horn throat can be really quite high.
I used to have a CDP101, my pride and joy that I used for many years and which I later sold to a colleague. From there it was to a Denon DCD1500 mk 1 which was good ('better' even) and then to a Micromega which was my first foray into 'fringey' non mainstream brands. That one stood the test of time and although now retired, it has been kept. A Marantz Pearl Lite (SA-8004) is now the mainstay.
This would all make for a fascinating listening test you know. Old vs new state of the art players. I could do a £15 Lidl portable vs the Micromega 😀
I wish now I had kept the Sony, it was beautifully built and very much a machine of its time packed full of circuitry... as is typical of first generation products I suppose. The mechanics were real precision engineering and far more substantial than anything available today. You felt like you could pick the beast up from the drawer itself, no freeplay, it was a solid all metal affair.
This would all make for a fascinating listening test you know. Old vs new state of the art players. I could do a £15 Lidl portable vs the Micromega 😀
I wish now I had kept the Sony, it was beautifully built and very much a machine of its time packed full of circuitry... as is typical of first generation products I suppose. The mechanics were real precision engineering and far more substantial than anything available today. You felt like you could pick the beast up from the drawer itself, no freeplay, it was a solid all metal affair.
I've posted this before but worth reminding people how good a modern cheap CD player can be Marantz CD5004 CD player Marantz CD5004 CD player Measurements | Stereophile.com.
The latest version of this the CD6006 is £269. If you need to play red book that is all you need. This may be a painful thing for some to accept 🙂
The latest version of this the CD6006 is £269. If you need to play red book that is all you need. This may be a painful thing for some to accept 🙂
Hi Karl,
Yes, the first and second generation machines were marvels of mechanical engineering. Some are the best transports of all time, most of them OEM'd by NEC. The best was the Nakamichi OMS-5/7, and later as manufacturers discovered how to make the electronics make up for poor alignment of the laser head, the transports became "less good". It wasn't unusual for early heads to have the tracking and focus coils so hot they melted the plastic dust cover! Basically, as the electronics got better, the mechanism became less reliable and wore out faster. The Philips VAM series are the worst I've seen, along with the Hitachi HOP-M3 heads (plastic body on metal slide rails and no bearings!!). Sony later committed this same crime on consumers.
The KSS-210A / 240A transports were laughed at when they appeared. These days they are a high quality transport compared with the other stuff on the market.
Your Sony transport had a nasty electrical alignment procedure. If you ran through it once you would not mourn the passing of that CD player. This is also common in first generation machines. That and Sony's grease had a habit of turning into a solid.
-Chris
Yes, the first and second generation machines were marvels of mechanical engineering. Some are the best transports of all time, most of them OEM'd by NEC. The best was the Nakamichi OMS-5/7, and later as manufacturers discovered how to make the electronics make up for poor alignment of the laser head, the transports became "less good". It wasn't unusual for early heads to have the tracking and focus coils so hot they melted the plastic dust cover! Basically, as the electronics got better, the mechanism became less reliable and wore out faster. The Philips VAM series are the worst I've seen, along with the Hitachi HOP-M3 heads (plastic body on metal slide rails and no bearings!!). Sony later committed this same crime on consumers.
The KSS-210A / 240A transports were laughed at when they appeared. These days they are a high quality transport compared with the other stuff on the market.
Your Sony transport had a nasty electrical alignment procedure. If you ran through it once you would not mourn the passing of that CD player. This is also common in first generation machines. That and Sony's grease had a habit of turning into a solid.
-Chris
It happened to everyone to discover, listening to the CD remastered release of an old Beatles title, some rhythm guitar riffs, far behind, that we had imagined very differently from what we hear clearly for the first time. Surprised or disappointed ;-)
It's crazy also as some tracks of our adolescence, heard on the radio of Wolf Man Jack can seem us so clumsy or naive today, on a hifi system.
Digital is terrible, it does not forgive the smallest imperfection. Like a cold sore under a harsh light.
I did the best I could with meager resources ... designed my own riaa preamp and MC pre pre, tri-amp'ed, subs, acoustics, etc. But, after I heard my 1/2 track 30 ips tapes, I stopped with LP and you haven't heard from me since. There just was no going back. Then CD came out and that was so-so but some practical advantages - longer playing time, no wear from playing, etc. Finally, we get to master down loads of 24/96+ recordings. Now I am interested again. got some good headphones and made a HP amp. Got a great DAC etc. So, it warranted investing in JBL M2 and it is fun again. Sounds like music!
