Are CD Player still relevant?

[ranjeetrain]

Steve's experiment with the truth was indeed interesting. However, it is also true a good mastering engineer knows what he is doing. So does Steve Hoffman. They do what it takes a certain format to sound the best.

Here is an excerpt from here where Steve clarifies further about the mastering process:

Hi Steve,

You mentioned in your original post that you already use your "tricks" when mastering to digital. I'm not asking what your tricks are, but wouldn't they mean you are mastering differently than you do for analog? If it's not possible to answer this question without giving away too much info, I understand. Just wondering what I'm not getting

The end result sounds as close as possible when I master for CD or LP. What ever tricks I need to get there when mastering in digital, well, it seems to work....

Compare a DCC Gold CD I did with a DCC LP of the same title. Pretty close sonically as they should be. So even though I had to use different tricks to get them to match, the end result is the same; they sound the way I want them to sound, no matter what format.

 

[Ambio]

Steve has never gone on record saying DSD is better.

That was in 2007. Then he was out of Blue Note and Analogue Production and started another company making mostly Vinyl (I think). Anyway....he is now saying...

For us, in that situation the Grimm A/D DSD converter killed the Meitner. It sounded exactly like the analog, both tone wise and ambiance wise. Very impressive." - Steve Hoffman (Mastering Engineer

and

I'm now using a DSD converter called a GRIMM for my SACD mastering.

Big improvement. If I did that test over again the results might be different...

 

[prem]

He is saying it now sounds like vinyl. That does not mean it's better. At no point does he use the word better. He has smartly answered results might be different

This is what I mean by saying people will read things the way they want to and interpret it the way they want to

You read into those statements as Steve thinks DSD is superior. I read it differently. There's nothing wrong with either of our interpretations. But as I said it all boils down to what you believe is good sound for you

 

[prem]

I just gave that link to give a different perspective. Anyway, i am not a fan of his vinyl masters. I much prefer the original pressings

 

[Ambio]

He is saying it now sounds like vinyl. That does not mean it's better. At no point does he use the word better. He has smartly answered results might be different

This is what I mean by saying people will read things the way they want to and interpret it the way they want to

You read into those statements as Steve thinks DSD is superior. I read it differently. There's nothing wrong with either of our interpretations. But as I said it all boils down to what you believe is good sound for you

Ok. I may have misinterpreted when he said it sounded like analogue. I thought sound is always analogue and it should sound like analogue.

Both Bruce and Steve were talking about the master tape and not vinyl.:lol:

 

[prem]

Hi Ambio

No sweat Its just that this hobby of ours can have so many interpretations. And the funny thing is nothing is right or wrong. Its just a preference. Many times i feel purchasing audio equipment is akin to buying perfumes. At the end of the day you buy what pleases you.

 

[prem]

Hi Thad

I am with you to have tests to build better products.

But for a minute please pull back and look at how big the audio industry is. You'll see its more like a small scale industry. Lots of small players with little or no resource. In such an industry its very difficult to expect them to invest a lot in research and tests. In the last two decades whatever breakthroughs have come have been from Philips or Sony. Both huge giants. It'll have to be such guys who can usher in new ideas, new products, new material, etc.

Do you really expect someone like say, Viren of Lyrita Audio, to get into major research and testing to prove his product is superior? I don't think so. He has built a product based on his conviction that its superior. Its for the consumer to hear and take a call whether its actually superior.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I think there is a yes and a no there. Maybe a maybe too!! :lol:

The work that Sean Olive has done is amazing, but yes, he has one of the world's biggest audio groups behind him. Room and finance for R&D on that sort of scale. Whilst I suppose it suits JBL, in one way, to publicise that research, it is also good for everyone that he is allowed to present papers to pros on it, and write for the general public. The principles, at least, which, I suppose it could be said that JBL paid to research, are there, for free, to everyone, R&D budget or not.

At the other end of the scale are the very small companies that you speak of. Do I expect them to build anechoic chambers and fantastic test rigs? No, I do not: I expect them to say, hey, I've built this, I love it, I hope you do too.

