A discussion about crappy DVD players as CD players

[mbhangui]

Everything colors the sound. Poor quality bits even more so. When you put a box like that in the middle, you are basically invalidating the core premise of being able to compare two things as this box will impart it's own color. Also this is not even made for audio. It is made for AV which means it probably even doesn't bother about signal purity.

There is zero logic or science in what you are saying other than some urban legend that you have conjured. A switch is a switch. It doesn't care what is connected at the two ends of the switch other than the requirement that it should be of very low resistance so that there is zero I2R loss.

Without switch it is impossible to find out difference between two devices as switching will take more than few seconds. Placebo will affect your judgement. Humans can briefly retain auditory information, with short-term memory for auditory stimuli declining faster than for visual or tactile stimuli. While accuracy for short retention intervals (1-4 seconds) is similar across modalities, auditory accuracy drops significantly at longer intervals (8-32 seconds) compared to visual and tactile. This suggests a relative weakness in auditory memory compared to other senses. You just cannot delay more than 2 seconds to decide which of the two devices sounded better. In such cases the louder will be sensed as better.

 

[IndianEars]

I have owned 3 types of cd transports. Esoteric which uses their own transport, CEC which is a belt drive transport and Mark Levinson which uses a Philips pro transport.

I have heard all three with the Mark Levinson dac. All three sounded different to my ears.

Esoteric is all about detail and resolution.

CEC is a very fluid sounding player. Very addictive

The Levinson is a warmer presentation.

For lack of a better analogy it’s like comparing a direct drive turntable with an idler and a belt one.

In another experiment, I have compared a simple OPPO player as a transport. The Esoteric transport sounded much better.

Having said the above, if I can’t afford an Esoteric, I think a blu ray player as a transport is a good option. I would choose it over your run of the mill cd transports.

I wholeheartedly endorse this & similar opinions.

To me, the sound off a CEC Transport is VERY distinct, and unmistakable.

A DVD Player sound shoddy compared to a Philips CDM Pro based transport.

If you cant hear the difference, you do save yourself a lot of money.

 

[mbhangui]

The purpose of this article is to highlight challenges in HiFi testing. Many a time the time involved in switching the equipment is too high. This cannot be used reliable to test subtle differences between two equipments because our auditory retention is poor. Also our auditory recognition memory is inferior to our visual recognition memory. Then there are other issues like reliablity and consistency of hearing. Read this article on how to address these challenges

Challanges in HiFi Testing - Article at Audio Nostalgia

Comprehensive article describing common challenges in HiFi equipment testing and description of potential solutions to overcome them.

audionostalgia.co.uk