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DJ[_2_] DJ[_2_] is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard about this player,
and better yet, auditioned or own one?

Reference - http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html

Best regards,

-DJ

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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:02:14 -0800, DJ wrote
(in article ):

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard about this player,
and better yet, auditioned or own one?

Reference - http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html

Best regards,

-DJ


I know that the original two Sony SACD players did that, (the $5000 one and
the multichannel $3500 SACD777ES - which I have). The EMM Labs Player is
supposed to up-sample regular CDs to DOUBLE the SACD bandwidth. Whether or
not it actually improves CDs is another matter, I know that my Sony SACD777ES
is not only an excellent sounding SACD player, but its also one of the best
sounding Redbook CD players I've ever heard as well.
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Arny Krueger Arny Krueger is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.

"MDAT is unlike anything the industry has seen, or heard, before. Here’s
why: Rather than address the digital signal as a series of sine waves—as is
standard convention

This just isn't true. Standard convention is to address the digital signal
as a series of samples.

"—the MDAT-equipped CDSA SE processes (and upsamples CD audio to DSD for
conversion to analog) by dynamically adapting to the transient nature of the
musical signal.

In fact the basic nature of musical signals is exactly what they just said
they don't do. Musical signals are composed of a series of sine waves. Every
musical signal can be accurately analyzed and represented as a collection of
sine and cosine waves. CD players don't do that, but FFTs do. The human
ear, being largely composed of a collection of narrow-band filters, can also
be characterized as addressing the musical sound as being composed of a
series of sine waves.

In this way, the CDSA SE is utterly unique and singularly able to
preserve the phase, frequency and
dynamic integrity of the original signal.


In fact the best way to preserve the phase, frequency and dynamic integrity
of the original signal is to treat it as a series of samples, which is what
they already said that their product does not do.

Once you’ve heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance
and dynamic shading, there’s no going back.


So where's their reliable bias-controlled lisetening test data that supports
this claim?

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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.


True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs sound better. Perhaps
its the removal of that brick-wall filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things
sound "better", I don't know. But something sure sounds better. I've
performed double-blind tests with my friends, and everyone preferred the
oversampling on my outboard D/A converter turned on rather than turned off,
could dteect the difference almost every time and I concur. I also find that
44.1KHz digital upsampled to 88.2 KHz sounds better than upsampling it to 96
KHz, but DAT (48 KHz digital) sounds better upsampled to 96 KHz than it does
upsampled to 88.2 KHz. I don't pretend to understand why. It must have
something to do with one upsampled rate being an exact multiple of the
original sampling rate of the disc/DAT and the other not.
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Steven Sullivan Steven Sullivan is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

Sonnova wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):


"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.


True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs sound better. Perhaps
its the removal of that brick-wall filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things
sound "better", I don't know. But something sure sounds better.


Oversampling isn't the same thing as upsampling. OVersampling as means to
do what you say -- make it easier to implement transparent filtering -- is
not controversial, and has been in use in CDPs since around 1990.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason


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Codifus Codifus is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 14, 6:11 pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"DJ" wrote in message



It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.

"MDAT is unlike anything the industry has seen, or heard, before. Here's
why: Rather than address the digital signal as a series of sine waves--as is
standard convention

This just isn't true. Standard convention is to address the digital signal
as a series of samples.

"--the MDAT-equipped CDSA SE processes (and upsamples CD audio to DSD for
conversion to analog) by dynamically adapting to the transient nature of the
musical signal.

In fact the basic nature of musical signals is exactly what they just said
they don't do. Musical signals are composed of a series of sine waves. Every
musical signal can be accurately analyzed and represented as a collection of
sine and cosine waves. CD players don't do that, but FFTs do. The human
ear, being largely composed of a collection of narrow-band filters, can also
be characterized as addressing the musical sound as being composed of a
series of sine waves.

In this way, the CDSA SE is utterly unique and singularly able to
preserve the phase, frequency and
dynamic integrity of the original signal.


In fact the best way to preserve the phase, frequency and dynamic integrity
of the original signal is to treat it as a series of samples, which is what
they already said that their product does not do.

Once you've heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance
and dynamic shading, there's no going back.


So where's their reliable bias-controlled lisetening test data that supports
this claim?


Doesn't all this assume perfect behavior of a D/A system? The main
reason that oversampling came about is to deal with the limitations or
flaws in the digital filtering process. Things like smearing and phase
issues. By oversampling, you're not re-creating, but rather improving
the phasing and smearing issue. It is well known that part of the
reason that 44.1/16 was "flawed" because the filter digital filter
that needs to be applied should have so steep a curve which tends to
cause unwanted, audibly unpleasant artifacts.

I know that this does not apply to this device because its a DSD based
system, but surely the same philosophy applies, in that digital
circuits are not perfect and over sampling would somehow help to
better re-create the analog signal. The issue is to deliver more
accurately.

With this recently introduced Consonance Linear 120 player, it boasts
no over-sampling and no digital filter. It's well received by several
reviewers. Here's a link to the theory behind the digital filterless
DAC;

http://www.sakurasystems.com/articles/Kusunoki.html

I find this player very fascinating because it goes a whole new way
about extracting digital audio data. My guess is that to go the route
of making a digital filterless DAC, you have to build all the
associated components, the opamps and clocks and ICs to a
fantastically high, and expensive, standard. In other words, to deal
with imperfect components in the DAC chain, they got rid of the
digital filter and made them remaining components to much more
stringent standards. This comes at a price, of course. If there ever
comes a time when gold plated, silver deposited, 1 u meter ICs became
cheap, this technology may find its way to the lower end consumer
audio market like that $50 Walmart CD player.

All these implementations of D to A address the simple fact that
nothing's perfrect. Remember the 1st, basic electronic lessons, where
a resistors are not ideal? They have some capacitance. Capacitors have
resistance, etc. So DACs, made of of these imperfect electronic
components, have imprefections of their own. Yes, electrical engineers
do design their circuits to compensate for the imperfections, but
there's always a compromise. Nothing is ideal.

So, nothing's perfect, but its getting much much better all the time

CD
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own
one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical
or electrical process can accurately recreate music that
isn't already present in the recording.


True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs
sound better.


.....Right up until you level-match, time-synch, use a really good resampler,
and start trying to control bias.

Perhaps its the removal of that brick-wall
filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things sound "better",


Similar means of comparison shows that a brick wall as low as 16 KHz can be
difficult or impossible to hear.

http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm

I don't know.


Nobody knows because it never seems to actually happen.

But something sure sounds better.


Interesting that removing trivial audible cues and the power of suggestion
has such predictable effects.

I've
performed double-blind tests with my friends, and
everyone preferred the oversampling on my outboard D/A
converter turned on rather than turned off, could dteect
the difference almost every time and I concur.


Just addressing bias isn't enough. The level-match and time-synch thing is
very important.

I also
find that
44.1KHz digital upsampled to 88.2 KHz sounds better than
upsampling it to 96 KHz, but DAT (48 KHz digital) sounds
better upsampled to 96 KHz than it does upsampled to 88.2
KHz.


If there's an audible effect, then it speaks to the quality of the
resampling. I've definately seen resampling gone wrong. Resampling down
usuallly involves two stages of low-pass filtering, and that makes two
places where audio products can and have gone wrong. Upsampling involves at
least one stage of low-pass filtering, and while there's less chance for
error, it doesn't mean no chance for error.

I don't pretend to understand why. It must have
something to do with one upsampled rate being an exact
multiple of the original sampling rate of the disc/DAT
and the other not.


It is well-known that resampling involving integer multiples or integer
fractions has no special magic involved with it, no matter what naive
intuition tells some people.

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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:18:51 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):


"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.


True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs sound better. Perhaps
its the removal of that brick-wall filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things
sound "better", I don't know. But something sure sounds better.


Oversampling isn't the same thing as upsampling. OVersampling as means to
do what you say -- make it easier to implement transparent filtering -- is
not controversial, and has been in use in CDPs since around 1990.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason


Sorry, I meant up-sampling.
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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:30:09 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own
one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical
or electrical process can accurately recreate music that
isn't already present in the recording.


True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs
sound better.


