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"Harry Lavo" wrote:

"Nousaine" wrote in message
...
"Harry Lavo" wrote:

"Rusty Boudreaux" wrote in message
...
"Mkuller" wrote in message
news:58Pub.246217$HS4.2182771@attbi_s01...
Snake oil is more than a "tad" harsh to call AA. Mark owned
the company and
had a very talented designer in the days when digital was
evolving. They
produced excellent products at great prices and their DTI
jitter buster was a
breakthrough product that is still in use today by people using
separates.

That may be true but I still think they weren't totally honest
with some of their products. There should be no need for jitter
correction in CD audio as has been pointed out by Dick Pierce and
others that CD's can't have jitter. If a jitter buster helps
then something is wrong with the CD player.

Another example is a quote by Tom Nousaine in this newsgroup a
few weeks ago:

"I'm guessing that my experience with an Audio Alchemy outboard
DAC might be
illustrative. Using that device for a level matched test I
discovered that the
output of the AA was +10 dB compared to the analog output of a
Marantz CD-63
player.

Inside the case there was a jumper with 0 dB and +10 dB settings.
Moving the
jumper to the 0 dB position and, guess what, the output was still
+4 dB. So to
an end-user the device always delivered a higher output level.

I'm guessing that this kind of level de-match accounts for
practically all, if
not exactly all, of the reported cd-player sound differences."

Well, if this is your belief as well as Tom's guess, then perhaps this
will
persuade you otherwise.

I use an AA DTI Pro jitter buster. Had it wired into a Proceed PDP using
balanced cable and then into Aux two on my preamp next to Aux one, direct
feed from the cd player. Identical cables used. The outputs were matched
within .5db on all three cd players I used over the decade with this
arrangement in my system.

Compared to my Phillips 880, the sound was the same but more transparent
(it
should be since the PDP was 18 bit and the DTI Pro featured noise-shaping
specifically designed for 18-bit making it sound like 20-bit, while the
880
was designed at a time when 16 bit multibit DACs were not particularly
linear below -80db).

Compared to my Marantz 63SE (one-bit pcm), the sound was slightly more
neutral (the Marantz a tad "lean") and more natural sounding and about
the
same in perceived transparency.

Compared to my Sony C222ES, the sound was very similar but had a slightly
more dynamic, warmer, and more natural sounding bass, and about the same
transparency.

On a casual level they can all "sound the same". In fine detail, they
all
have subtle differences. So if the AA DAC had higher output and people
did
not level adjust, then that may explain some specific results with that
DAC.
But it is a big leap from there to saying that all DACs were liked better
because they had higher output. There were other things at work,
especially
in the early days when outboard DACs first became popular...different DAC
chips, better power supplies, better analog outputs, etc.

Ok here's the rest of my story. In a blind experiment the analog output of
a
Maratntz CD-63 was fed into the analog input of a Marantz CDR610
CD-recorder.
The recorder was placed in "record" and the signal at the headphone jack
of the
CD-R was fed into the system and level matched to the Audio Alchemy with
the
level control of the headphone jack (whereas the analog output of the
player
had been subject to a complete extra AD-DA cycle through the CDR610s
internal
chips.)

I found it it illustrative that several experienced enthusiasts were then
unable to reliably differentiate between them by sound alone.

First, are you sure you weren't just bypassing the ad-da converters out the
headphone jack? That's how my Panansonic DAT's work. Otherwise the sound
would not be synched.

Yes I'm sure because I spoke with the Marantz people prior and without the CDR
being placed in record mode no sound gets to the headphone output.

Second, what is this supposed to prove about the sound of DAC's in general
and whether or not they would improve upon a given cd player...that was the
original point of this post.

All this does is suggest that your AA and your
Marantz sounded alike (neither the epitome of high-end sound IME).

I'm glad you regognize that Audio Alchemy was high-end hyperbole.

Perhaps
your answer to the original poster should be that you doubt the AA DAC would
be an improvement...perhaps he should borrow a Wadia, or a Mark Levinson, or
an MF, or at least a Benchmark to listen to. No?

Why bother; there's nothing they could possibly do but degrade an already
transparent signal.

And based on your dismissal of antidotal discussion of listening tests, your
experienced enthusiasts might or might not have heard a difference based on
their expectations, and in either case their opinions cannot be trusted.

But this was a double blind test and the numbers show they were unable to
reliably identify them. I didn't rely on their 'opinions.'

Perhaps, another set of "experienced enthusiasts" might have heard an
equally untrustworthy difference.

IMO another set of listeners would have heard (or not) exactly the same thing.

Since you dismiss antidotal evidence as worthless, those "experienced
enthusiast's" opinions we should accept as the last word? Given that they
were acquaintances of yours, how are we to know that they have been led to
have negative expectations of differences by the known opinions, of you
their friend. Perhaps another set of "enthusiast" might have reached a
different conclusion. But it doesn't count anyway, right?

Well at least half of them seemed heavily biased in the other direction, at
least in comments. But, as you well know, I'm not one to accept opinions when
true sonics can be verified.

Don't forget that when the experiment is double blind there is no way that I
can prevent listeners from hearing true differences.