Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
"Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain." Audiophile Example #3
I get my best laughs from all the specs for high-end CD players.
Goodness, you can pay up to $10K or so, and for this you get a heavy unit with all kinds of ultimate suspensions for the drive, non-resonate metals, etc., etc. The problem with all this is that "everyone" seems to think that a CD drive has the same "problems" as a turntable that plays vinyl. Nothing could be further from the truth. The difference is BUFFERING and/or CACHE a concept that has come down from the earliest days of computer hardware/software technology. Let me explain. Buffering via a cache simply means you have a holding area into which flows the input signals from the read mechanism and from which data is drawn at a fixed rate. This compensates for any delays in transmission for the original source. Think of a bucket with water flowing in unevenly but smoothly flowing out through a tube at the bottom at a fixed rate. The difference here is we are talking speeds measured in microseconds. The laser in the device's read head detects the off-on condition on the surface of the CD and sends it to an intermediate circuits where any read errors are corrected (or attempts are made) and this is forwarded into a memory module acting as an last-in/last-out buffer. I have a fairly inexpensive (well under $100) portable CD player that has such a large buffer that you can knock it around and never hear a glitch in the output. So much for massive CD read mechanisms mounted in ultra shock resistant mountings in a ultra heavy chassis. So, the sad fact is that if you hear any "distortion" from a CD player it comes from the circuits that handle the output from the buffer and translates that into the SPIF/DF format. And, that my friends, I think is a function of the quality of the power supply. |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Jim wrote:
I get my best laughs from all the specs for high-end CD players. Goodness, you can pay up to $10K or so, and for this you get a heavy unit with all kinds of ultimate suspensions for the drive, non-resonate metals, etc., etc. The problem with all this is that "everyone" seems to think that a CD drive has the same "problems" as a turntable that plays vinyl. Nothing could be further from the truth. The difference is BUFFERING and/or CACHE a concept that has come down from the earliest days of computer hardware/software technology. Let me explain. Good info. I can buy a $20 CD-ROM and slap it in my computer, and use it to install an OS off CD, and it'll do it in a few minutes, without missing a single byte Now, it's true that the ISO9660 filesystem for CD-ROMs does include a CRC checksum, but I can also get a perfect bitwise copy of an audio cd using the same drive by ripping a CD to ..wav file. I can also do this at up to around 32x speed in my currect drive. So, if a $20 no-name CD-ROM can get a PERFECT digital copy of the audio info stored on a CD at 32 times the speed that a $10k stereo CD player has to read it, then what exactly is the $10k CD player doing for the other $9,980? Now, I do think some of the hi-fi CD-ROMs look pretty, and if I had a near infinite supply of disposable income, I'd probably get one just for the aesthetic value. Unfortunately, every hi-end device represents many days of work for me, so I just run a cable from my computer to my preamp for CD playing. Sounds exactly the same to me. |
Reply |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
"Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain." Audiophile Example #2 | High End Audio | |||
need help,poverty breeds stupidity | Car Audio | |||
S888Wheel awove his incredible stupidity | Audio Opinions | |||
More American rigth wing stupidity. | Audio Opinions | |||
Torresists - Krueger's Fellow Libeler - Exhibits His Stupidity | Audio Opinions |