[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message


On the playback end, it was D/A converters that were not
able to do a full 16-bits linearly (early Philips players
(Magnavox) didn't even try. They used 14-bit D/A
converters and the little Magnavox FD-1000 sounded MUCH
better than the Japanese 16-bit units of the day).

The above account ignores the fact that oversampling was used to obtain 16
bit performance from 14 bit parts. For all practical purposes, the
converters were 16 bit.

The claim that there was a signficant and large audible difference has been
investigated with DBTs and found to be yet another audiophile myth.

They
also had really crude multi-pole anti-alaising filters
and produced, what would be considered today,
unacceptable levels of quantization error.

As a rule there are no anti-aliasing filters in playback devices. Aliasing
is only possible in ADCs and resamplers.

Quantization error and aliasing are orthogonal effects and exist
independently. Something that addresses one generally has no effect on the
other. The fix for aliasing is better filters, and the fix for quantization
error is not filtering but rather randomizing schemes such as dither.

Therefore the statement that crude multi-pole anti-alaising filters and
produced, what would be considered today,unacceptable levels of quantization
error" is a technical impossibility.

Thus the above claim must also be dismissed as an audiophile myth on the
grounds that it is a confused misuse of technical terminology.

The first
generations of Sony CD players were just terrible and
even with good, modern CDs, they sound simply wretched. I
have an acquaintance who still uses a Sony CDP-101 (the
first publicly available CD player, IIRC) and thinks it's
just fine. Of course, he's 84 and deaf as a post. Anyone
would have to be to put-up with that wretchedness!

I still have an operational CDP 101 and so does a friend. They both have are
well-maintained and sound good.

I once had a CDP101 that had problems with its servo chips, and it did
indeed sound bad - it didn't track most CDs.

In the late 1980s Stereo Review used several teams of audiophiles to
investigate the sound quality of CDP 101s via DVTs and found only tiny
barely audible differences and that only with very specific program kinds
material, or artificial test signals.