"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
news
In this article,
http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/886/ , John
Marks expresses opinions very similar to my own:
1. Sony players, (to which I add the qualification, ES
models), have historically provided very good
performance. In my personal experience, I have found them
better than models by Marantz, Rotel, et al. It's a
natural consequence of Sony's custodianship of the Red
Book standard.
In 2008, anybody who can't make a good CD player for $100 or less needs to
hang it up. In 2008 the Red Book means next to nothing. Almost every music
player sold today was primarily designed to conform to some other, more
demanding standard and does Red Book discs almost as an afterthought.
2. Marks mentions the EAD surround processor as "the best
CD playback for the least money." This lends support to
my similar opinion about the Sony EP9ES, also a HT
processor.
Making surround sound out of good 2-channel makes as much sense as Marilyn
Monroe with implants.
But the article is actually about the Benchmark and the
Teac D-70. He mentions the Benchmark as a
bottom-of-the-high-end product.
I've talked to Marks Personally, and he's so full of himself that his head
never sees sunshine. The Benchmark DAC while wildly overpriced is definately
technical and sonic sunshine compared to very many DACs that have been
highly reviewed in S'pile.
Marks goes on to review the Teac D-70
Marks says, "there is always the possibility that what
one is hearing is just the application of a different-but
not necessarily more accurate-equalization curve. "
People who rant and rave about small changes in frequency response have
obviously never been allowed to, or had the aural and mental facilities
required get really friendly with a parametric eq.
This creates the uncertainty. While he effuses about the
Benchmark, the D-70 produces an epiphany. He does this in
the face of the supposed 18 bit limit of CD resolution
with noise-shaping.
Sorry Robert but that Red Book format that you were just obsessing over says
16 bits, no more no less. IMO, one reason why the S'pile staff has never had
the guts to do DBTs of DACs or digital music players and report in public is
that several decades of ranting and raving about resolution differences that
they never heard would there in print to point out their past corporate
ignorance.
What do you think? Did Marks have a transferrable
experience, which would imply that the D-70 is worth the
money, or was his epiphany an idiosyncracy of his setup,
his environment, and his ears?
IMO, Marks makes it up as he goes along. The only interesting question is
like Atkinson, whether or not he knows that is what he is doing.