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#1
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 |
#2
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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? |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 |
#6
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 |
#7
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#8
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#9
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#10
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#11
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#12
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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. |
#13
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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)? |
#14
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 . |
#15
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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. |
#17
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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. |
#18
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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. |
#19
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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. |
#20
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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. |
#21
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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 |
#22
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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 |
#23
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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. :- |
#24
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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 |
#25
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
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#26
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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. |
#27
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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 |
#28
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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 |
#29
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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 |
#30
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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 |
#31
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
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 |
#32
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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 |
#33
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
"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. |
#34
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
"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 |
#35
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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 |
#36
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:36:12 -0800, wrote (in article ): snip 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. snip Right, so on the basis of two totally different masterings (i.e. the actual spectral composition was changed between formats, not 'just' the requisite RIAA curve application) of the performance, you think you can make a valid comparison of formats? Sorry, not possible - whatever format comparison you choose (MP3-Vinyl-CD-SACD-etc.). Keith Hughes |
#37
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 |
#38
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 |
#39
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
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 |
#40
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Any impressions on the EMM Labs CDSA-SE CD/SACD player?
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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