....Right up until you level-match, time-synch, use a really good resampler,
and start trying to control bias.

Perhaps its the removal of that brick-wall
filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things sound "better",


Similar means of comparison shows that a brick wall as low as 16 KHz can be
difficult or impossible to hear.

http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm

I don't know.


Nobody knows because it never seems to actually happen.

But something sure sounds better.


Interesting that removing trivial audible cues and the power of suggestion
has such predictable effects.

I've
performed double-blind tests with my friends, and
everyone preferred the oversampling on my outboard D/A
converter turned on rather than turned off, could dteect
the difference almost every time and I concur.


Just addressing bias isn't enough. The level-match and time-synch thing is
very important.

I also
find that
44.1KHz digital upsampled to 88.2 KHz sounds better than
upsampling it to 96 KHz, but DAT (48 KHz digital) sounds
better upsampled to 96 KHz than it does upsampled to 88.2
KHz.


If there's an audible effect, then it speaks to the quality of the
resampling. I've definately seen resampling gone wrong. Resampling down
usuallly involves two stages of low-pass filtering, and that makes two
places where audio products can and have gone wrong. Upsampling involves at
least one stage of low-pass filtering, and while there's less chance for
error, it doesn't mean no chance for error.

I don't pretend to understand why. It must have
something to do with one upsampled rate being an exact
multiple of the original sampling rate of the disc/DAT
and the other not.


It is well-known that resampling involving integer multiples or integer
fractions has no special magic involved with it, no matter what naive
intuition tells some people.


Well observed criteria is at odds with your assessment. Like most people, I
tend to agree with people I trust and people who have made the same
observations that I have. In these cases, some pretty high-powered players in
both pro and consumer audio seem to agree with my observations as opposed to
your facts. Like I said. I'm not here to make enemies or to pontificate
(unlike some others that I have noticed). I am here to discuss the things in
audio that interest me.
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"codifus" wrote in message

On Nov 14, 6:11 pm, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"DJ" wrote in message



It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own
one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical
or electrical process can accurately recreate music that
isn't already present in the recording.

"MDAT is unlike anything the industry has seen, or
heard, before. Here's why: Rather than address the
digital signal as a series of sine waves--as is standard
convention

This just isn't true. Standard convention is to address
the digital signal as a series of samples.

"--the MDAT-equipped CDSA SE processes (and upsamples CD
audio to DSD for conversion to analog) by dynamically
adapting to the transient nature of the musical signal.

In fact the basic nature of musical signals is exactly
what they just said they don't do. Musical signals are
composed of a series of sine waves. Every musical signal
can be accurately analyzed and represented as a
collection of sine and cosine waves. CD players don't do
that, but FFTs do. The human ear, being largely
composed of a collection of narrow-band filters, can
also be characterized as addressing the musical sound as
being composed of a series of sine waves.

In this way, the CDSA SE is utterly unique and
singularly able to preserve the phase, frequency and
dynamic integrity of the original signal.


In fact the best way to preserve the phase, frequency
and dynamic integrity of the original signal is to
treat it as a series of samples, which is what they
already said that their product does not do.

Once you've heard this level of improvement in terms of
resolution, nuance and dynamic shading, there's no
going back.


So where's their reliable bias-controlled lisetening
test data that supports this claim?


Doesn't all this assume perfect behavior of a D/A system?


Perfection is not required. Contrary to some people's misapprehensions,
0.001% and 110 dB dynamic range has no audible impact on musical signals.

The main reason that oversampling came about is to deal
with the limitations or flaws in the digital filtering
process.


So, they are dealt with effectively, and have no audible effects. Next!

Things like smearing and phase issues. By
oversampling, you're not re-creating, but rather
improving the phasing and smearing issue.


You can't remove the damage that was already done. You can't re-invent data
that was lost. Furthermore, the damage and lost data don't cause any audible
problems.

It is well
known that part of the reason that 44.1/16 was "flawed"
because the filter digital filter that needs to be
applied should have so steep a curve which tends to cause
unwanted, audibly unpleasant artifacts.


Just because something isn't perfect, doesn't mean that it is the weakest
link.

All this obsession with converters, which are already highly perfected,
distracts people's attention from the weakest links which are rooms,
speakers and microphones.



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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:30:09 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone
heard about this player, and better yet, auditioned
or own one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical
or electrical process can accurately recreate music
that isn't already present in the recording.

True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs
sound better.


....Right up until you level-match, time-synch, use a
really good resampler, and start trying to control bias.

Perhaps its the removal of that brick-wall
filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things sound "better",


Similar means of comparison shows that a brick wall as
low as 16 KHz can be difficult or impossible to hear.

http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm

I don't know.


Nobody knows because it never seems to actually happen.

But something sure sounds better.


Interesting that removing trivial audible cues and the
power of suggestion has such predictable effects.

I've
performed double-blind tests with my friends, and
everyone preferred the oversampling on my outboard D/A
converter turned on rather than turned off, could dteect
the difference almost every time and I concur.


Just addressing bias isn't enough. The level-match and
time-synch thing is very important.

I also
find that
44.1KHz digital upsampled to 88.2 KHz sounds better than
upsampling it to 96 KHz, but DAT (48 KHz digital) sounds
better upsampled to 96 KHz than it does upsampled to
88.2 KHz.


If there's an audible effect, then it speaks to the
quality of the resampling. I've definately seen
resampling gone wrong. Resampling down usuallly
involves two stages of low-pass filtering, and that
makes two places where audio products can and have gone
wrong. Upsampling involves at least one stage of
low-pass filtering, and while there's less chance for
error, it doesn't mean no chance for error.

I don't pretend to understand why. It must have
something to do with one upsampled rate being an exact
multiple of the original sampling rate of the disc/DAT
and the other not.


It is well-known that resampling involving integer
multiples or integer fractions has no special magic
involved with it, no matter what naive intuition tells
some people.


Well observed criteria is at odds with your assessment.


You forgot to add that the observations that are at odds are highly flawed.

Like most people, I tend to agree with people I trust and
people who have made the same observations that I have.


I prefer to agree with reliable information. If someone is my friend and
they are wrong, then it would be a friendly thing for me to do, to help them
find the correct information out for themselves.

In these cases, some pretty high-powered players in both
pro and consumer audio seem to agree with my observations
as opposed to your facts.


Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying in the
marketplace.

Like I said. I'm not here to
make enemies or to pontificate (unlike some others that I
have noticed). I am here to discuss the things in audio
that interest me.


I prefer to discuss how the real world actually works and debunk, not
promote old wive's stories.

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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 14, 10:26 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.


True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs
sound better. Perhaps its the removal of that brick-wall filter
at 22.05 KHz that makes things sound "better"


Oversampling does NOT remove the 22.05 kHz brick-wall
filter. It is still required and still implemented in 44.1 kHz
CD players.

What oversampling provides is the ability to move most
of the implementation of that filter into the digital domain.

I don't know. But something sure sounds better. I've
performed double-blind tests with my friends, and
everyone preferred the oversampling on my outboard
D/A converter turned on rather than turned off,


Unless it's something unusual, I'd be willing to bet that
your outboard D/A, in fact, implements its reconstruction
filter using oversampling.

I also find that
44.1KHz digital upsampled to 88.2 KHz sounds better
than upsampling it to 96 KHz, but DAT (48 KHz digital)
sounds better upsampled to 96 KHz than it does
upsampled to 88.2 KHz. I don't pretend to understand why.


It's simple: if there are audible differences, they are
likely due to faulty upsampling and filtering implementation.

It must have
something to do with one upsampled rate being an exact multiple of the
original sampling rate of the disc/DAT and the other not.


Look, at least everywhere else in the world, these
are long-solved problems. It seems that only in high-
end audio is technical incompetence in product design
and implementation a desirable attribute.
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 15, 6:18 pm, Steven Sullivan wrote:
Sonnova wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):
"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.

True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs sound better. Perhaps
its the removal of that brick-wall filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things
sound "better", I don't know. But something sure sounds better.


Oversampling isn't the same thing as upsampling.


It isn't? How?

An oversampling D/A converter first converts one sample
rate to a higher sample rate, then performs filtering at the
higher sample rate. An upsampling D/A converter first
converts one sample rate to a higher sample rate, then
performs filtering at the higher sample rate.

