rbroer said:I do agree that price doesn't say a lot about the quality.
I have no doubt that some of those al-cheapo DVD players are crap. the point I wanted to make is that you can find equally crappy DVD players in more expensive brand name boxes. so why blame all the DVD players for being inexpensive?
my first Sony costed me upwards of $1K. and my lowly Panasonic can run circles around that Sony. Why? Because of those al-cheapo players.
People keep talking about jitters this, jittesr that. how many of you have heard jitters in a CD player, being it a $10 KISS portable or a $30 Apex DVD player? I haven't.
Not to mention that jitters, as defined in the sense of CD audio, do not exist in the DVD world. Yet people still insist on jitter being an issue with al-cheapo dvd players.
I don't know about you but there isn't much (any?) difference between a 1 coming out of an Apex DVD player and a 1 coming out of a Denon DVD player.
Will the Denon be quieter? yes. More reliable? maybe. Better built? yes. Sound better? not sure.
Someone pointed this out a while ago but I think it is worth repeating: you are likely to get improvement on the analog front in a cheap dvd player.
On the digital front? unless you have platinum ears (gold ears aren't sufficient anymore,
), you are better served leaving it alone.perception vs. reality
here is a quick link to a USAToday's article on vehicle quality, how people perceive them vs. how they perform in real world.
here is an interesting study reported by usatoday.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos...5-quality_x.htm
it essentially compared a vehicle's quality (per JD Power's vehicle dependibility survey) vs. "perceived" quality survey of the same vehicle.
the following is a short list of vehicles that actually are more dependible than people think:
Mercury
Infiniti
Buick
Lincoln
Chrysler
Lexus
Porsche
Mostly US makes. It is interesting that Infiniti and Lexus actually made it on that list.
the follow is a short list of vehicles that are less dependible than people think:
LandRover
Kia
VW
Volvo
Benz
Mistubishi
Hyundai
Audi
BMW.
Mostly high-end European and low-end Korean cars.
here is a quick link to a USAToday's article on vehicle quality, how people perceive them vs. how they perform in real world.
here is an interesting study reported by usatoday.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos...5-quality_x.htm
it essentially compared a vehicle's quality (per JD Power's vehicle dependibility survey) vs. "perceived" quality survey of the same vehicle.
the following is a short list of vehicles that actually are more dependible than people think:
Mercury
Infiniti
Buick
Lincoln
Chrysler
Lexus
Porsche
Mostly US makes. It is interesting that Infiniti and Lexus actually made it on that list.
the follow is a short list of vehicles that are less dependible than people think:
LandRover
Kia
VW
Volvo
Benz
Mistubishi
Hyundai
Audi
BMW.
Mostly high-end European and low-end Korean cars.
From which we learn (if treating Porsche as a "measurement
error") that americans underestimate native brands and
overestimate foreign brands. It could still be that the
foreign brands are highly superior, just not as much as expected.
That interpretation is fully consistent with the data presented
(the link didn't work, so I don't know if there is more detailed
statistics there).
error") that americans underestimate native brands and
overestimate foreign brands. It could still be that the
foreign brands are highly superior, just not as much as expected.
That interpretation is fully consistent with the data presented
(the link didn't work, so I don't know if there is more detailed
statistics there).
Hi,
From which I learn that there are mostly flying carpets on the American roads....
IOW, a marketing study getting paid to boost locally made cars.
BTW, give me any Porsche prior to 1990 and I'll maintain it all by myself at the cost of 15L of oil a year given a yearly use of 20.000Km.
It's the most economic car I know of.
And there are many other advantages, not to mention the pleasure of driving one on the German Autobahn.
Seven Eleven? No, no, Nine Eleven...
Nowadays cars are just electronics on wheels really...The fun is gone....
Cheers,
From which I learn that there are mostly flying carpets on the American roads....
IOW, a marketing study getting paid to boost locally made cars.
BTW, give me any Porsche prior to 1990 and I'll maintain it all by myself at the cost of 15L of oil a year given a yearly use of 20.000Km.
It's the most economic car I know of.
And there are many other advantages, not to mention the pleasure of driving one on the German Autobahn.
Seven Eleven? No, no, Nine Eleven...
Nowadays cars are just electronics on wheels really...The fun is gone....
Cheers,
Christer said:
I thought the study was about reality vs. perception, not if brand A is better than brand B.
My Audi has not lived up to its expectation, and my BMW, after a couple of early quirks, has been trouble free. Had an Infiniti in the early 1990s, and it has to be one of the worst cars I have ever had.
Best car I have ever had is a 1970 Mazda RX7 and a 1982 Datsun 280ZXT.
sounds like we are pulling away from the original thread so maybe the moderators should move it to off-topic?
