Are CD Player still relevant?

[bhagwan]

it is like this-
"Opinions are like wrist watches..
everyone's watch shows a different time from others..
But.,everyone believes that their time is correct..

All this depends on which longitude one is on;

If most people are in the same time zone - the time difference will be within +/- 5 minutes - generally...[may be 10 if people like to set their watches to account for 'delays' etc] !!

That +/- 5 minutes is like Flac to Wave.
But if you are on MP3 - then people are sitting in different time zones.

To come back to CD Players / Transports & Computers as Music Transports...
It takes a lot for a Computer used as a transport to beat a good stable CD Transport. Like a Dedicated CD Transport - CEC / Esoteric etc.
All Computers can be Music Transports - Just like all DVD Players can be CD Transports - but to get a 'good' one is a different story altogether...

hyeah:

 

[Ambio]

As much as I would like to say that modern PC outperforms CDP, the jury is still out there in my humble system. Using reference DSD recordings, I think JRiver + MYTEK gives me the best ever quality but when I compared the ripped version and CD I somehow prefer the CDP.

It is almost impossibly to make a reliable comparisons because the output of CDP is 2V and MYTEK is over 4V. This alone would make a lot of difference in the SQ. This thread prompted me do my own experiment and maybe once I get a way to match both output level then I can come to a "sound" conclusion. Furthermore, our reference has always been CDP and we tend to judge SQ with CDP even though technically PC could be better.

It is also the same with senior audiophiles who started to learn and judge sound with analogue format may find digital not up to standard.

 

[captrajesh]

Hey Capn, Unless you are using the PC to output digital ( spdif ) via a sound card, it is very easy for a PC to perform as a very high end transport via usb if you use a high end usb dac.

Using PC for digital out :
Recording studios have for a long time mastered the art of assembling pcs to output very high quality digital using custom designed pcs with SOTA sound cards / master clocks etc. It is just that it has not trickled down to the masses. It was costly, cumbersome and easy to screw up.. Most high end network players pretty much do the same. This is a bit tricky area and one has to tread with caution and need a pro's help..

Thanks for the info Vinnie I did try playing audio from my laptop to the USB input of the TDA 1541 Philips chip based AP DAC and compared it with my Marantz. CD6003 outputting digital via SPDIF to the same DAC. Same tracks ripped from the CD being played were played through the computer and both playbacks were started simultaneously. I could switch with a flick of a switch. I listened with my eyes closed as someone kept alternating between sources. We could distinctly notice the superior SQ with CDP as source.

I'm still interested in the PC as source because I''ve decided to use HTPC for my budget HT setup. Looking for some expert advice on how to go about. Since I'm a noob in the field, will take the help of a hardware guy to do it for me.

All this depends on which longitude one is on;

If most people are in the same time zone - the time difference will be within +/- 5 minutes - generally...[may be 10 if people like to set their watches to account for 'delays' etc] !!

That +/- 5 minutes is like Flac to Wave.
But if you are on MP3 - then people are sitting in different time zones.

To come back to CD Players / Transports & Computers as Music Transports...
It takes a lot for a Computer used as a transport to beat a good stable CD Transport. Like a Dedicated CD Transport - CEC / Esoteric etc.
All Computers can be Music Transports - Just like all DVD Players can be CD Transports - but to get a 'good' one is a different story altogether...
hyeah:

 

[captrajesh]

All Computers can be Music Transports - Just like all DVD Players can be CD Transports.hyeah:

Very well said. Can't agree more.

I multiquoted this post in my previous post but was unable to edit it as I'm browsing through my Mobile. Hence this second post.

 

[sarith]

I'm still interested in the PC as source because I''ve decided to use HTPC for my budget HT setup. Looking for some expert advice on how to go about. Since I'm a noob in the field, will take the help of a hardware guy to do it for me.

I have owned and tried few computers with both intel and amd, and sound of my current cpu is cool (i5). IMO, it's worth investing on a good mobo. I haven't used internal sound card yet.

Used an external dac and connected my mobo's optical out to it (stereo setting). sounds pretty good. headphone out of my asus mobo is pretty good. Sound from the rear 7.1 output is good too.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Using PC for digital out :
Recording studios have for a long time mastered the art of assembling pcs to output very high quality digital using custom designed pcs with SOTA sound cards / master clocks etc. It is just that it has not trickled down to the masses. It was costly, cumbersome and easy to screw up.. Most high end network players pretty much do the same. This is a bit tricky area and one has to tread with caution and need a pro's help..

The trickle-down meets prejudice and gets stopped in its tracks.

Professionals have used professional sound cards for decades: the "audiophile" says it can't be done because, hey, a PC is noisy.

Oddly, the same "audiophile" (fictitious, but one doesn't have to look far) will insist on using a laptop, which, due to poor power supplies being standard (or standard power supplies being poor ) very probably is noisy!