What's the difference (other than high-end audio hooey-
speak)?
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 15, 6:29 pm, codifus wrote:
On Nov 14, 6:11 pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:



"DJ" wrote in message




It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.


"MDAT is unlike anything the industry has seen, or heard, before. Here's
why: Rather than address the digital signal as a series of sine waves--as is
standard convention


This just isn't true. Standard convention is to address the digital signal
as a series of samples.


"--the MDAT-equipped CDSA SE processes (and upsamples CD audio to DSD for
conversion to analog) by dynamically adapting to the transient nature of the
musical signal.


In fact the basic nature of musical signals is exactly what they just said
they don't do. Musical signals are composed of a series of sine waves. Every
musical signal can be accurately analyzed and represented as a collection of
sine and cosine waves. CD players don't do that, but FFTs do. The human
ear, being largely composed of a collection of narrow-band filters, can also
be characterized as addressing the musical sound as being composed of a
series of sine waves.


In this way, the CDSA SE is utterly unique and singularly able to
preserve the phase, frequency and
dynamic integrity of the original signal.


In fact the best way to preserve the phase, frequency and dynamic integrity
of the original signal is to treat it as a series of samples, which is what
they already said that their product does not do.


Once you've heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance
and dynamic shading, there's no going back.


So where's their reliable bias-controlled lisetening test data that supports
this claim?


Doesn't all this assume perfect behavior of a D/A system?


Given the known fundamental resolution of the human
auditory periphery, "perfect" is simply irrelevant. "Practically
perfect" is achievable.

The main
reason that oversampling came about is to deal with the limitations or
flaws in the digital filtering process.


Wrong.

The reason why oversampling was implemented (and it was
implemented long before a lot of people here seem to think
it was), was to be able to move the anti-imaging process
out of the analog domain, where the implementations were
not so much "flawedd" in some vague sense, but expensive
and difficult to implement in any repeatable fashion using
conventional analog topologies, into the digital domain where
a number of rather significant constraints were relaxed.

Things like smearing and phase
issues. By oversampling, you're not re-creating, but rather improving
the phasing and smearing issue.


Huh?

It is well known that part of the
reason that 44.1/16 was "flawed" because the filter digital filter
that needs to be applied should have so steep a curve which tends to
cause unwanted, audibly unpleasant artifacts.


"It is well known" by whom? Yes, a lot of things are "well
known" in the high-end audio realm, and many of those
"well-known" things are wrong.

Let's please set the record straight. An oversampling
reconstruction/anti-imaging filter in a D/A converter
MUST have a brick-wall low-pass cutoff at below half
the original sample rate, whether it's implemented
as a pile of expensive resistors, inductors and capacitors
or whether it's implemented as an oversampled filter.
The cutoff MUST be below 22 kHz and it MUST be essentially
a brick-wall filter.

What an oversampled filter lets you do is push the majority
of that filtering to the digital domain, where you have many
more degrees of freedom in your design.

Oversampled filters work thusly: Take you incoming
stream, at 44.1 kHz. By itself, it contains the base-band
audio from 0-22 Khz, an image from 44 to 22 kHz,
an image form 44 to 66 kHz and so on. You HAVE to
get rid of all of those images, thus the requirement
for the brick wall filter.

When you oversample, let's say by 8x (to make the math
easy), now you have your original 0-22 kHz base band
signal in a new base band from 0-176 kHz, an image
384-176, another image from 384-528 kHz and so on.

Now, instead of trying to implement some wildly difficult
analog filter at 20 kHz, you can implement a nice, really-
steep, near brick-wall, linear phase (if you want), low
delay (if you want) or whatever, completely in the digital
domain: your cutoiff frequency is tree octaves below the
Nyquist point, so your artifacts are miminal, and all you
have to do when your done is have an external, gentle,
simple (and, thus, cheap) analog filter sufficient to
remove artifacts at 176 kHz and above.

And, you should note, the MAJOR portion of the cost
of implementing a brick-wall filter in the analog domain
is in the cost of the parts and assembly, thus substantially
raising the per-unit cost of players. The per-unit cost
of an oversampled filter is essentially zero: you probably
already have all the silicon you need anyway.

With this recently introduced Consonance Linear 120 player, it boasts
no over-sampling and no digital filter. It's well received by several
reviewers. Here's a link to the theory behind the digital filterless
DAC;

http://www.sakurasystems.com/articles/Kusunoki.html


This was soundly rejected by the rest of the signal
processing world decades ago. Only in high-end audio
does this sort of patent nonsense not only survive but thrive.

I find this player very fascinating because it goes a whole new way
about extracting digital audio data. My guess is that to go the route
of making a digital filterless DAC, you have to build all the
associated components, the opamps and clocks and ICs to a
fantastically high, and expensive, standard.


Nope, what you have to do is spend a lot of money
on replacement tweeters and output devices, because
ALL of those images are being sent raw out to your
amplifier and tweter.

Such designs are the result of one of two possibilities:

1. Technical ignorance and incompetence on the part of
the product designer,

2. The hope on the part of the product designer of technical
ignorance on the part of the consumer base

In other words, to deal
with imperfect components in the DAC chain, they got rid of the
digital filter and made them remaining components to much more
stringent standards.


No, it's simply a lack of fundamental understanding of
the most basic principles of signals and circuits.

This comes at a price, of course. If there ever
comes a time when gold plated, silver deposited,
1 u meter ICs became cheap, this technology may
find its way to the lower end consumer
audio market like that $50 Walmart CD player.


You wanna take the bet?

I'll bet good money that in 5 years, this "technology", if
you can call it that, will not make it at all out of the
boutique high-end audio-as-jewelry marketplace. In
fact, I'll bet that it will die the type of obscure ignoble
death uniquely reserved for this sort of gross technical
incompetence and negligence .
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:00:42 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:30:09 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone
heard about this player, and better yet, auditioned
or own one?

Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html


The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical
or electrical process can accurately recreate music
that isn't already present in the recording.

True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs
sound better.

....Right up until you level-match, time-synch, use a
really good resampler, and start trying to control bias.

Perhaps its the removal of that brick-wall
filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things sound "better",

Similar means of comparison shows that a brick wall as
low as 16 KHz can be difficult or impossible to hear.

http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm

I don't know.

Nobody knows because it never seems to actually happen.

But something sure sounds better.

Interesting that removing trivial audible cues and the
power of suggestion has such predictable effects.

I've
performed double-blind tests with my friends, and
everyone preferred the oversampling on my outboard D/A
converter turned on rather than turned off, could dteect
the difference almost every time and I concur.

Just addressing bias isn't enough. The level-match and
time-synch thing is very important.

I also
find that
44.1KHz digital upsampled to 88.2 KHz sounds better than
upsampling it to 96 KHz, but DAT (48 KHz digital) sounds
better upsampled to 96 KHz than it does upsampled to
88.2 KHz.

If there's an audible effect, then it speaks to the
quality of the resampling. I've definately seen
resampling gone wrong. Resampling down usuallly
involves two stages of low-pass filtering, and that
makes two places where audio products can and have gone
wrong. Upsampling involves at least one stage of
low-pass filtering, and while there's less chance for
error, it doesn't mean no chance for error.

I don't pretend to understand why. It must have
something to do with one upsampled rate being an exact
multiple of the original sampling rate of the disc/DAT
and the other not.

It is well-known that resampling involving integer
multiples or integer fractions has no special magic
involved with it, no matter what naive intuition tells
some people.


Well observed criteria is at odds with your assessment.


You forgot to add that the observations that are at odds are highly flawed.


I your not-so-humble-opinion. You forgot to add that :-

Like most people, I tend to agree with people I trust and
people who have made the same observations that I have.


I prefer to agree with reliable information. If someone is my friend and
they are wrong, then it would be a friendly thing for me to do, to help them
find the correct information out for themselves.

In these cases, some pretty high-powered players in both
pro and consumer audio seem to agree with my observations
as opposed to your facts.


Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying in the
marketplace.


DVD-A is, in fact dead.

Like I said. I'm not here to
make enemies or to pontificate (unlike some others that I
have noticed). I am here to discuss the things in audio
that interest me.


