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

 

[rrunner]

Yes, CEC and Philips CDM Pro are the best I have heard so far.

 

[Analogous]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful insights and suggestions. A couple of questions

1. Would lossless files ripped from CDs played back from a good streamer-server sound as good or not as good as the original CD played using a ToTL CD transport?

2. If I don’t want to spend a couple of lakhs or more on a ToTL Philips transport what would be other good options under say 50k? @prem has suggested a good Blu Ray player. Other options?

 

[prem]

Answer to your question 1 is no. I have tried it. The original cd just sounds more correct.

 

[IndianEars]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful insights and suggestions. A couple of questions

1. Would lossless files ripped from CDs played back from a good streamer-server sound as good or not as good as the original CD played using a ToTL CD transport?

2. If I don’t want to spend a couple of lakhs or more on a ToTL Philips transport what would be other good options under say 50k? @prem has suggested a good Blu Ray player. Other options?

1. IMO, its easy to get the ripping 'perfect' .. its the playback of the rip that is the tough part. I have heard some superlative systems, and Playback via the CD Spinner is the reference that has not been beat.

All CD Spinners sound different ... 2 very expensive CDTs will also sound different, so clearly there is no 'reference'.

Files streamed via Qobuz & Tidal also sound inferior to a 'proper' CD rip.

2. No idea regarding 2nd best for a Disc Spinner. They are significantly inferior sounding to the extent that I would probably forget buying a level-2 CD spinner and use ripped files only... Files ripped ('perfectly') directly from CDs into .wav files. (I would not use files download from the 'net from unknown sources, or .flac file rips or .mp3 files.

 

[Analogous]

1. IMO, its easy to get the ripping 'perfect' .. its the playback of the rip that is the tough part. I have heard some superlative systems, and Playback via the CD Spinner is the reference that has not been beat.

All CD Spinners sound different ... 2 very expensive CDTs will also sound different, so clearly there is no 'reference'.

Files streamed via Qobuz & Tidal also sound inferior to a 'proper' CD rip.

2. No idea regarding 2nd best for a Disc Spinner. They are significantly inferior sounding to the extent that I would probably forget buying a level-2 CD spinner and use ripped files only... Files ripped ('perfectly') directly from CDs into .wav files. (I would not use files download from the 'net from unknown sources, or .flac file rips or .mp3 files.

This is interesting to me.
Could you help me understand how to get bit perfect rips?
I never even considered that rips could vary. Is this dependent on the software used?

 

[bhooshaniyer]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful insights and suggestions. A couple of questions

1. Would lossless files ripped from CDs played back from a good streamer-server sound as good or not as good as the original CD played using a ToTL CD transport?

2. If I don’t want to spend a couple of lakhs or more on a ToTL Philips transport what would be other good options under say 50k? @prem has suggested a good Blu Ray player. Other options?

I went from a oppo bluray player to cec CDP and the difference in sound quality was significant.i would recommend a cec CDP that vinay has put on sale.
If you want to go the ripping and local streaming route,.pls read up on Diretta end point/target device and asio driver on host side. Sotm, rpi, canarino dub etc are brands that can get you there with some configuration.

 

[bhooshaniyer]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful insights and suggestions. A couple of questions

1. Would lossless files ripped from CDs played back from a good streamer-server sound

This is interesting to me.
Could you help me understand how to get bit perfect rips?
I never even considered that rips could vary. Is this dependent on the software used?

Exact copy is the name of the software

 

[rrunner]

Yes, I have heard Bhooshan's CEC Cd player.

 

[reignofchaos]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful insights and suggestions. A couple of questions

1. Would lossless files ripped from CDs played back from a good streamer-server sound as good or not as good as the original CD played using a ToTL CD transport?

2. If I don’t want to spend a couple of lakhs or more on a ToTL Philips transport what would be other good options under say 50k? @prem has suggested a good Blu Ray player. Other options?

Look for a used cec tl5 for a bit more money.

 

[bornfi]

2. If I don’t want to spend a couple of lakhs or more on a ToTL Philips transport what would be other good options under say 50k? @prem has suggested a good Blu Ray player. Other options?

Try older CD/DVD/BluRay players that do not have SMPS. By following the underline you will already be eliminating a whole lot of crappy players. This will still be decent sounding but ToTLs will always sound better in terms of details retrieval where the magic of the music lies.

 

[prem]

Look for a used cec tl5 for a bit more money.

CEC TL 5 is very average. Only their top of the line ones are nice. I would look at a transport with a Philips Pro over the CEC TL5

 

[reignofchaos]

CEC TL 5 is very average. Only their top of the line ones are nice. I would look at a transport with a Philips Pro over the CEC TL5

For under 1 lac it will be pretty hard to get one.

 

[prem]

To my ears CEC TL5 smoothens sound a bit too much, affecting transient speed and attack.

I don’t know what you get new for 1 lakh today but am sure you’ll get some decent used cd transport.

Some of the old SONY ES cd players had great cd transport mechanism. If you can get them in a good condition, worth exploring

 

[Analogous]

To my ears CEC TL5 smoothens sound a bit too much, affecting transient speed and attack.

I don’t know what you get new for 1 lakh today but am sure you’ll get some decent used cd transport.

Some of the old SONY ES cd players had great cd transport mechanism. If you can get them in a good condition, worth exploring

I am a bit wary buying used audio equipment like CDPs which have motors and many moving parts, specially expensive ones. The phrase “used very little” is difficult to understand.
But will keep an eye out if something good comes up for sale locally.

 

[bhooshaniyer]

I use a CEC TL53z for what it is worth.

 

[rrunner]

Shanling -ET3 is one more option if one prefers new equipment with good specs.

 

[Kannan]

@Analogous rip using EAC or dbpoweramp your original CDs. There are several settings that you can incorporate while ripping to keep error tolerance low. Also rip at a lower speed (max 8x) even if your drive supports higher speeds.
If you are very critical and technically looking, the playback quality of the ripped file will be closest to that of spinning in a direct wired path instead of a streaming path irrespective of the protocol used.