Rajesh, this might be a possible reason for being unsatisfied with your laptop so far.

At the end of the day, it is difficult to be dogmatic on this (much as I might want to be ). We take a random combination of motherboard, power supply, etc, and put it up against a designed, single-box combination, and it should be obvious which one would win. But it isn't...

 

[thx911]

a couple of years ago was reading the reviews on Parasound Halo CD player... one of those high end CD players costing $4K onwards, and goggled now to to see if i can share the internal view of the player.



It basically uses a CD-ROM!! yes you heard it right, your normal day to day 4X CD-ROM drive connected to a intel ITX board using linux OS as software! in essence its a Linux PC dressed as hi-end CD player (this is why i think Thad is a visionary among us! :thumbsup

This player had attracted rave reviews and couple of awards. In essence, if you dumb down today's modern PC and dramatically reduce the number of "degrees of freedom" on functionality, imposed disabilities, so to speak, will give you a Parasound class of player

The Designers at Parasound definitely knew their stuff and which technology was superior!

 

[Vinod.R]

That is really interesting!

Nice pics even though I do not know the exact MB or processor being used!

 

[wishihadtubes]

I just realised the other day I hadn't switched on my Cambridge Audio CD player for 8 months. It's the laptop for me, with either Foobar or jRiver feeding my MyDAC when I want to hear music on the speakers or my Geek Out when I want to use my headphones. And my four other CD players are all packed and stowed away.
I have no fun poking through my shelves with hundreds of CDs to find an album I want. And I don't find the convenience of having all my albums and hi-res downloads on one HDD stops me from listening to whole albums. If anything, I'm listening to more since I switched over to the computer.
BTW, I'm no computer geek and I still struggle with tech but I've never so far had problems configuring my laptop to use a DAC or to playback files with different bit depths and formats.
But yes, my turntable still gets a spin once in a while.

 

[Naturelover]

Any machinery and electronic equipment needs to be used once in a while. Keeping equipment packed and stowed away is actually not a good idea.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

a couple of years ago was reading the reviews on Parasound Halo CD player... one of those high end CD players costing $4K onwards, and goggled now to to see if i can share the internal view of the player.

It basically uses a CD-ROM!! yes you heard it right, your normal day to day 4X CD-ROM drive connected to a intel ITX board using linux OS as software! in essence its a Linux PC dressed as hi-end CD player

This player had attracted rave reviews and couple of awards. In essence, if you dumb down today's modern PC and dramatically reduce the number of "degrees of freedom" on functionality, imposed disabilities, so to speak, will give you a Parasound class of player

The Designers at Parasound definitely knew their stuff and which technology was superior!

What you can't see is the unicorn breath. hyeah:

(this is why i think Thad is a visionary among us! :thumbsup

Thanks, but ...not just me! Heaps of people have been playing music from PCs for a long time. It's just that, around the time when basic soundcards were just beginning to not sound truly dreadful, some of us experimented with cards that you had to go to music/studio shops to buy, not computer shops. And we found that we had done the right thing

 

[reignofchaos]

a couple of years ago was reading the reviews on Parasound Halo CD player... one of those high end CD players costing $4K onwards, and goggled now to to see if i can share the internal view of the player.



It basically uses a CD-ROM!! yes you heard it right, your normal day to day 4X CD-ROM drive connected to a intel ITX board using linux OS as software! in essence its a Linux PC dressed as hi-end CD player (this is why i think Thad is a visionary among us! :thumbsup

This player had attracted rave reviews and couple of awards. In essence, if you dumb down today's modern PC and dramatically reduce the number of "degrees of freedom" on functionality, imposed disabilities, so to speak, will give you a Parasound class of player

The Designers at Parasound definitely knew their stuff and which technology was superior!

There is more to it than meets the eye - that is a very optimized computer for music only with nothing else running. It probably is playing samples from a ram buffer. It also does not appear to use an smps - it has a linear power supply with an r-core transformer. Finally it appears to have a well built analog output stage.

Put all these things into a computer and you shall definitely have great quality output. It is possible but claiming any random computer without any optimization can do the same is not right.

 

[dheerajin]

Digital music is digital..people find difference becauae it is dragged by mule or horse...thats it...once digital, it will always be digital and it is compulsory PC based...word transport is external...only people outside digital realm know it that way....DEDICATED PC playback is perfect and it is the only digital way to play it..anyone who says that it is imperfect does not know that it not digital.....so only word is digital...CD is only the one of the way to play and it was only the way...now People in industry know that SS drive are better and would survive for longer duration....so ultimately it is efficieny that matters and nature believes in that

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

It is my opinion that "optimisation" prevents potential problems rather than directly improving sound quality in any way. Whilst some of those potential problems are never going to be actual problems, none-the-less, why not turn off the unwanted. That computer above is never going to send pages to a printer, or connect to a network. But running a print server is not going to affect sound. Running wifi might, though.