I prefer to discuss how the real world actually works and debunk, not
promote old wive's stories.


I have yet to see you actually debunk anything. All I actually see from you
are counter claims.



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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:06:44 -0800, wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 15, 6:29 pm, codifus wrote:
On Nov 14, 6:11 pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:



"DJ" wrote in message




It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html

The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.


"MDAT is unlike anything the industry has seen, or heard, before. Here's
why: Rather than address the digital signal as a series of sine waves--as
is
standard convention


This just isn't true. Standard convention is to address the digital signal
as a series of samples.


"--the MDAT-equipped CDSA SE processes (and upsamples CD audio to DSD for
conversion to analog) by dynamically adapting to the transient nature of
the
musical signal.


In fact the basic nature of musical signals is exactly what they just said
they don't do. Musical signals are composed of a series of sine waves.
Every
musical signal can be accurately analyzed and represented as a collection
of
sine and cosine waves. CD players don't do that, but FFTs do. The human
ear, being largely composed of a collection of narrow-band filters, can
also
be characterized as addressing the musical sound as being composed of a
series of sine waves.


In this way, the CDSA SE is utterly unique and singularly able to
preserve the phase, frequency and
dynamic integrity of the original signal.


In fact the best way to preserve the phase, frequency and dynamic
integrity
of the original signal is to treat it as a series of samples, which is what
they already said that their product does not do.


Once you've heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance
and dynamic shading, there's no going back.


So where's their reliable bias-controlled lisetening test data that
supports
this claim?


Doesn't all this assume perfect behavior of a D/A system?


Given the known fundamental resolution of the human
auditory periphery, "perfect" is simply irrelevant. "Practically
perfect" is achievable.


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly irrelevant here. The
human auditory sense notwithstanding, most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound reinforcement) and canned, no
matter how well recorded or how well played back. If we assume that the goal
here is to recreate, in the home, the sound of live music, then it would seem
to me that "accuracy" in and of itself is irrelevant. What is relevant is
whatever path to that goal achieves the most palpable results. Many people
feel that a well recorded, well mastered LP conveys to the listener, more of
the psychological impact of live music than does a CD or any other digital
medium. If this is, indeed the case, (and say what you will, but for lots of
people this is true) then obviously "accuracy" is not that important. LP, as
a music storage medium, is fraught with flaws both electrical and mechanical
as we all know. An LP has lots more of all kinds of distortions than any
viable, modern digital medium, yet many people feel more "viscerally
connected" to the music from a LP than they do with a CD. Again, I don't
pretend to know why, maybe its familiarity to these people (you know like the
aural equivalent of "comfort food"), maybe LP distortions fabricate something
that occurs in real space that defies actual capture by today's
high-resolution recording systems (which seems unlikely). And, of course, we
must never discount the possibility that the "better" LP sound is a figment
of the listener's imagination. If the latter is so, then it too is relevant
because it brings the emotional content of the performance closer to the
listener. If you take that component away, then music just becomes an
exercise in mathematics.
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:00:42 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message


In these cases, some pretty high-powered players in both
pro and consumer audio seem to agree with my
observations as opposed to your facts.


Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those
overpriced, oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A
formats are slowly dying in the marketplace.


DVD-A is, in fact dead.


A confirmation of my efforts to debunk it and the bad science that it
represents.

Like I said. I'm not here to
make enemies or to pontificate (unlike some others that
I have noticed). I am here to discuss the things in
audio that interest me.


I prefer to discuss how the real world actually works
and debunk, not promote old wive's stories.


I have yet to see you actually debunk anything.


Debunking is in the eye of the beholder.

All I actually see from you are counter claims.


Actually, counter evidence, for those who choose to experience the
recordings that I've posted on the web at www.pcabx.com.

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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"Sonnova" wrote in message


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly
irrelevant here.


Since perfection does not exist in the real world, the question of
perfection in the real world is always irrelevant.

The human auditory sense
notwithstanding, most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound
reinforcement) and canned, no matter how well recorded or
how well played back.


Canning music is a journey of many steps. Just because the journey to
complete and total realistic reproduction is incomplete at this time, does
not prove that each and every one of the steps is flawed.

If we assume that the goal here is
to recreate, in the home, the sound of live music, then
it would seem to me that "accuracy" in and of itself is
irrelevant.


Since reproduction is a journey of many steps, each step can potentially be
analyzed for accuracy. Since the steps are different the means of analysis
may well be different.

What is relevant is whatever path to that
goal achieves the most palpable results.


Well, words have meanings. Here are some generally-accepted meanings of the
word palpable, from the online Merrium-Webster dictionary:

1 : capable of being touched or felt : tangible
2 : easily perceptible : noticeable a palpable difference
3 : easily perceptible by the mind : manifest

It would appear that the word palpable can be applied to any musical
reproduction that at least middling in quality.

Many people
feel that a well recorded, well mastered LP conveys to
the listener, more of the psychological impact of live
music than does a CD or any other digital medium.


Many is a very vague word. Therefore it is pretty much without meaning.

In fact about 99% of all music lovers have abandoned the LP. Only a tiny
noisy minority bother with it any more. A lot of recent LP sales were
related to "scratching" in dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available, LP sales dropped by about another
1/3 per RIAA statistics.

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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 17, 5:35 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:06:44 -0800, wrote
Doesn't all this assume perfect behavior of a D/A system?


Given the known fundamental resolution of the human
auditory periphery, "perfect" is simply irrelevant. "Practically
perfect" is achievable.


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly
irrelevant here.


Exactly.

The human auditory sense notwithstanding,


Uhm, last time anyone checked, the human auditory
PERIPHERY (please do not change the words: they
have a very specific and well-understood meaning)
is very germaine to the topic.

most people can instantly tell the difference between
"live" music (with no sound reinforcement) and canned,


Yes, and the reason has absolutely NOTHING to do with
the current discussion.

No commercially available sound reproduction system
comes even remotely close to being able to duplicating
the sound field present in a live venue. Whether the D/A
is "perfect" in a theoretical sense or practical sense,
you've solved 1%, maybe, of the difference between a live
and reproduced image of a live event. The remaining
99% is unsolved.

Many people feel that a well recorded, well mastered
LP conveys to the listener, more of the psychological
impact of live music than does a CD or any other digital
medium.


And, for LOTS of people, it does not.

If this is, indeed the case, (and say what you will, but
for lots of people this is true)


Say what YOU will, for lots is does not.

then obviously "accuracy" is not that important.


You bandy about the term "accuracy" as if it has a
universally agreed-upon definition. Tell me, why
would not one such definition be "fidelity to the
original listening experience?"

Whether one assigns the word "accuracy" to that
or not, whether it's LP or CD or Edison cylinder,
EVERYTHING falls FAR short of that goal. At which
which time, it becomes more an issue of a personal
preference of which bad reproduction is most preferable.

Be that all as it may, you have used the thread as a means
of launching into an irrelevant discussion. If you want to
about LP vs CD, go start yet another pointless, interminable
and unresolved thread on that topic and have at it.

The immediate point is that in THIS particular thread, a
number of specific technical assertions have been made,
many of them are just simply wrong, culminating to the
reference to the Consonance Linear 120, which is an
unfortunate but all-to-real existence proof of the high-end
audio worlds ability to sell total pig sh*t as caviar.
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 18, 8:10 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
In fact about 99% of all music lovers have abandoned the LP. Only a tiny
noisy minority bother with it any more.


Not all are "noisy", Arny. Some of us just like what some LPs bring
to the sonic and musical table.

A lot of recent LP sales were
related to "scratching" in dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available, LP sales dropped by about another
1/3 per RIAA statistics.


Cite, please.


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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

Arny Krueger wrote:

A lot of recent LP sales were
related to "scratching" in dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available...


what is "scratching"?

fwiw, i'm not trolling; i've been
out of hifi for 10 years

bill
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying in the
marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?

again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?

at this point i have no opinion one way or the other!

tia, bill
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:10:32 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly
irrelevant here.


Since perfection does not exist in the real world, the question of
perfection in the real world is always irrelevant.

The human auditory sense
notwithstanding, most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound
reinforcement) and canned, no matter how well recorded or
how well played back.


