Improvements in CD replay....nearly free

JoshK · « **Reply #20 on:** 11 Jun 2003, 11:51 pm »

I heard it!

I played track 6 of Radiohead's new HTTT alb. I think hit back 15 seconds later and confucious spoke to me, he said, "he smoka too much budda!"

Seriously though, don't you think that memory of what you are about to hear has something to do with it?

JoshK · « **Reply #21 on:** 11 Jun 2003, 11:51 pm »

oops

randytsuch · « **Reply #22 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 12:29 am »

Here's some food for thought on the subject

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/digital/messages/65966.html

I am not sure where this guy is getting his information though, it really does not make sense, but if it is true, would explain this phenomenon(sp?).

Randy

nathanm · « **Reply #23 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 12:45 am »

Quote from: subhuman

nathanm - did you bother trying it? let me guess - you're one of those people that believe all transports are the same, and that "bits are bits" right?...anyway - perhaps you're right. perhaps it IS psychological - but it's easy to try it.

You don't read so well do you? Hit the back button on your browser and read my first post again. Aside from the words now looking more like they are printed on parchment than a computer screen, you may also notice I DID try it. Reading the post a second time...wow, what a difference, eh?

Which bits are we talking about here exactly? The bits read by hitting a button on a remote which performs the same function as another button? Do you mean those bits? Yes, I'd guess those bits are bits. Are they encoding CDs with special hidden data now, a "vinyl" track and a "digital" track that can only be accessed by this secret easter egg key press? Those kooky mastering engineers, always having a little joke...

If I were you subhuman I would stick to listening, as your reading comprehension seems to be sorely lacking.

Quote

and don't bother making fun of people here. just enjoy.

I DO enjoy making fun of people here you silly person!

peakrchau · « **Reply #24 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 11:51 am »

Quote from: 2channelguy

...I'm not a newbie when it comes to common sense....I know where I'd place my bet.

For the betting people...I've tallied the responses so far. Out of 15 responses:

So that stats are

You can find a table of voting for YES (can hear) and NO (cannot hear) at the bottom of the page. Note, I've lumped the "skeptical" posts in with NO as that is how I think they will vote long term. The people who have merely added commentary/questions have been lumped into "Not Available" (NA). I'll update the results over time.

To make it easier take a favourite album(s) that you might use for background music and forget the A/B testing...use the "skip method" described earlier to play whole album aftter skipping past the first song only ...just note your overall impression from your gut. Some will get the standard baseline response...some will notice differences in cerain songs and not be able to listen to it as just background music

So my bet of 60% of you hearing is off. ...probably because the first two people I phoned said that they could hear it eaily. Clearly, I do not expect people with a table top CD player to hear the effect. Better systems can show the result more easily.

	Yes	No
1	peakrchau	nathanm
2	Tsunami	Hantra
3	subhuman	2channelguy
4	-	Bwanagreg
5	-	Byteme
6	-	DBF
7	-	hmen
8	-	Tonto Yoder
9	-	-
10	-	-

Tonto Yoder · « **Reply #25 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 12:02 pm »

Quote from: peakrchau

For the betting people...I've tallied the responses so far. Out of 15 responses:

3 can reproduce the result (YES)
8 cannot (NO)
4 are undecide (Carlman, JoshK, Malcom Fear, and randytsuch)

peAK,
Put me in the undecided camp. While I'm certainly in the incredulous camp, I haven't actually TRIED the tweak. Since it's free, it certainly can't hurt to try the tweak before pronouncing it snake oil or worthwhile.

hmen · « **Reply #26 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 12:12 pm »

Quote from: peakrchau

For those who do not hear the "difference" it has been traced to system setup (use of very fancy power cords) and overall system transparency. ...

Peakrchau - This is what you wrote yesterday. Today you're saying that the people who don't hear it are the one's with "tabeltop" CD players. That seems like a bit of a contradiction.

peakrchau · « **Reply #27 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 01:07 pm »

Quote from: hmen

Quote from: peakrchau
/quote]

...you wrote yesterday:
For those who do not hear the "difference" it has been traced to system setup (use of very fancy power cords) and overall system transparency...

Today you're saying that the people who don't hear it are the one's with "tabeltop" CD players. That seems like a bit of a contradiction.

A bit of clarification:

I re-read the http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.pl?forum=hirez&n=92055">original post on AA regarding fancy cables.