I can honestly say I have heard jitter. There will be more jitter on a cheap DVD player. And yes, even DVD players, the cheap and the expensive ones have jitter. While it is true that in a DVD, the audio is buffered (at least for DVD-Audio), no guarentees what they will do with CD-Audio, the clocks that are used to run the DACs are generally generated from a PLL inside a big SOC. That PLL can be very jittery. I can state quite unequivocally that one of the ways the low end brands cut costs is to shave performance. Yes the SOC will work with only 1 tantalum cap and a couple of ceramics with a so-so layout, however, the noise, jitter on the PLLs, etc. will be much better if you add to the tantalum a couple of big well placed MLC caps, so more small ceramic caps for high frequency filtering, take the time to do a really good job on the layout, etc. Now we add better power supply filtering on the DACS, better layout on the DACS\op-amps, better decoupling capacitors, etc. ...... this has and will always be the difference between low end and high end. Functionally they may be similar, they are both DVD players, but one has been implemented optimally, and one has been implemented as cheap as will work. The goal for the cheap DVD players is to get an image on that 27", $200 TV bought from Walmart coupled with the $150 5.1 surround system, not to project a beutiful image on a $4,000 Plasma (or your pic of what you like) display running into a $5,000 surround system.
Alvaius
Alvaius
Everybody Hears Jitter...............
At the lower end of DVD players, I think that jitter performance is much lower priority than fitting all that circuitry onto a small decoder board, if it is considered at all.
Ever since the invention of CD players, all have quoted wow/flutter performance as "immeasurable".
This is probably correct for the bandwidth and averaging times spec for W/F measurement standard, but as we all know by now digital machines do have a form of W/F called jitter, only the spectrum of speed instability is different and the products are agueably much more sonically noticable/damaging/disturbing.
Quoting W/F meter figures is true, but not representative of sonic performance.
Jitter spectrum is very highly detectable, so any figures quoting jitter levels also require spectral information to be fully useful.
Eric.
At the lower end of DVD players, I think that jitter performance is much lower priority than fitting all that circuitry onto a small decoder board, if it is considered at all.
Ever since the invention of CD players, all have quoted wow/flutter performance as "immeasurable".
This is probably correct for the bandwidth and averaging times spec for W/F measurement standard, but as we all know by now digital machines do have a form of W/F called jitter, only the spectrum of speed instability is different and the products are agueably much more sonically noticable/damaging/disturbing.
Quoting W/F meter figures is true, but not representative of sonic performance.
Jitter spectrum is very highly detectable, so any figures quoting jitter levels also require spectral information to be fully useful.
Eric.
Good Moaning...........
Originally posted by fdegrove
Hi, In SY we trust, then....
Yes, and UPS.
Hitting the sack and the GF...6 AM I must be out of my mind..........
Coming to bed at 6.00 AM - sounds more like your GF will be hitting you.........., or did you mean 'hitting on' your GF at 6.00 AM ?.
See ya,
Good luck...........
Originally posted by fdegrove
Hi, In SY we trust, then....
Yes, and UPS.
Hitting the sack and the GF...6 AM I must be out of my mind..........
Coming to bed at 6.00 AM - sounds more like your GF will be hitting you.........., or did you mean 'hitting on' your GF at 6.00 AM ?.
See ya,
Good luck...........
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Jitter But Were Afraid To Ask.........
You can start here -
http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/appnotes-d/jittercu.asp
or here -
http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=28/
And especially here -
http://www.nanophon.com/audio/jitter92.pdf
Section 3.3 - The Audibility Of Sampling Jitter
Eric.
You can start here -
http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/appnotes-d/jittercu.asp
or here -
http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=28/
And especially here -
http://www.nanophon.com/audio/jitter92.pdf
Section 3.3 - The Audibility Of Sampling Jitter
Eric.
I bought a cheat $40 memorex dvd player from a drug store here in the US. It has progressive scan output. It's super small. I love the damn thing. It uses a Sunplus chipset. The DSP and motor control are all Sunplus. The power supply and dvd section is integrated into one PCB. The DSP outputs composite, S-video, component/RGB. It outputs serial audio in either stereo or surround sound, and heads to a cirrus logic DAC which is a multichannel DAC. It outputs either component or RGB, probably dependant on the registers of the DSP. Video output is clean, but I haven't really tested the audio. Power sipply is a simple design, and seems adequately filters, but is switching. The PCB has all pads labeled. It also has horizontal and vertical sync outputs. I connected the RGB and sync lines to a VGA connector and tried it out, but the picture was green. This means the output is component video. There is somec way to change this, but I have no documentation on this sunplus chipset other than the schematic. The whole PCB is made by Tonic Electronics, Inc. which is a chinese company. I was suprised to find a service manual forv the damn thing, but it is nothing but the user manual with schematics and pcb drawings, etc at the end of the manual. Most of you guys bought cheap DVd players with the ESS VideoDrive chipsets. These are super common. Sunplus seems to be a new company. Their old name used to be Grandtech. They manufactured chipsets for cheap digital cameras and web cams, and now they've expanded their line to condsumer applications like DVD and mp3 decoder chipsets. Tonic Electronics designed a PCB, which includes a power supply and everything all on one board. I forget who makes the drive. The front panel is connected to the main PCB. The display is VFD, so it uses low voltage AC to drive it, about 3.2Vrms. The .pdf is 4mb. I'll put it on my geoshities web server for you all to enjoy. I remember a chinese site selling drives and ESS VideoDrive and Sunplus complete DVD player PCBs with multiregion, no macrovision, all outputs, and VGA output even. The Sunplus PCB was the one that caught my eye. I'll see if I can buy one in a quantity of one and try to assemble my own player. I only want a decent cd player that will output S/PDIF.
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