Canning music is a journey of many steps. Just because the journey to
complete and total realistic reproduction is incomplete at this time, does
not prove that each and every one of the steps is flawed.


That's Irrelevant doubletalk, Arny and you know it. Nobody said anything
about any steps being flawed. I said that most people can tell live music
from recorded music instantly, no matter how good the recording and playback
system might be.

If we assume that the goal here is
to recreate, in the home, the sound of live music, then
it would seem to me that "accuracy" in and of itself is
irrelevant.


Since reproduction is a journey of many steps, each step can potentially be
analyzed for accuracy. Since the steps are different the means of analysis
may well be different.


More non-sequitur doubletalk because again, it addresses my comment in no
way.

What is relevant is whatever path to that
goal achieves the most palpable results.


Well, words have meanings. Here are some generally-accepted meanings of the
word palpable, from the online Merrium-Webster dictionary:

1 : capable of being touched or felt : tangible
2 : easily perceptible : noticeable a palpable difference
3 : easily perceptible by the mind : manifest

It would appear that the word palpable can be applied to any musical
reproduction that at least middling in quality.


Palpable as applied to music: The characteristic of conveying to the listener
the feel of the live event, I.E. the excitement and passion of the musicians
making the music. In other words, what Gordon Holt used to call the
"goosebump factor".

Anything that conveys more of the sense of live music playing in the room
with the listener, the better. If this goal is better served by introducing
inaccuracies in the system, then I'm all for it. After all, most of us aren't
listening to test tones or watching a THD meter. We're listening to music and
want to get closer to the real thing - at least that's always been my goal.
Occasionally, I get glimpses of the Grail.

Many people
feel that a well recorded, well mastered LP conveys to
the listener, more of the psychological impact of live
music than does a CD or any other digital medium.


Many is a very vague word. Therefore it is pretty much without meaning.


It's not vague at all except to someone who's object is to obfuscate debates
with meaningless semantics games. Many means a decent percentage, but not
all. Like for instance " Microsoft has 90% of the computer market, but many
computer users still prefer Linux."

In fact about 99% of all music lovers have abandoned the LP. Only a tiny
noisy minority bother with it any more. A lot of recent LP sales were
related to "scratching" in dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available, LP sales dropped by about another
1/3 per RIAA statistics.


You need to get out more, Arny. There are more high-end turntables, arms, and
cartridges made and sold today than there were when LP was at it's peak. And
NONE of those end up in discos and dance clubs because belt drive tables and
$1000+ cartridges don't work very well for that purpose. DJ tables are almost
all direct drive units with cheap, robust cartridges capable of handling the
stresses of being back-cued.

A trip to Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor:

http://www.needledoctor.com/

or Music Direct:

http://www.musicdirect.com

will give you some small idea of how much new high-end phono equipment is
being sold and even that's just the tip of the iceberg. And I'd like to see
where you get the 99% number that you tossed out, above. A citation would be
nice. :-

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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

willbill wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying
in the marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?

again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?



The SACD has great merit because it is multichannel. Many
of the SACDs I have are really really good heard on
my 5-speaker system.

Doug McDonald
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:36:12 -0800, wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 17, 5:35 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:06:44 -0800, wrote
Doesn't all this assume perfect behavior of a D/A system?


Given the known fundamental resolution of the human
auditory periphery, "perfect" is simply irrelevant. "Practically
perfect" is achievable.


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly
irrelevant here.


Exactly.

The human auditory sense notwithstanding,


Uhm, last time anyone checked, the human auditory
PERIPHERY (please do not change the words: they
have a very specific and well-understood meaning)
is very germaine to the topic.

most people can instantly tell the difference between
"live" music (with no sound reinforcement) and canned,


Yes, and the reason has absolutely NOTHING to do with
the current discussion.

No commercially available sound reproduction system
comes even remotely close to being able to duplicating
the sound field present in a live venue.


Preceisly my point.

Whether the D/A
is "perfect" in a theoretical sense or practical sense,
you've solved 1%, maybe, of the difference between a live
and reproduced image of a live event. The remaining
99% is unsolved.


No disagreement here.

Many people feel that a well recorded, well mastered
LP conveys to the listener, more of the psychological
impact of live music than does a CD or any other digital
medium.


And, for LOTS of people, it does not.

If this is, indeed the case, (and say what you will, but
for lots of people this is true)


Say what YOU will, for lots is does not.

then obviously "accuracy" is not that important.


You bandy about the term "accuracy" as if it has a
universally agreed-upon definition. Tell me, why
would not one such definition be "fidelity to the
original listening experience?"


Because I'm making a very specific point. The point is (as I have said)
given that LP is fraught with problems, both mechanical and electrical, how
come the medium can often elicit positive emotional responses from
listeners, while the CD of the same performance does not? Obviously the CD is
more accurate - in every way- than is the LP, but the LP sounds more alive,
more palpably THERE than the CD. Not that this is always the case, but it is
the case often enough to raise in my mind the question of the importance of
"accuracy" in the recording an playback of music. If we assume that the CD is
more accurate, but the LP -with all of it's flaws- SOUNDS better, then which
approach is better? Anecdotal evidence isn't worth much, but I'll give you an
example, anyway - just to show where I'm coming from with this line of
thinking.

I have two copies of the Mercury Living Presence recording of Stravinsky's
"Firebird" ballet with Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony. One is the
CD mastered by the recording's original producers Wilma Cozert Fine, and
Robert Eberenz. It sounds OK. Then, several years ago, I purchased the
Classic Records re-mastering of the same work on vinyl. Now this isn't just
any vinyl, this is 200 gram virgin vinyl mastered at 45 RPM and pressed on
ONE SIDE of the record only. It took three 12'' discs to hold what a normal
LP can fit on one. The first time I played it, I got goosebumps. By the time
the piece was over, I was standing in the middle of the room cheering. I've
never heard my system sound so RIGHT, so life-like and real. This is what I
got into Hi-Fi for in the first place. I then played my CD. It's nice, but
the magic isn't there. Wilma Fine says that the CD masters she made sounded
exactly like the (analog) master tapes. If so, then the LP sounds BETTER than
the original master tapes, and if that is true, then the LP must be wildly
inaccurate. The second time I palyed the LP, I made sure that I cut a CD of
the LP using my trusty TASCAM CDRW-7000 pro- CD recording deck. I listen to
that now and it mostly captured the LP inaccuracies and distortions that make
the LP sound so much better than the CD release.

Of course, this isn't always the case. Many CDs that I have sound far better
than the same release on vinyl, but still, there's always that exception.

Whether one assigns the word "accuracy" to that
or not, whether it's LP or CD or Edison cylinder,
EVERYTHING falls FAR short of that goal. At which
which time, it becomes more an issue of a personal
preference of which bad reproduction is most preferable.


Agreed.

Be that all as it may, you have used the thread as a means
of launching into an irrelevant discussion. If you want to
about LP vs CD, go start yet another pointless, interminable
and unresolved thread on that topic and have at it.


That's not my point. We are talking about the importance of accuracy over
euphonic coloration in the recording/playback chain, and the LP vs CD bit is
merely an illustration

The immediate point is that in THIS particular thread, a
number of specific technical assertions have been made,
many of them are just simply wrong, culminating to the
reference to the Consonance Linear 120, which is an
unfortunate but all-to-real existence proof of the high-end
audio worlds ability to sell total pig sh*t as caviar.


Threads usually wander after initial points are made. I don't apologize for
that. If staying on the subject of the Consonance Linear 120 was that
important, I would think that one or more of our moderators would steered us
back on track.

But as to you point about the high-end audio industry selling pig droppings
for caviar, I quite agree. BTW have you purchased your ceramic Cable
Elevators yet to raise your fire-hose sized speaker cables up off the floor?
Better hurry! :-


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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:18:38 -0800, willbill wrote
(in article ):

Arny Krueger wrote:

A lot of recent LP sales were
related to "scratching" in dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available...


what is "scratching"?

fwiw, i'm not trolling; i've been
out of hifi for 10 years

bill


"Scratching" is placing the needle in the groove of a stationary record and
using one's finger to rock the record back-and-forth making a scratchy
wow-ing sound. For some reason, patrons of dance clubs and discos like it.
Don't ask me why.
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

wrote:
On Nov 15, 6:18 pm, Steven Sullivan wrote:
Sonnova wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:11:45 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):
"DJ" wrote in message

It's supposed to upsample CDs to SACD. Has anyone heard
about this player, and better yet, auditioned or own one?