There is nothing to stop them measuring their equipment, and publishing those measurements. I guess some small business probably do, especially if they are trying to prove a point about that equipment. And, if they then go into the music business, or even the DAC business, and start trying to tell me how every step up the sample-rate ladder gives better sound, then, hey... foobar is free; the ABX addi-in is free; anyone can do a blind ABX of file formats. There's nothing to loose. Or is there?

 

[Ambio]

I .... foobar is free; the ABX addi-in is free; anyone can do a blind ABX of file formats. There's nothing to loose. Or is there?

Ouch


Ambio

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Get out of jail free card: "I don't run Windows."

:lol:

 

[asliarun]

thank you, jls001 and rohit, for confirming I'm not suffering from adsd!

while listening to music on my iPhone (usually to drown out the pa and bawling kids on a flight), I find myself constantly worrying about the next song to play. tracks whiz by in a schizophrenic mishmash of genres and artistes, and the experience always leaves me deeply dissatisfied.

at home, my music sessions are very deliberate affairs. I need a good 2 hours of uninterrupted time, a cold beverage within easy reach and a clutch of CDs that suits the mood of the hour. sometimes, I'll do an 'artiste' night; say, just playing steely dan albums. other times, it might be a 'female vocalists' or '70s rock' or 'albums I haven't heard in ages' evening.

once in a while, an album will set off a desire to hear another unrelated album. and this can lead to some interesting sessions. for eg: start with some shakti. the tabla makes me want to hear trilok gurtu. then, I want to up the pace, so I switch to talvin singh. now, I'm getting a craving for bass, so I switch to massive attack. at the end of 4 albums, I've got a huge smile on my face!

all my friends, who are into computer audio, tell me I need to switch. all the tracks in my 1500 odd cd collection will be just a click away, they say. well, I say, no thank you! I know exactly where 95% of my albums are on the shelves. and I can use the exercise

Very nice writeup, coaltrain.

The irony is that the argument you make is exactly the reason you should switch over to computer audio.

A CD player *forces* us to listen to an entire album. Then, it again forces you to get up and swap out the CD for another one (hence the CD carousel). Just to be clear, this is a limitation, not a feature. You could call it a feature because it causes a bit of extra exercise, but that is not correct. That is just an unintended benefit you have found from a product limitation. CD players were not purpose built to burn an extra 4 calories. One can, for example, burn a lot of calories by washing clothes by hand instead of using a washing machine - but that should also not be a negative point against washing machines!

There is nothing preventing you from listening to an entire album back to back in a computer based software player. In fact, that is how software players work by default. So again, not sure why you chose an apples to oranges example of listening to your iPhone on a noisy flight.

The crucial thing is that a software based player also allows you to create customized play lists. It will even do things automatically for you like categorize albums and songs based on genre, sub-genre, artist, listening mood, etc. Or you can hand-roll your own customized playlists - and all this is a super straightforward operation. Heck, Winamp has been supporting most of this for years now.

In fact, radio services like Pandora take this a step forward. They have super intelligent algorithms that actually learns from your listening preferences and from your feedback (you mark a song/artist with a like/dislike). For what it is worth, I have discovered more interesting music in the last couple of years because of Pandora than ever before. And let's admit it - for most music lovers, our true music discovery phase happens in our school and college years. After that, we get stuck in a time warp - and let ourselves get defined by the same artists and songs that we listened to in our formative years. Of course, this is subjective (maybe just me).

So among all the examples you gave of
- listening to an album back to back
- listening to music by mood
- being able to easily switch over from one artist to another
- doing an artiste night
- listening to music by genre (70s) or male/female artists

How exactly is a CD player superior to computer based audio?

You painted a very nice picture of how you listen to music, and for sure, it sounded wonderful to me too. As a matter of fact, I listen to music in similar ways too, although I cannot articulate it as nicely as you You also say that you have a cold beverage within easy reach because I presume you don't want to get up every time you want to sip your drink. So why do you need to get up every time you want to change a CD. And what if you want to listen to 1-2 songs from a bunch of CDs?