Better late than never.
Listening to the last great Traffic jam at this time. 9 minutes, live. Gimme Some Lovin' (live) from the album -- Welcome to the Canteen (live).
Played as if alive, of course 🙂
THx-RNMarsh
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I can enjoy too, cruisin' in my car, an old tune of Loggins & Messina from the MP3 folder of my phone, played on a desert country road by a full moon night ;-)
Dynavector KARAT 17D3 | MC Phono Cartridge
I have a review from Audio Magazine on the 17D, where the measured frequency response is commendably flat out to 60kHz. Fitted in a suitable arm (the DV507 is a superb match) the 17DIII will track perfectly.
"Surpassed"? Not even remotely close. My business is service to audio equipment. In that position, I have the opportunity to listen to *A LOT* of different, high end products in my systems. I recall, very well, the day, a few years back I completed the repair of a CD80 for a client. I was using a very highly regarded AUS$2,000.00 player in the system. I plugged in the CD80. Within 3 seconds, I went "Whoa, this is something very special". And it is. Now I am not saying that there are not better machines, but those machines usually come at much higher cost. Additionally, the experience was a few years back. In recent years there have been a number of very nice multi-bit DACs come to market at reasonable cost. I've since re-acquainted myself with a CD80 and it is still a fine sounding machine.
Alas, we are down to only one mfr of the CD/DVD drive mechanisms. Soon to be gone the way of VHS tapes. CD players are fast becoming a legacy product as well. So, I bought an OPPO player - don't need the DVD portion. But hope it will last a long time because once the drive mfr stop, we wont even be able to repair/replace.
Meanwhile, I have to convert some 1000 Blues CD's to hard drive. Many of my Blues CD are not available any more and thus the music will be gone as well.
I am using a dedicated CD player for this -- LG M-Disc drive mech and sold by OWC, model Mercury Pro. USB 3.1 only for copy to Sony HAP-Z1.
-RNM
Meanwhile, I have to convert some 1000 Blues CD's to hard drive. Many of my Blues CD are not available any more and thus the music will be gone as well.
I am using a dedicated CD player for this -- LG M-Disc drive mech and sold by OWC, model Mercury Pro. USB 3.1 only for copy to Sony HAP-Z1.
-RNM
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It was much the same story when VHS/Beta hit the market. Remember the old 'Metal Mickeys', the VHS machines with the piano key transport. Massively engineered and all metal mechanics. They had to be that good and that consistent because the servos were rubbish compared to the later 'digital' types.
I did have a soft spot for the Sony CDP101, and yes, I have run a full alignment on one 😱 all those offsets as I recall 😀
STK6922's anyone ! I never had one fail on mine although I did have a couple of the BX1201's in reserve.
The official Sony published guide for the mech and pickup mentioned holding it at some angle such as 30 degrees, and that the pickup should slide freely under its own weight along the super highly polished and ground guide rails. If it didn't then there was a problem. Compare that to a Philips CDM/VAM where you need half the fingers of one hand to get it to move... but the modern electronics are so much better that its not a problem. The Micromega uses a CDM12:4 (oh dear).
i don't understand. You need a CD 'Reader', not a player. Copying bits, not a stream.
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I got an old tape/radio from my grandmother to rip apart. I had assumed it was the usual trash because looking at the outside it looked like any other cheap tape/radio player. When I got into the guts I discovered the tape mechanism was a bit more sophisticated than the usual plastic fare.
The tape section was a cast metal frame with a simple 3-way toggle arm to move the mechanical parts around. The motor has a brass pulley and flat belt drive to a large flywheel which goes to the playback mechanism. The motor has a LC filter on the outside which goes into a metal shell inside which there is a 2-transistor drive circuit which is unlike any typical circuit I've seen, it appears to be a variable output impedance design.
The bearings are sintered bronze but not the typical bearing you see in toy motors today, they are slightly different in appearance and are still silky smooth despite the dust and grime. I was surprised the belt is still quite pliable. I had to scrape some grime off the pulleys though.
I'm considering building it back into a usable player. But I noticed the playback head had quite a well-polished gash worn into it by no doubt countless meters of tape moving past it.