Reference -
http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html

The basic premise is ludicrously flawed. No mechanical or electrical
process can accurately recreate music that isn't already present in the
recording.
True, but oversampling does tend to make Redbook CDs sound better. Perhaps
its the removal of that brick-wall filter at 22.05 KHz that makes things
sound "better", I don't know. But something sure sounds better.


Oversampling isn't the same thing as upsampling.


It isn't? How?


Marketing. Upsampling as routinely advertised and employed, provides digital
output at the upsampled rate. Oversampling, as routinely employed, still
provides output at Redbook values.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

willbill wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:


Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying in the
marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?


again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?


If you asked me (and I realize you didn't), technologies that make the AD
and DA filtering stages better (like oversampling) had merit; dither and
noise-shaping have merit ; high-bit recording and production has merit;
research into more lifelike recreation of *sound fields*, involving
multiple channels, digital sound processing and room correction, and
perhaps new loudspeaker designs, is the most important wave of the future.

High-bit/high sample rate (or in the case of DSD, low-bit,
ultrahigh sample rate) formats for *home playback media*,
on the other hand , have no demonstrated merit....even
after all these years of touting. The limiting factors to realistic
home audio are not sample rates and bit depths.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

willbill writes:

Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying
in the marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?

again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?

at this point i have no opinion one way or the other!

tia, bill


Bill, you asked Arny, but in my opinion, good-ol' 16-bit "Redbook" CD
audio "done right" is incredibly good. If reasonable care was taken in
the recording process (good equipment, the mastering engineer doing his
job right, etc.), the reproduction of stereo audio on many (most?) CD
players will be as close to perfection (in terms of frequency response,
dynamic range, and D/A conversion accuracy) as required outside of a
laboratory environment.

Let me put it to you this way. I own a pair of Klipschorns that are
capable of producing over 110 dB SPL (unweighted) in my living room.
That means that if I were to listen to material at 110 dB SPL on a
well-made CD, the quantization noise floor would be at about 30 dB SPL,
allowing for 10 dB of headroom in the digital recording and a few dB
derating below the ideal quantization floor for the dither levels.

Understand the signficance of this performance level: the quantization
noise will be wideband, "white" (uncorrelated) noise with a _total_
power of 30 dB SPL. Now you may know from the old Fletcher/Munson curves
that 0 dB SPL is the threshold of human hearing, but that was for a
SINE WAVE at around 3 or 4 kHz (our most sensitive area of hearing).

Then if you averaged 30 dB of wideband noise in a narrow band, say, 10
Hz, you'd be BELOW the threshold of hearing in that band.

So what you would experience in my living room is music at
ear-splitting, damaging levels with a corresponding noise level that is
(since it is wideband) *BELOW* the threshold of hearing when that noise
is measured in 10 Hz bands.

Do ya' think that's good enough?
--
% Randy Yates % "Though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % you still wander the fields of your
%%% 919-577-9882 % sorrow."
%%%% % '21st Century Man', *Time*, ELO
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

On Nov 18, 10:36 pm, Sonnova wrote:

Because I'm making a very specific point. The point is (as I have said)
given that LP is fraught with problems, both mechanical and electrical, how
come the medium can often elicit positive emotional responses from
listeners, while the CD of the same performance does not?


Euphonic distortion, probably mixed in with a bit of nostalgia.

Obviously the CD is
more accurate - in every way- than is the LP, but the LP sounds more alive,
more palpably THERE than the CD.Not that this is always the case, but it is
the case often enough to raise in my mind the question of the importance of
"accuracy" in the recording an playback of music. If we assume that the CD is
more accurate, but the LP -with all of it's flaws- SOUNDS better, then which
approach is better?


Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is, "what sounds best to
me" or "what evokes for me a sense of live music" or "what gives me
goose bumps" then whether it's technically accurate or not is beside
the point. Enjoy your euphonic distortion, if that's what gets you
off. Just be careful not to make technical claims about the
superiority of the gear that produces those distortions.

bob


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On Nov 18, 10:33 pm, Sonnova wrote:

There are more high-end turntables, arms, and
cartridges made and sold today than there were when LP was at it's peak. And
NONE of those end up in discos and dance clubs because belt drive tables and
$1000+ cartridges don't work very well for that purpose. DJ tables are almost
all direct drive units with cheap, robust cartridges capable of handling the
stresses of being back-cued.

A trip to Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor:

http://www.needledoctor.com/

or Music Direct:

http://www.musicdirect.com

will give you some small idea of how much new high-end phono equipment is
being sold and even that's just the tip of the iceberg.


Phrased this way, it is nonsense. There may be more companies (or
individuals) making turntables, but that's probably a response to the
abandonment of the market by the mainstream. The idea that there are
more units being sold is ridiculous.

And I'd like to see
where you get the 99% number that you tossed out, above. A citation would be
nice. :-


Every year, the RIAA conducts a consumer survey, asking people what
music they bought--formats, genres, etc. Despite a one-third drop in
CD sales due largely to Napster and its followers, CD still outsells
the LP by about 100:1.

bob
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Default SACD vs CD vs vinyl; was: Any impressions...

Doug McDonald wrote:

willbill wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying
in the marketplace.



i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?

again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?



The SACD has great merit because it is multichannel. Many
of the SACDs I have are really really good heard on
my 5-speaker system.

Doug McDonald


1st thanks to you, steve sullivan and sonnova for
your very recent answers in the "impressions" thread

to me, of the "big 3" (read inexpensive, yet very good;
SACD, CD and vinyl), the clear current volume leader
has been and continues to be CD

(i'm discounting mp3 coz what little i know about it
is that it is a compressed sound format (2 channel?),
similar to the compressed DD and DTS multichannel
formats used with DVD movies)

my recent experience (limited: maybe 25 titles now)
with SACD suggests that it is in there with vinyl
for top sound quality honors (this said without
a current turntable in operation)

i guess my question or comment to Arny (and you), is:
if instead of dying, SACD simply stalls, is there
anything else on the horizon to take it's place?

to my view, it's more likely that intead of
dying it will simply stall at current levels

and also that i get the impression that there's
a (sizeable?) subset of purist audiophiles that
still think that all that's really needed for
top sound at home is stereo?

bill
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"willbill" wrote in message

Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those
overpriced, oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A
formats are slowly dying in the marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?


I'm a fan of any practical technology that provides improved sound quality.

If you think that SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?


Dolby TrueHD seems to have merit. It seems to be an envelope that can
contain a wide variety of alternative audio formats. Some are useful, some
are not. Its major practical advantage is that it finally prys mainstream
DVD releases away from AC3. AC3 was simply growing long in the tooth, and
was not all that efficient.

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"Jenn" wrote in message

On Nov 18, 8:10 am, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
In fact about 99% of all music lovers have abandoned the
LP. Only a tiny noisy minority bother with it any more.


Not all are "noisy", Arny. Some of us just like what
some LPs bring to the sonic and musical table.


It's not a matter of just liking. People like many things that they don't
publicly obsess over so frequently as we see, with that tiny noisy minority
who still bother with LPs.

A lot of recent LP sales were
related to "scratching" in dance clubs. Since digital
means for simulating scratching have become readily
available, LP sales dropped by about another 1/3 per
RIAA statistics.


Cite, please.


http://76.74.24.142/E795D602-FA50-3F...8A40B98C46.pdf

1997 0.7
1998 0.7
1999 0.5
2000 0.5
2001 0.6
2002 0.7
2003 0.5
2004 0.9 - peak LP sales 10 years - also when digital scratching started
becoming widely accepted.
2005 0.7
2006 0.6 - sales drop 1/3 from peak of 0.9

Interesting that it is hard to find RIAA's 2007 mid-year statistics, as they
usually come out in August or September

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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:10:32 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly
irrelevant here.


Since perfection does not exist in the real world, the
question of perfection in the real world is always
irrelevant.

The human auditory sense
notwithstanding, most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound
reinforcement) and canned, no matter how well recorded
or how well played back.