The contention is that some high end power cables introduce a colouration that complements the fault(s) of CD playback. With the "skip track access" method, the difference is "still" noticeable on these systems but the simpler cable construction gets you the more neutral result.

I cannot afford to spend big $$$ on Shunyata power cords to confirm the above point but it is interesting that a lot of the reviewers at TAS and Stereophile are using these cables. This is not to say that power cords do not influence the reproduced sound, but yes the effect is more unambiguous on transparent systems where other faults are less likely to osbcure the subtle (for some) improvements. In the high end, these subtle improvements are why people pay big bucks for cables. Place you bets

Carlman · « **Reply #28 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 01:30 pm »

I got to thinking... since I use a DVD player as my transport, I wonder if my results would be as meaningful as a fancy, non-tabletop type CD player... I'm using the stock power cord at the moment... on a Pioneer DV-444. You can definitely put me down as a 'no' because I did not hear a difference. I tried it.

I got to thinking more.... what about video? Shouldn't it be better using this method? So, I also tried watching a DVD for 12 seconds then, skipping to the next chapter... the picture and sound quality were the exact same. So, I get a 'double no'.... and I think if there were any sonic improvements it would be real, but... only to your brain. Maybe this should be sold as a listening 'method' and not an equipment tweak.

When I get my other DVD player back after Dan W has a chance to modify it, I wonder what the results will be... This thread will probably be dead by then.

byteme · « **Reply #29 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 02:50 pm »

Ya, I tried it last night too, no difference. However, I'm sure my test was fataly flawed because:

Bwanagreg · « **Reply #30 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 03:11 pm »

Quote

D) My system is probably too cheap to resolve the difference. I thought I remember reading that the cost of the components in the chain need to exceed $5000 in order to hear this I'm about a grand short...

Maybe if you wrap 10 $100 bills around your power cord you'll be able to hear the difference

subhuman · « **Reply #31 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 04:08 pm »

no offense, but I didn't read your other posts nathanm - usually try to avoid them actually

That's a cute little table, peakrchau...

"BTW you should try the 100 dollar bills wrapped around your AC cables it works"

nathanm · « **Reply #32 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 06:41 pm »

Quote from: subhuman

no offense, but I didn't read your other posts nathanm - usually try to avoid them actually

Well, I would advise you continue to do so!

Unless of course if you plan on replying to me directly, in which case reading them is imperative. Otherwise you may want to do some mouth-stretching exercises to better get your foot in there next time. Have a nice day, Golden Ears...

Hey, did I miss the reason for the NEARLY free part? Does it cost more to play 15 seconds of one track and then skipping ahead to the next track as opposed to hitting the numeric keypad? I don't know about you guys who have very expensive, revealing systems unlike the half-ass junk I have, but mine is already paid for (including the CDs) and as far as I can tell it doesn't cost any more to track advance vs. direct.

Oh wait, perhaps it is a measure of TIME, not money? It's true, for example on a 10 track CD you will spend roughly 2 extra minutes prepping the CD for that "vinyl sound" to follow.

I can only assume a clever person somewhere invented this track skipping story to have some fun at the expense of the audiophiles. In that case I salute them. Otherwise if this person is serious I would imagine they are the type of gullible nitwit who spends their spare time calling up psychic hotlines or joining cults. The mindset is the same - a person easily vulnerable to any kind of persuasion, no matter how implausible.

byteme · « **Reply #33 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 07:01 pm »

Nathan, reading your last post here got me thinking

very dangerous! It's a damn shame that someone hasn't come up with a web site similar to the Urban Legend one - http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/ - but for all of these audiophile ideas. If nothing else it would be a hoot to see some of the ones from the older days recycled - or just to read them again. Like the time in the late 80's that Stereophile recommended spraying all your CDs with Armor All which yeilded "much better sound". Only next month, it turns out they had to do a complete 180 since it turns out Armor All leads to decomposition of the CDs plastic or some such thing. There has to be literally a million of these types of tweaks and such, and as with Urban legend a ton of people who swear they work, or they have an old roommate who's brothers' ex-wife's new boyfriends' daughters teacher claims they actually did get a check from Microsoft for $5 for everyone they forwarded that email too. I'm sure that same guy would swear by the "digital dance" too!!

Carlman · « **Reply #34 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 07:23 pm »

Quote from: byteme

... the "digital dance" ...

GREAT name!