Now having said that, you have obviously invested a great deal in CDs and I assume a good CD player. You also have a nice system of listening to music worked out for you. I am not saying what you or I or anyone should do. Matter of fact, if people love vintage cars or vintage watches, that is absolutely fine. But saying a vintage car is superior to a modern car is another thing - and that is where I object.

 

[mpw]

Very nice writeup, coaltrain.

The irony is that the argument you make is exactly the reason you should switch over to computer audio.

A CD player *forces* us to listen to an entire album. Then, it again forces you to get up and swap out the CD for another one (hence the CD carousel). Just to be clear, this is a limitation, not a feature. You could call it a feature because it causes a bit of extra exercise, but that is not correct. That is just an unintended benefit you have found from a product limitation. CD players were not purpose built to burn an extra 4 calories. One can, for example, burn a lot of calories by washing clothes by hand instead of using a washing machine - but that should also not be a negative point against washing machines!

There is nothing preventing you from listening to an entire album back to back in a computer based software player. In fact, that is how software players work by default. So again, not sure why you chose an apples to oranges example of listening to your iPhone on a noisy flight.

The crucial thing is that a software based player also allows you to create customized play lists. It will even do things automatically for you like categorize albums and songs based on genre, sub-genre, artist, listening mood, etc. Or you can hand-roll your own customized playlists - and all this is a super straightforward operation. Heck, Winamp has been supporting most of this for years now.

In fact, radio services like Pandora take this a step forward. They have super intelligent algorithms that actually learns from your listening preferences and from your feedback (you mark a song/artist with a like/dislike). For what it is worth, I have discovered more interesting music in the last couple of years because of Pandora than ever before. And let's admit it - for most music lovers, our true music discovery phase happens in our school and college years. After that, we get stuck in a time warp - and let ourselves get defined by the same artists and songs that we listened to in our formative years. Of course, this is subjective (maybe just me).

So among all the examples you gave of
- listening to an album back to back
- listening to music by mood
- being able to easily switch over from one artist to another
- doing an artiste night
- listening to music by genre (70s) or male/female artists

How exactly is a CD player superior to computer based audio?

You painted a very nice picture of how you listen to music, and for sure, it sounded wonderful to me too. As a matter of fact, I listen to music in similar ways too, although I cannot articulate it as nicely as you You also say that you have a cold beverage within easy reach because I presume you don't want to get up every time you want to sip your drink. So why do you need to get up every time you want to change a CD. And what if you want to listen to 1-2 songs from a bunch of CDs?

Now having said that, you have obviously invested a great deal in CDs and I assume a good CD player. You also have a nice system of listening to music worked out for you. I am not saying what you or I or anyone should do. Matter of fact, if people love vintage cars or vintage watches, that is absolutely fine. But saying a vintage car is superior to a modern car is another thing - and that is where I object.

so now we do have 2 camps here...

i refrain from the " modern car " ( in music ) because of the following :-

a. i do not understand bits and bytes nor do i want to get into it

b. the almost weekly definition change of what is hi-res and what is not is very confusing ( iphone / flac / aiff / lossless / loasy / mp3 / 441. / 96 / 144 hz... ) all of these resound in my ear.

c. the millions of dacs available in the market make it so much more harder to choose the right one...

in view of the above.... i went in for a high quality CDP and am immensely happy.

I got myself a couple of CD's of Radiohead 2 days back - Pablohoney and Verve - Urban Hymns thinking that there are only 2 "hit " songs ie Creep and Bittersweet symphony. But i ended up liking atleast 2 more tracks in each album.

It is said that convenience breeds laziness and this is what i suspect a "modern" system does.... we invariaby listen to the commercially hit songs and move on to the next one.

