Hi Venkat, without any intention of sounding harsh, I would not agree with any of your view points.
As long as we have healthy discussion on these points I have no issues. At the same time, I am not going to let go so easily.
This discussion started with the need to decide between CD (analogue) vs PC (Digital). We seem to have veered off into discussing old CD drives vs new CD drives. In any case, let me try to bring some semblance of order into the discussion.
To start with, you have pointed out the technological advances that has taken place in the last 20 years and hence you conclude that modern day CDPs are better. But unfortunately its not the case IMO. Most modern day technologies are being utilized to make cheaper CD players and not better Cd players. In fact technology is developed with the sole intention of cutting corners. I am talking about entry level Cd players and not the serious ones like the Wadias or Esoteric.
Gone are those days when CD transports were built like tanks and assembled within solid heavily isolated chasis structure so as to prevent the last ounce of vibrations to affect the process of digital data extraction. Those were the era when you heard terms like Stable platter (Pioneer), VRDS (TEAC), CDM Pro(Philips).
Those things have now been replaced with a flimsy DVD drive followed by some error correction mechanisms (technologically advanced) stuffed in some thin metal box. Where are the fundamentals ? When the foundation is so compromised, no amount of error correction can get back the integrity of the signal. It may rather do unpredictable things to music. Thats the reason serious players of this domain still use the best possible CD transport mechanism and over engineer around them.
Let us stick to CD players and to some semblance of budget limitations. If any of us can afford a Wadia or Esoteric, we would not be a member here and discussing all these points. A budget player such as those made by NAD, Marantz, CA, or Emotiva have been praised many times and I fail to understand how so many reviewers can praise something that has fundamental flaws. If you want to move up the ladder, Cyrus has walked away with so many awards. They have re-designed the player from ground up including developing a completely new transport mechanism. So have Emotiva.
Listen to what Rich Schmidt of Secrets has to say about the Emotiva CD Player - 'The sound from the ERC-1 compares very well with high end CD players, even those that cost an order of magnitude more, it has a plethora of outputs including balanced, a fabulous remote, it looks great on the shelf, clearly designed by some people who care about what they are doing... highly recommended.
All the time I had the ERC-1, I kept thinking of that intergalactic invading army, seeking revenge on planet Earth in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, "Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog." Either Emotiva has miscalculated how much they could charge for a CD player this good or all the other hifi manufactures have miscalculated how much they should charge. Dont get me started - too late... the remote control for my preamp costs the same as this CD Player (which has an excellent remote of its own!). I could go on but you know all too well how much this stuff costs.
And I have to think that Emotiva keeps costs down in part because they keep costs down, that is, they aim for a low price and work to achieve it. Obviously that is not the norm in high end audio gear.'
One of the greatest advantages of going digital is that all these issues of stability and such do not exist at all up to the source stage. Because analogue systems introduced errors that were difficult to differentiate from valid signal, designers were forced to follow expensive methods of reduce errors in all stages. You literally had to hold your breadth and pray to god the signal comes out clean. As many stages as you introduced in the delivery and amplification cycle, that many degradation in signals did you introduce.
A digital system, on the other hand, is much cleaner. The quality of digital transmission is independent of the medium. Wow, flutter, particulate noise, print-through, dropouts, modulation noise, HF squashing, azimuth error, and inter-channel phase errors are all gone. Any error at any stage can be corrected by error checking and correction. The new USB medium has two way communication. The receiving station can actually do a checksum error and instruct the source to resend the data. All this is easier and faster to do on a disk based system rather than a CD based system. Though you can do it on a CD based system, you have build large buffers in the player to avoid re-read. In a PC based system, even if needed, re-read are faster. If you have 4 GB RAM, you can store a complete song in a buffer and resend it as many times as needed. Gone are your shakes and need for stability.
As far DAC is concerned, again there is a lot of tech talk regarding specs and ratings. 192khz, 24 bit, 110db SNR etc etc...does any of these guarantee better musicality ?? Can you buy a CDP solely based on these specs ? Unfortunately, I am yet to hear a 24 bit, 192khz oversampled DAC that does not sound analytical
. I dont say its wrong to up/over sample but its the implementation that matters rather than just the DAC chip. The DACS in the yesteryear's CDPs were very well implemented in general with dedicated power supplies, high quality components, well isolated thoughtful and elaborate circuitry, they did not rely on oversampling to get more detail, rather they tried best not to lose anything from what is coming in. The DAC implementation of a Marantz CD94 (built in mid 80s) would kill any DAC under $1000 manufactured today. These machines were legends not by chance.
'Musicality' is subjective, and what you like is your choice. But in DAC, since it is digital, measurements are easy to make and is not subjective. Twenty years ago getting a SNR of over 100dB was impossible or very expensive. Today a 200$ unit can do that with ease.
Once you get data out of the DAC with specifications as close to what you set as desirable, you then tweak around it to give it the 'musicality' you desire. But that does not alter the fact that the specifications of modern DAC have improved and that their prices have gone down.
If you read my extract of John Atkinson's review of the Asus Xonar XT, you will understand he was forced to compare the 200$ card with a Ayre DAC costing 2500$. Even at that level of comparison, all he could say was that the Ayre DAC had more 'there' there. The conclusion was very subjective as John could hardly find any clearly perceptible difference between the two.
Even otherwise, buying a DAC for $1000 doesnt mean you are all set, you need to spend at least another $500 on a good transport to justify the output of your $1000 dac purchase. Add another $100-200 on a good digital cable and if you are serious you also need two decent power cords...where are you heading sir ? You are close to $2000 and for that price you are better off buying a one box CDP. That will yield better sound quality and relatively easy to buy and sell.
Cables interconnects, etc are common to both digital and analogue system, so let us leave them out. Using your argument, you cannot connect a Marantz CD 94 to a pre/amp using cheap cables and hope to get good music.
In terms of transports, with a digital system, you
do not need any transport at all. Everything is on your hard disk.
And in terms of costs, if you calculate in terms of storing and playing one song, a digital transport and delivery mechanism will be far far cheaper. A well built HTPC can deliver songs to you at less than 50 paise a song. As you play the songs more, these costs will only go down. And, irrespective of how many times you play it. the quality will be the same. You cannot say that of TT or even CDPs.
I agree that there some high definition music files on the net but they are very limited in number and choice and they are not available free. It is still a good 5 years before we can see this format mature and abundantly available for affordable price.
The CDPs that Unleash is considering are superb machines, just that they are old but I am sure he would still get a good 5 years of service from them (if it is well maintained) and may be even more. Anyway a NAD or a CA CDP doesnt last for more than 5-6 years of regular use, for the same money why not buy something 20 times better.
Bottom line !!! There is no replacement for an high quality CD player even today if you are looking for high quality music reproduction. I would not waste my precious time listening to some ripped flac file off a flimsy DVD drive if I have a top quality CDP lying besides it. Its about priority. Convenience Vs Quality !!
I am not sure where you are searching, but I have been able to find literally every album I can think of on the Net. And, why should it be free? Are your CDs free?
We are also not talking about playing some 'ripped files off a flimsy DVD drive'. We are talking about properly digitised music files off a well constructed HTPC. The format is unimportant.
And, I am not talking about NOT using a CD Player if you already have one. In that case, of course, it does not make sense to build a digital system. But if you have to decide between building a digital system, and buying a CDP, then the points raised in this thread make sense enough to consider
Cheers