Some problems are imaginary; others are not. Without optimisation, my firewire audio would not even work properly ...so fairly big improvement to the sound there! :lol:

 

[manoj.p]

It is my opinion that "optimisation" prevents potential problems rather than directly improving sound quality in any way.

You said it perfectly.

 

[thx911]

It also does not appear to use an smps - it has a linear power supply with an r-core transformer. Finally it appears to have a well built analog output stage

Of course it has to have all these component, it better have it, how else are they going to justify the $4500 asking price? just for a ITX pc running linux with parasound label on it?

We really don't know for sure if a $500 PC can match this player or not, in the absence of comparative data everything is just hypothesis. On the other hand people who buy this need to believe with great conviction that a normal specc'd PC can't do what this player can do, after all they are paying such a lofty price

The bottom line here is, traditional CDP v/s PC is slowly morphing itself into PC v/s Optimized PC - that is interesting, me thinks.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

To be fair to Parasound, it is not as if they are claiming anything else, at least about the Linux-pc basis of the machine, I'm not going to dig so deep to find out about the actual optical drive.

A Lynx TWO-A sound card costs $1,000. Whilst it may (or may not, I don't know) be only a small percentage better than a Juli@ for substantially less cash, it is still an indicator of how much one might spend on the DAC/Analogue section of a high-spec machine. Of course, it does I as well as O: you get ADC as well, for your money. It is certainly not considered any sort of a bullshit product. If Lynx products were linux compatible, I would still yearning after one .

If Parasound, maybe, elected to design and build their own DAC/Output sections, then I suppose the quantities would be much less and the price would also be increase.

I have no idea if linear power supplies need to be expensive (or are even needed at all) but I know that some very juicy looking power supplies and cases we were discussing in another thread were far from cheap.

Of course, audiophile-price-tag prejudice happens --- but what I am saying is that, to be fair to parasound, the fact that that machine is 'just' a linux PC plus a few other bits does not necessarily make the price unreasonable.

Not necessarily. It would take rather more analysis to know.

And yes, listening to it might be interesting too :lol:

 

[thx911]

I'm not going to dig so deep to find out about the actual optical drive.

Let me do the digging for ya , Halo CD1 uses Sony AD-7800H DVD / CD writable discs, a slim volume, thickness 12.7mm.

Its interesting that most ardent CDP fans will be turned off if someone used a DVD drive for playing CD... its been drummed into my skull that DVD drive lenses is not optimized for CD reading and hence all DVD players are inferior to a dedicated CD lens. so how did Parasound indulge in such a blasphemy?

 

[reignofchaos]

Of course it has to have all these component, it better have it, how else are they going to justify the $4500 asking price? just for a ITX pc running linux with parasound label on it?

We really don't know for sure if a $500 PC can match this player or not, in the absence of comparative data everything is just hypothesis. On the other hand people who buy this need to believe with great conviction that a normal specc'd PC can't do what this player can do, after all they are paying such a lofty price

The bottom line here is, traditional CDP v/s PC is slowing morphing itself into PC v/s Optimized PC - that is interesting, me thinks.

Again - this is not a traditional CD player by any means. For each of these computers converted to cd player you find, you will probably find a hundred different models that use a normal or traditional philips or sony CD transport connected to an analog stage. The trouble is that because of CD players disappearing, dedicated transports are hard to come by and very very expensive. Hence most entry level to mid end players use a DVD transport or CD rom drive which might end up compromising sonics.

As for price, one has to use their head to decide what floats their boat. 4000$ might be expensive for you or me. However it might be chump change for someone else. It all depends on what one is comfortable spending.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Let me do the digging for ya , Halo CD1 uses Sony AD-7800H DVD / CD writable discs, a slim volume, thickness 12.7mm.[/thanks]
[quoteIts interesting that most ardent CDP fans will be turned off if someone used a DVD drive for playing CD... its been drummed into my skull that DVD drive lenses is not optimized for CD reading and hence all DVD players are inferior to a dedicated CD lens. so how did Parasound indulge in such a blasphemy?

Yes, I always heard the thing about not using a DVD player for stereo CD playback, probably most of us have heard it. I never thought much about it, because I didn't actually have a DVD player until recent years.

Just because something is audiophile lore does not mean that it is right. Maybe this is one of the myths? Also, maybe, as this drive is feeding data to a computer, there are different requirements, and different tolerances

Hmmm... I didn't set out to defend Parasound, but at this rate I'll end up buying one! :lol:

OK, No: that is not going to happen. I'm never going to have $4,500 to spend on any component --- not to mention the fact that, for a computer-that-plays-CDs, I'd want to make my own.