Afterall none of us i presume can spend more than 2 - 3 hours a day on a music session. Lets say 3 such sessions in a week for a married guy with a few kids running around :lol:

Folks like me derive pleasure in listening to the album in its entirety - which is fine - and some folks like to do the latest trend and spend time making playlists... which is fine too...

whatever makes you happy..

but there is no question of vintage or modern - IMO - and thats where i am coming from.

For the record... the "dinosaur" vinyl is the best sounding of them all and it dont do playlists...

to each his own and it makes sense to understand what is being said and to understand another POV.

but these are just my points..

YMMV..

regards

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

mpw, whilst you overestimate the difficulties of pc music playing, it doesn't matter. You are happy with your CD player and with your turntable.

I am happy with my car, and do not want a bicycle, however much anybody tells me of the advantages!

Very nice writeup, coaltrain.

The irony is that the argument you make is exactly the reason you should switch over to computer audio.

A CD player *forces* us to listen to an entire album. Then, it again forces you to get up and swap out the CD for another one (hence the CD carousel). Just to be clear, this is a limitation, not a feature. ... ... ...

It's funny you should say that ...

I use a couple of different PC audio players, but they both have a similar, simple interface which uses tabs. The obvious method of use is one tab for one album, and yes, dating back to vinyl days, I am mostly, an album-at a time listener.

But, just two days ago, I wishing that there was a facility (I bet some software has it) to temporarily select play-just-these-tracks now without deleting the other tracks, and I thought, "My old CD player could do that!"

hyeah:

 

[Ambio]

That shouldn't be a problem with JRemote. Alternatively create a new playlist and add whatever tracks you want to listen.

 

[mpw]

I am happy with my car, and do not want a bicycle, however much anybody tells me of the advantages!

now there we go again....

when you introduce things like car / bicycle etc... you introduce an unfair comparison.

The simple question the OP asked - are CD player still relevant - has degenerated to bits and bytes thanks to arguments put forth like this that make a mountain out of a molehill.

i prefer a good CDP... you prefer something else... the matter ends there.

where do the bicycles and cars come from thad ?

You are right in 1 sense - the description of digital audio is so confusing it puts people like me off from even trying it and preferring a darn good CDP. That cant be denied and if digital audio is to go further then standardization is the key without the attendant confusing mumbo jumbo.

mpw

 

[asliarun]

Hi mpw, I totally agree if the case being made is "purpose built device vs general purpose computer". No arguments that a purpose built device offers far more convenience and ease of use. My point was more towards CD as a format specifically, and the usefulness of CD players compared to modern options.

There are plenty of purpose built audio playback devices that use a hard drive or SSD drive as a storage mechanism too - with an inbuilt DAC or without. One doesn't necessarily have to understand bits and bytes, nor does one have to hand assemble one's computer. You can find the same level of convenience in all these devices too.

The DAC argument again is about how discrete you want to get in terms of your equipment chain. And yes of course, it is trickier to setup a pre-pro instead of an integrated, but that has its benefits too, and many people do it too. And these devices will do a lot more fro you - if you give them a chance!

For what it is worth, CD sales have been declining at record levels (pun unintended), except for Japan(!), and the writing is on the wall that CDs will become increasingly harder to find, just as CD players will become increasingly unserviceable. That is just the course of technology. Like tape decks and VCRs. The cost efficiencies of distributing digital audio over the internet is just too powerful for CDs to compete.

So no, CD players are in the dying end of the technology curve, will soon become obsolete, and are thus not relevant for someone building a new system. If one already has done the investment, that is a different matter. The audiophile world adopts technology at a different pace anyway, and at any rate, it is like having a well running but old car. No point selling it but no point buying it either.