The tape section was a cast metal frame with a simple 3-way toggle arm to move the mechanical parts around. The motor has a brass pulley and flat belt drive to a large flywheel which goes to the playback mechanism. The motor has a LC filter on the outside which goes into a metal shell inside which there is a 2-transistor drive circuit which is unlike any typical circuit I've seen, it appears to be a variable output impedance design.
The bearings are sintered bronze but not the typical bearing you see in toy motors today, they are slightly different in appearance and are still silky smooth despite the dust and grime. I was surprised the belt is still quite pliable. I had to scrape some grime off the pulleys though.
I'm considering building it back into a usable player. But I noticed the playback head had quite a well-polished gash worn into it by no doubt countless meters of tape moving past it.
DSD format rise time at SACD player output is mostly defined by output analog LP filter, which is implemented by SACD standards and definitions. -3dB roll-off is usually about 50kHz and rise time measured is usually about 8us. Without that low pass filter, rise time would be much shorter, at expense of much more ultrasonic noise. DSD 1-bit modulation is in principle a compromise between speed and noise, the higher the frequency, the more noise and less usable dynamic range.
96kHz sampling is usually still not enough if 10us rise time is requested. However, there is a question if 10us rise time of the audio signal source is really needed. I am afraid there is no trustworthy proof of necessity of such request, other than feelings and faith. And, simple 10us rise time parameter does not say enough about requested transfer function.
Extremely low noise transistors
Interlude #5:
Ultra low noise amplifiers
If you think those decades old Rohm devices are low Rbb/low noise, fast forward to 2017. Check out those Zetex devices!
Link courtesy Joachim Gerhard.
Jan
Interlude #5:
Ultra low noise amplifiers
If you think those decades old Rohm devices are low Rbb/low noise, fast forward to 2017. Check out those Zetex devices!
Link courtesy Joachim Gerhard.
Jan
I use 10us rise-time as an easy number to remember. 11 to 14us might be OK mostly. It is just the 'brick wall' filtering that CD demands, or the vast majority of inexpensive moving magnet cartridges with vinyl that essentially compromise the ultimate sound quality.
Without extra bandwidth significantly above 20KHz to work with, you are ALWAYS compromised in the transient response of the audio program. Why compromise?
Without extra bandwidth significantly above 20KHz to work with, you are ALWAYS compromised in the transient response of the audio program. Why compromise?
Oh, good lord. Digital is not "terrible." This sort of hyperbole does nothing to advance the discussion.
As I've mentioned before, there were whole swaths of music (orchestral, piano, organ) that I stopped even trying to listen to on vinyl for being constantly jolted out of the moment by ticks & pops, various distortions, etc, etc. Now that I can hear the music without the distractions, my love for all types of music has expanded broadly. And that's what it's all about.
I pretty much agree with everything you've said, John. In fact, What do you think would happen if you designed an amplifier that performed as bad as 16/44 digital?
I reckon no one would buy it. It's a trivial exercise to build amplifiers with 1uS rise time. It is not unreasonable to demand that the other ends of the reproduction chain are able to reproduce 10uS rise times. The Dynavector 17DIII can manage it, as can several modern (and not so modern) HF drivers. Yet we forgive 16/44 digital for some reason. 16/44 is very good, but it could have been so much better. As good as the best phono cartridges and HF drivers.
Regarding Digital, data converters have gotten a lot better over the years, although better professional devices aren't cheap.
And, heck, we even have tape emulators that can add some tape machine distortions and phono emulators that can add pops and clicks. I don't usually like them myself, but some people like the sounds of vintage tape machines, compressors, EQs, etc., to try to get back to more of a colored analog type of sound. Not that the emulations are perfect, they're not. However, like other things they do seem to keep getting better over the years.
And, heck, we even have tape emulators that can add some tape machine distortions and phono emulators that can add pops and clicks. I don't usually like them myself, but some people like the sounds of vintage tape machines, compressors, EQs, etc., to try to get back to more of a colored analog type of sound. Not that the emulations are perfect, they're not. However, like other things they do seem to keep getting better over the years.
No one speaks about amplifiers with 10us rise time. This would be ridiculous. Sound sources are in question. My point was that "square" 10kHz with 10us rise and fall time would be useless as a test signal. I was told that 10 us was meant for a sound source, not for a test signal. Speaking about sound sources, we should take into account relationship between time and frequency domain. Tomorrow I can post some time response examples of digital sources with higher sampling frequency.
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