Canning music is a journey of many steps. Just because
the journey to complete and total realistic reproduction
is incomplete at this time, does not prove that each and
every one of the steps is flawed.


That's Irrelevant doubletalk, Arny and you know it.


What, you think that recording and reproducing music is not a journey of
many steps?

Nobody said anything about any steps being flawed.


So what does "most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound
reinforcement) and canned, no matter how well recorded
or how well played back" mean, if not that the over-all process is flawed?

I said that most people can tell live music from recorded music
instantly, no matter how good the recording and playback
system might be.


Which has a common-sense interpretation that you think the overall process
is flawed. I stipulate that this is true.

If we assume that the goal here is
to recreate, in the home, the sound of live music, then
it would seem to me that "accuracy" in and of itself is
irrelevant.


Since reproduction is a journey of many steps, each step
can potentially be analyzed for accuracy. Since the
steps are different the means of analysis may well be
different.


More non-sequitur doubletalk because again, it addresses
my comment in no way.


Please explain what you mean, if ordinary, common-sense, generally-accepted
interpretations of it are irrelevant.

What is relevant is whatever path to that
goal achieves the most palpable results.


Well, words have meanings. Here are some
generally-accepted meanings of the word palpable, from
the online Merrium-Webster dictionary:

1 : capable of being touched or felt : tangible
2 : easily perceptible : noticeable a palpable
difference 3 : easily perceptible by the mind : manifest


It would appear that the word palpable can be applied to
any musical reproduction that at least middling in
quality.


Palpable as applied to music: The characteristic of
conveying to the listener the feel of the live event,
I.E. the excitement and passion of the musicians making
the music. In other words, what Gordon Holt used to call
the "goosebump factor".


Now I see the problem - there is some magical dictionary that is hidden from
the public, that redefines words from their dictionary defintions.

Anything that conveys more of the sense of live music
playing in the room with the listener, the better.


Of course I think we all agree with that. It is well-known that the
reproduction of the sense of live music is greatly hindered by adding
audible noise and distortion to the music. This has been known and
generally-accepted since the early 1930s, at the latest.

If this goal is better served by introducing inaccuracies in
the system, then I'm all for it.


The same logic suggests that muddying up bottled water would enhance the
degree to which it recreates the experience of drinking water from a pure
spring.

OTOH, we know that absolutely pure water does not please the palate like
water with certain impurities. Therefore it is generally recognized that
analyzing the water of highly pleasing springs, and duplicating the same
levels and kinds of impurities in bottled water does a better job of
recreating the experience of drinking water from popular springs. The point
is that the primacy of accuracy is still preserved, even though measurable
amounts of impurities are added.

In a similar way, the totally-pure sound of acoustic radiation from voices
and musical instruments is not as pleasing as acoustical signals that
include acoustic radiation from certain highly-regarded concert halls such
as Orchestra Hall here in Detroit.

If you can show that there is some logical connection between the rather
grotesque-sounding noise and distortion that the LP process adds to
recordings, and what a good concert hall adds, then I would be in favor of
using the LP process to sweeten improperly made recordings that are devoid
of a sense of the acoustics of a good room. Can you do that?

After all, most of us aren't listening to test tones or watching a THD
meter.


Talk about a straw man argument!

We're listening to music and want to get closer to the
real thing - at least that's always been my goal.
Occasionally, I get glimpses of the Grail.


Throwing veils over the grail has never been generally accepted as a good
means to improve our vision of it.

Many people
feel that a well recorded, well mastered LP conveys to
the listener, more of the psychological impact of live
music than does a CD or any other digital medium.


Many is a very vague word. Therefore it is pretty much
without meaning.


It's not vague at all except to someone who's object is
to obfuscate debates with meaningless semantics games.


In another post I showed that LP sales are a tiny, rapidly-shriking market
segment.

Many means a decent percentage, but not all. Like for
instance " Microsoft has 90% of the computer market, but
many computer users still prefer Linux."


The general problem is the same - that many is a very vague word. This is
especially true when we are talking about billions of people. None of us
would say that 100,000 people is a few people, unless we compare to that the
billions of people who listen to reproduced music. However, the RIAA only
logs about 600,000 LP sales. I suspect that people who still buy LPs buy a
few, maybe 6 a year. So we're talking maybe 100,000 LP buyers, more or less.
There's about 270 million people in the US, so almost all of them listen to
music other than that recorded on LPs.

In fact about 99% of all music lovers have abandoned the
LP. Only a tiny noisy minority bother with it any more.
A lot of recent LP sales were related to "scratching" in
dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available, LP sales
dropped by about another 1/3 per RIAA statistics.


You need to get out more, Arny.


Childish insults don't change the relevant published facts from neutral
parties.

There are more high-end
turntables, arms, and cartridges made and sold today than
there were when LP was at it's peak.


That's absolutely ludicrous. Provide your statistics from an independent
source.

And NONE of those
end up in discos and dance clubs because belt drive
tables and $1000+ cartridges don't work very well for
that purpose. DJ tables are almost all direct drive units
with cheap, robust cartridges capable of handling the
stresses of being back-cued.


A trip to Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor:

http://www.needledoctor.com/


or Music Direct:

http://www.musicdirect.com


will give you some small idea of how much new high-end
phono equipment is being sold and even that's just the
tip of the iceberg. And I'd like to see where you get the
99% number that you tossed out, above. A citation would
be nice. :-


Those are just niche web sites. They are not credible independent evidence
of LP playback equipment sales, whether large or small.

What does this site tell us about the sales of its niche products?

http://www.newfarmcarriage.com/Whips.cfm



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Default Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?

Doug McDonald wrote:
willbill wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying
in the marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?

again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?



The SACD has great merit because it is multichannel.


It isn't necessarily so . And it's not the only multichannel-capable
format.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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Default SACD vs CD vs vinyl; was: Any impressions...

willbill wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:


willbill wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:

Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying
in the marketplace.


i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?

again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?



The SACD has great merit because it is multichannel. Many
of the SACDs I have are really really good heard on
my 5-speaker system.

Doug McDonald


1st thanks to you, steve sullivan and sonnova for
your very recent answers in the "impressions" thread


to me, of the "big 3" (read inexpensive, yet very good;
SACD, CD and vinyl), the clear current volume leader
has been and continues to be CD


(i'm discounting mp3 coz what little i know about it
is that it is a compressed sound format (2 channel?),
similar to the compressed DD and DTS multichannel
formats used with DVD movies)


It is, but 1) you may not be able to tell an
mp3 from a lossless source by ear, if the mp3 is well-made and 2) mp3 sales
and popularity *far* outstrip SACD's and vinyl's.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:13:32 -0800, bob wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 18, 10:33 pm, Sonnova wrote:

There are more high-end turntables, arms, and
cartridges made and sold today than there were when LP was at it's peak. And
NONE of those end up in discos and dance clubs because belt drive tables and
$1000+ cartridges don't work very well for that purpose. DJ tables are
almost
all direct drive units with cheap, robust cartridges capable of handling the
stresses of being back-cued.

A trip to Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor:

http://www.needledoctor.com/

or Music Direct:

http://www.musicdirect.com

will give you some small idea of how much new high-end phono equipment is
being sold and even that's just the tip of the iceberg.


Phrased this way, it is nonsense. There may be more companies (or
individuals) making turntables, but that's probably a response to the
abandonment of the market by the mainstream. The idea that there are
more units being sold is ridiculous.


But I never said that. I said that there are more HIGH-END 'tables arms and
cartridges being sold (as in diverse brands and models, not quantity) than
when LP was mainstream.

And I'd like to see
where you get the 99% number that you tossed out, above. A citation would be
nice. :-


Every year, the RIAA conducts a consumer survey, asking people what
music they bought--formats, genres, etc. Despite a one-third drop in
CD sales due largely to Napster and its followers, CD still outsells
the LP by about 100:1.


But I'm interested in the audiophile market, not general consumers. Outside
of the audiophile (high-end, you know, what this NG is about?) market, I
suspect that CD outsells LP by more than 100:1, maybe even approaching
infinity :1!. Perhaps we all should have made clear what we meant. Obviously
Arny meant overall while I was talking about the High-End. Sorry for the
confusion.

bob


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On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:28:26 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:10:32 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message


Seems to me that the question of "perfection" is mostly
irrelevant here.