 

[coaltrain]

How exactly is a CD player superior to computer based audio?

thanks, asliarun, for taking the time to read my ramble and ask some pertinent questions.

at the outset, let me clarify on the point you've raised above. if you read my post carefully, you'll notice that I've refrained from making any such assumption. in fact, on page 3 of this thread, I've expressed my stand quite clearly.

you are quite right in pointing out that computer audio offers great flexibility for playback. I may sound like a 'vintage' soul, but I do make playlists for my wife on her iPhone however, I'm at a loss to explain why I constantly change tracks while listening to songs on the iPhone. which is why I was so delighted to discover that I was not alone, in this regard. would I do the same if I had a 'high-end' pc hooked up to my system? I have no idea. at the moment, the thought of ripping 1500 CDs to a hard drive is enough to bring out the procrastinator in me

now, to address some misc points:

- discovering new music
oh, absolutely! there's just so much good stuff out there, and the internet has definitely made it easier for us music lovers.
pandora is nice, but my app of choice is tunein radio. I also purchase albums from mp3million.com and burn CDs to check them out at home. if I like, I buy the original cd. I also read a lot. everything from downbeat and mojo to fremer's analog planet.

- cold beverages
I have long held the belief that a pint of ice cold Guinness or a dram of Lagavulin is worth it's weight in Nordost Valhalla! veils will be lifted, musicians will materialise in your listening room! oh, and I do visit my bar more often than the cd rack

and, finally, a closing thought...

are audiophiles and music lovers two distinct species? how else can one explain the vehemence on display here, for one format over the other?
the best system I've ever heard in my life was when I was a teen in B'bay: sony tape deck, enbee amp and arphi speakers belting out 'urgent' by Foreigner.
the room was tiny. the speakers were waaaay above ear height. but the music was magic!

will a 192Khz sample rate or 3 brass discs take me back to that tiny room? I don't think so. but, sitting in a jam packed bar in B'lore the other day, I heard George McRae crooning 'rock your baby' over the noise. talk about a time machine!

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

where do the bicycles and cars come from thad ?

You're happy with your CD player and deck: you don't need to bother about bicycles. Err, I mean, PC audio.

Just that. Nothing more than... be happy

 

[dheerajin]

Again..people are so far away from the digital realms... Optical disc which is not an efficient way to play music , for the same reason magnetic tapes were discarded, are being discussed in such a length...just because it is convenient to play...lol..i listen to the album specially new one on internet, if i like then i will buy CD, rip it and at the same time make a copy of that CD in another backup drive....why..because i know shelf life of CD is not long enough..
So no body is discussing digital,only convenience CDP and fear of PC like an alien thing to operate.
Digital is digital so its closure to computer and CD was invented to store the data and later on identified for music playback with the redbook format.
After reading optical information , rest of the thing is done by CDP is actually done by DAC.
So reading digitally stored data in hard drive or SSD is more efficient than reading a optically stored data and those who dont realize the same thing is really driving the rikshaw[emoji16] ..just for analogy no offence

 

[bhagwan]

Gentlemen - Please do bear with me - this may seem a bit O/T

Do all CD Players 'Sound the Same' ??

Does a CD Played on a DVD Player - sound the same as one played on a Blue Ray Player - sound the same as one played on a Dedicated Player - all being used as a Digital Drive into a 'common DAC' ??

All digital data is 0 & 1 - yet different digital devices impart different sonic signature tot he sound - why ?

The Computer as a Transport is a Super idea.
Yes, so long as you do not want to 'take the fight home' to a TOP END CD Transport !!
Once the Computer is to try and 'play against' a PlayBack Design / Meitner / dCS / Esoteric / Accuphase etc. the story changes & that too dramatically...

The Computer was never designed to play music.
We 'audiophiles' are trying to get it to do that & the potential for it to play as a Transport does exist - but lots of things need to get 'changed' & 'tweaked'
LPS [Power Supply] - System Shut Down [Hibernate mode] & lots of non critical functions need to be 'switched' off in a computer for it to be made into a 'critical' & 'dedicated' Music Transport Mechanism.

Herein lies the problem.

Therefore a Plain Jane CD Transport is easy & far more reliable to use.

p.s. I do not own a CD Player & I still have 5 K ++ CD's
The convenience of a PC as a Transport is very high for me & I have 12 TB ++ of Music - so a computer works for me - but a Good CD Transport is still a great product...No 2 ways to that !