[vorbis] 24/96 ?

[fungus]

Wilson wrote:

 >

 >>And don't underestimate the importance of your CD-Player being good. A
 >>Sony for US$300 just won't do it if you're hyped for Hi-Fi. If your DVD
 >>equipment is that much better than your CD-Player, there's a lot room
 >>for misinterpretation.
 >>
 >
 > I have yet to hear a plausible explanation for why a $1000 CD player is
 > different from a $100 Discman. Can the "jitter" boogeyman account for the
 > differences people say they hear?
 >

<p>I once argued this with somebody who ought to know the answer
and his claim was that "Thanks to the more stable transport
mechanism, it gets a lot more information off the disc".

That sounded to me like turntable-speak, and I told him so,

I told him that my $50 CD-ROM drive can do perfect audio
extraction at eight times normal speed (using EAC) and that
you can't improve on that no matter how much money you spend.
He wasn't to be convinced, he wanted to justify his $7000
CD player.

You *could* argue that the DAC is better in the expensive
unit, but you'll have a hard time convincing me. I believe
that the best consumer DAC on earth can't possibly cost more
than $100 to produce, besides most discmen use a 1-bit DAC
so it's down the the quality of the capacitor used to filter
the output. I defy you to find a capacitor in the microfarad
range worth thousands of dollars (or even hundreds).

You could also argue about power supplies, but again
you'll have a hard time convincing me. A stable power
supply to produce a couple of volts with negligable
current requirement isn't exactly difficult to make
(just put a $0.10 capacitor across the output).

Finally there's the old "clock stability" argument.
I'm not buying that one either. A crystal in the mHz
range divided down to produce a 44.1kHz clock will be
unbelievably stable. This will also cost cents to make.

So what are we left with? Not much. I don't deny that
CD players sound different from each other, I remeber
being very impressed when I swapped my original Philips
CD player for a bitstream player, but I've since heard
that that old Philips only had a 14 bit DAC. Nowadays
it seems to me that the difference between players is
that some are more bassy than others. You can draw your
own conclusions from this. Maybe the expensive players
are the ones without any consumer oriented circuitry
*after* the DAC.

<p>
-- 
<\___/>
/ O O \
\_____/  FTB.

<p><p><p><p><p><p>--- >8 ----
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