Since perfection does not exist in the real world, the
question of perfection in the real world is always
irrelevant.

The human auditory sense
notwithstanding, most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound
reinforcement) and canned, no matter how well recorded
or how well played back.


Canning music is a journey of many steps. Just because
the journey to complete and total realistic reproduction
is incomplete at this time, does not prove that each and
every one of the steps is flawed.


That's Irrelevant doubletalk, Arny and you know it.


What, you think that recording and reproducing music is not a journey of
many steps?

Nobody said anything about any steps being flawed.


So what does "most people can instantly tell the
difference between "live" music (with no sound
reinforcement) and canned, no matter how well recorded
or how well played back" mean, if not that the over-all process is flawed?


1) That it's flawed is a given. It's also a non-sequitur.

I said that most people can tell live music from recorded music
instantly, no matter how good the recording and playback
system might be.


Which has a common-sense interpretation that you think the overall process
is flawed. I stipulate that this is true.


OK, but you state the obvious.

If we assume that the goal here is
to recreate, in the home, the sound of live music, then
it would seem to me that "accuracy" in and of itself is
irrelevant.


Since reproduction is a journey of many steps, each step
can potentially be analyzed for accuracy. Since the
steps are different the means of analysis may well be
different.


More non-sequitur doubletalk because again, it addresses
my comment in no way.


Please explain what you mean, if ordinary, common-sense, generally-accepted
interpretations of it are irrelevant.

What is relevant is whatever path to that
goal achieves the most palpable results.


Well, words have meanings. Here are some
generally-accepted meanings of the word palpable, from
the online Merrium-Webster dictionary:

1 : capable of being touched or felt : tangible
2 : easily perceptible : noticeable a palpable
difference 3 : easily perceptible by the mind : manifest


It would appear that the word palpable can be applied to
any musical reproduction that at least middling in
quality.


Palpable as applied to music: The characteristic of
conveying to the listener the feel of the live event,
I.E. the excitement and passion of the musicians making
the music. In other words, what Gordon Holt used to call
the "goosebump factor".


Now I see the problem - there is some magical dictionary that is hidden from
the public, that redefines words from their dictionary defintions.


No, but there is a general lexicon of terms used to describe the quality of
audio reproduction. "Palpable" is one of them. I assumed that anyone who
posts to high-end audio newsgroup would be familiar with the "jargon"

To put it another way: Listening to well made recordings on a good stereo
system should be a complete emotional experience, not just an aural one
(IMHO).

Anything that conveys more of the sense of live music
playing in the room with the listener, the better.


Of course I think we all agree with that. It is well-known that the
reproduction of the sense of live music is greatly hindered by adding
audible noise and distortion to the music. This has been known and
generally-accepted since the early 1930s, at the latest.

If this goal is better served by introducing inaccuracies in
the system, then I'm all for it.


The same logic suggests that muddying up bottled water would enhance the
degree to which it recreates the experience of drinking water from a pure
spring.


Only if you like mud. Obviously LP is very flawed and just as obviously many
find LP more satisfying. I don't, overall, but I do have some LPs that bring
me closer to the music than does the CD of the very same performance. The LP
has got to be adding something that my ears find more "real" than the same
performance from a CD.


OTOH, we know that absolutely pure water does not please the palate like
water with certain impurities. Therefore it is generally recognized that
analyzing the water of highly pleasing springs, and duplicating the same
levels and kinds of impurities in bottled water does a better job of
recreating the experience of drinking water from popular springs. The point
is that the primacy of accuracy is still preserved, even though measurable
amounts of impurities are added.


OK, I see where you are headed.

In a similar way, the totally-pure sound of acoustic radiation from voices
and musical instruments is not as pleasing as acoustical signals that
include acoustic radiation from certain highly-regarded concert halls such
as Orchestra Hall here in Detroit.


If you can show that there is some logical connection between the rather
grotesque-sounding noise and distortion that the LP process adds to
recordings, and what a good concert hall adds, then I would be in favor of
using the LP process to sweeten improperly made recordings that are devoid
of a sense of the acoustics of a good room. Can you do that?


Obviously not.

After all, most of us aren't listening to test tones or watching a THD
meter.


Talk about a straw man argument!

We're listening to music and want to get closer to the
real thing - at least that's always been my goal.
Occasionally, I get glimpses of the Grail.


Throwing veils over the grail has never been generally accepted as a good
means to improve our vision of it.

Many people
feel that a well recorded, well mastered LP conveys to
the listener, more of the psychological impact of live
music than does a CD or any other digital medium.


Many is a very vague word. Therefore it is pretty much
without meaning.


It's not vague at all except to someone who's object is
to obfuscate debates with meaningless semantics games.


In another post I showed that LP sales are a tiny, rapidly-shriking market
segment.

Many means a decent percentage, but not all. Like for
instance " Microsoft has 90% of the computer market, but
many computer users still prefer Linux."


The general problem is the same - that many is a very vague word. This is
especially true when we are talking about billions of people.


First of all, let's get straight what we are talking about here. I'm not
interested in, or talking, about billions of people. I'm talking about
high-end audiophiles - people to whom the reproduction of music is important.
The average consumer doesn't really care. They buy cheap receivers, cheap
speakers and cheap CD players, then they turn the bass control all the way up
and the treble control all the way down (OK so maybe they don't any more, but
a little hyperbole to make a point is no crime) and have zero interest in
achieving real-sounding results. Most have probably never heard live,
unamplified music to start with.

None of us
would say that 100,000 people is a few people, unless we compare to that the
billions of people who listen to reproduced music. However, the RIAA only
logs about 600,000 LP sales. I suspect that people who still buy LPs buy a
few, maybe 6 a year. So we're talking maybe 100,000 LP buyers, more or less.
There's about 270 million people in the US, so almost all of them listen to
music other than that recorded on LPs.


What percentage of the audiophile market does that 600,000 sales represent.
Because outside of DJs, that IS the market.

In fact about 99% of all music lovers have abandoned the
LP. Only a tiny noisy minority bother with it any more.
A lot of recent LP sales were related to "scratching" in
dance clubs. Since digital means for simulating
scratching have become readily available, LP sales
dropped by about another 1/3 per RIAA statistics.


You need to get out more, Arny.


Childish insults don't change the relevant published facts from neutral
parties.


It wasn't meant as an insult. Just a suggestion:-

There are more high-end
turntables, arms, and cartridges made and sold today than
there were when LP was at it's peak.


That's absolutely ludicrous. Provide your statistics from an independent
source.

And NONE of those
end up in discos and dance clubs because belt drive
tables and $1000+ cartridges don't work very well for
that purpose. DJ tables are almost all direct drive units
with cheap, robust cartridges capable of handling the
stresses of being back-cued.


A trip to Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor:

http://www.needledoctor.com/


or Music Direct:

http://www.musicdirect.com


will give you some small idea of how much new high-end
phono equipment is being sold and even that's just the
tip of the iceberg. And I'd like to see where you get the
99% number that you tossed out, above. A citation would
be nice. :-


Those are just niche web sites. They are not credible independent evidence
of LP playback equipment sales, whether large or small.


Again, I'm not talking about quantity sold, I'm talking about the numbers of
high-end manufacturers who are MAKING phono gear. I repeat: There are more
high-end 'tables, arms, and cartridges available today, than there were when
LP was at it's peak. And other than a few DD 'tables for DJ work, there is
essentially no market left for cheap tables like there was in the
mid-eighties because, as you pointed out, the hoi polloi don't "do"
phonograph records any more.

What does this site tell us about the sales of its niche products?

http://www.newfarmcarriage.com/Whips.cfm


I'm not saying that LP isn't a niche product, Arny. It obviously is. But from
the number of manufacturers making a good living selling fine turntables,
arms, and cartridges, I'd say its a pretty healthy niche market. I myself
have several thousand LPs. Many of which will never be released as CD. Of
those, approximately 3/4 are of mediocre (or worse) sound quality. They are
kept solely for the performances on them. The other twenty-five percent sound
very good and some sound better than the CD release of the same title.

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