Bwanagreg · « **Reply #35 on:** 12 Jun 2003, 11:36 pm »

Of couse. you guys realize that while some of us mock the DD (Digital Dance) treatment, over at places like AVS they think we are all nutballs 'cause we think cables sound different and tubes can't sound good 'cause they measure bad.

As Abbie Hoffman used to say, there are a lot of different realities running around out there

Psychicanimal · « **Reply #36 on:** 13 Jun 2003, 12:41 am »

You know guys,

This might actually make sense on some CDPs. Remember CD playback rotational velocity is not constant: it goes down from the center out. Playing a few seconds of the previous track might give some CDPs a new reference point and thus, better performance.

The more I learn about transports the more I reallize how critical they are. Yes, I've been to a Van Alstine demo where he uses an early Harman Kardon transport with his DAC. He claims it doesn't matter BUT

I've got some serious people helping me and they believe in good transports. My own experiments show that the more I improve my transport the better, more musical performance I get.

I have sent money for purchasing two really decent, top loading transports. I will sell the loser and keep the winner (one of them is belt driven). I hear belt drive is the way to go for truly musical CD playback.

wongstein · « **Reply #37 on:** 13 Jun 2003, 07:11 am »

Wow, what a thread. I didn't hear a difference in my system (humble as it is: Micromega Stage 6, Creek passive volume control, Bryston 4B, Apogee Centaur Majors, Nu-Vista interconnects), but I wouldn't say that this phenomenon can't occur with someone else's CD and transport.

If I did hear this phenomena, however, I would have presumed that there is something wrong with my CD player and would be looking to repair or replace it. In other words, it doesn't sound enhanced after you restart the track, just less busticated. You might attribute this problem to error correction or buffer issues or rotation speed induced jitter, but it's a mechanincal/logical problem that should just be fixed, not a quaint little tweak that has you evoking arcane digital incantations with your remote keypad. It's not cool - like Fonzy hitting the Jukebox to make it work. It's not cool at all.

I don't believe that "bits are bits", but I do believe that that is a worthwhile goal. A digital signal exists in an analog physical reality, but we should expect the analog characteristics of the signal to be tempered in the engineering phase of a high-end CD player, obviating the need for resamplers, buffers and other such jitter boxen. A player ought to sound its best whether it's just started a track or starting it over.

Anyway, if this problem is something that you can live with and you think your player is a fine value despite it, then bully for you. Heck, when I press the open/close button on the remote for my Micromega, it does just that: the drawer opens and then it closes. I have to press the button really quick to get it to just open the drawer and gimme the disk, but I'm going to try to fix this problem.

If anyone really cares, they could absolutely convince me and others here of this transport phenomenon if they were to record the SPDIF output from the player to a computer under both conditions and then generate a graphical delta of the two output files. While you're at it, try it with a scratched-up disc and a pristine disk under both conditions - one might conclude whether it's the error correction system. I don't really expect anyone to do this, I'm just conjecturing, but I wonder what free software exists to do this test. You'd need an SPDIF input on your computer.

Tonto Yoder · « **Reply #38 on:** 13 Jun 2003, 11:55 am »

Quote from: byteme

Nathan, reading your last post here got me thinking very dangerous! It's a damn shame that someone hasn't come up with a web site similar to the Urban Legend one - http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/ - but for all of these audiophile ideas.

This site is something along those lines (but certainly not exhaustive). Several of the "myths" would be considered true by members here (myself included):
http://2eyespy.tripod.com/myaudioandhometheaterhomepage/id3.html

Carlman · « **Reply #39 on:** 13 Jun 2003, 01:23 pm »

Quote from: wongstein

Wow, what a thread. I didn't hear a difference in my system................ I would have presumed that there is something wrong with my CD player and would be looking to repair or replace it. In other words, it doesn't sound enhanced ...

If anyone really cares, they could absolutely convince me and others here of this transport phenomenon if they were to record the SPDIF output from the player to a computer under both conditions and then generate a graphical delta of the two output files. While you're at it, try it with a scratched-up disc and a pristine disk under both conditions - one might conclude whether it's the error correction system. I don't really expect anyone to do this, I'm just conjecturing, but I wonder what free software exists to do this test. You'd need an SPDIF input on your computer.

Wow, what a great post. Very well-written and succinct. I think you have essentially provided the probable results and how to prove them. Thanks. This thread should be over until one of the 2 advocates of this phenomenon comes back with the results. Wouldn't THAT be nice?