In article , Chung
wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:


Fair enough. But I think it is significant that most of the
participants here who are engineers seem to think that the design
differences between CD players tend not to have audible consequences. I
would trust their judgment over yours or mine.

I'd hate to be stuck with unsatisfactory gear because some engineer
somewhere doesn't think audible consequences possible. I find it more
reassuring when an engineer with a respectable audio track record points
out things that can go wrong, like the pro-audio guy who found that
cheap dvd players had clipped outputs due to poorly implemented DACs.

That would show up clearly as THD (total harmonic distortion) in
measurements. If you were to look at measurements of CD players, you
will have a hard time finding any player with significant distortion,
say above 0.05%. The DVD player you mentioned, if indeed your pro-audio
guy was correct, is a very rare exception.

Apparently it did. However, even Consumer Reports implied some cheap dvd
players sounded different, the "fix" being a twist of the treble knob.

One selling point of the Arcam is the RingDAC, which was sourced from
dCS, who may be presumed to know something about design.

Question, of course, is why would the other CD player(AMC) be noticeably
worse in a listening test. Looking at the specs, there is nothing that
indicates it would not be sonically accurate. Certainly the Burr-Brown
96/24 DAC's are very good performers.

That was my thought when I bought it by mail. I imagine the problem may
be related to poor construction/assembly, but I would expect gross
problems rather than subtle ones from that.

Stephen