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Hey thereI am debating or not whether it is time to replace my NAD 502 CD player with a DVD player (< $300) or not. But...
I am getting slightly confused about DVD player and thier capabilities. Here are my questions :
1) What is 96KHz/24 bit mean for me ? Does this improve the sound of CDs ?
2) Is a DVD player able to play regular CDs ? Will it sound better or worse than my NAD 502 ? What DAC is being used in the DVD player to play audio CDs ?
3) Can DVD Players play CD-Rs or CD-RWs ? Why can some can and other can't ?
4) What is this problems I am hearing with budget DVD players ? Lip Sync ? Not able to play Matrix...why ? Etc...
5) What is DVD Audio ? Is this the 96/24 thing ? Do I need a seperate player to play DVD Audio ? Why ? If so...will current crop of DVD players be extinct ?
There thats all the questions for now....thanks !!! :-)
-DJ Mo
Check out the exchange, below, entitled "Predicting the Future: DVD". Again, with helpful answers provided by RichardH.
hello DJ Mo,well, let me see if i can tackle some of these....
1) What is 96KHz/24 bit mean for me ? Does this improve the sound of CDs ?
96/24 refers to a higher bit rate and sampling rate used to improve sound quality. however, you can only take advantage of this if you have software that is recorded in 96/24 (like some audio-only dvds). as far as i know, there is nothing inherently better about using a 96/24 DAC when listening to regular 16/44 cd's.
2) Is a DVD player able to play regular CDs ? Will it sound better or worse than my NAD 502 ? What DAC is being used in the DVD player to play audio CDs ?
yes, all dvd players can play regular cds. whether it will sound better than your NAD depends on what dvd player you get, but i would suspect that your NAD would sound better than most (if not all) $300 dvd players. which DAC being used depends on how the dvd player is hooked up. if you hook it up via a digital coax/optical cable, you are using the DACs in your receiver/pre-amp. if you hook it up using analog RCA, you would be using the dvd player's DACs. which you choose would depend what has the better DACs: recevier/pre-amp or dvd player.
3) Can DVD Players play CD-Rs or CD-RWs ? Why can some can and other can't ?
yes, some can and some can't. i think the reason is that some dvd players have two lasers, one optimised for reading dvds and another for cds. other players only have one. either kind of player can read regular cds, but only the dual-laser ones can read cd-r's. this is what i heard; i'm not entirely sure if it's true. however, i have a pioneer 525 (dual-laser) and i have played cd-r's on it. i have heard that toshiba players can't.
4) What is this problems I am hearing with budget DVD players ? Lip Sync ? Not able to play Matrix...why ? Etc...
well, those problems scared me too, and i waited a while longer to get my player. i think a lot of the "lip-synch" problems had to do with bad dvds and weren't the fault of the player. however, some players had a problem, the most complained about one being the pioneer 414 (predecessor to my 525). however, people reported that after getting firmware updates, most if not all problems disappeared. i haven't had any problems at all with my player. (have watched about a dozen movies, including "the matrix", "heat", "super speedway", etc.) if you're worried about it, just buy from some place like crutchfield that has a good return policy.
5) What is DVD Audio ? Is this the 96/24 thing ? Do I need a seperate player to play DVD Audio ? Why ? If so...will current crop of DVD players be extinct ?
dvd audio is a new standard that is competing with sony's new "sacd" standard. no, it is not the same as 96/24 audio-only dvds. (confusing, no?) there are only a handful of dvd players which will play dvd-audio. current budget players will not. a different decoding chip is needed for the dvd audio signal. current dvd players will not be obsolete because they will still play dvd movies fine. that standard is not going anywhere soon. dvd audio is just for music, as it's name would suggest, and i think it'll be quite some time before it reaches critical mass. not to mention sacd could "win."
well, i hope that helps some.
other inmates, if you see anything that i got wrong, please let me know about it.thanks,
richard h
1. Some audio CDs are on the market that have been remastered for 96/24 and should sound better on DVD players (all other things equal)
3. My understanding is that CD-R and CD-RW lasers are higher energy and are incompatible with older low energy lasers.
5. The DVD-Audio players will have more than 96/24; they will be DD5.1 as well. So multiple channel music is now possible. That is an advantage over SACD which is planned for 2-channel only; also they may be going to 192/24 in the future. I hear most of the DVDA players planned will be compatible with SACD as well so there may be no "battle." Supposed market date was this fall but now it may miss Christmas (bummer). The DVD-Video players now will play DVD-Audio discs but they are at a higher data compression rate so they will not sound quite as good as the DVD-A players. I have heard the difference and it is barely discernable to my poor ears.
Richard HAhh thanks for responding.
I am curious...does 96/24 mean that the sound can be extended to 96Khz ? Or is the 96Khz something totally different ? If not...then the 16/44 means that CDs can only reproduce upto 16Khz ? :-P
Also if there are "audio only dvd discs" then why isn't this the next big audio medium ? I mean why aren't record companies releasing more stuff on the 96/24 format, than jumping to a totally new DVD Audio format ?
How does your Pionner DVD player handle CDs ? Comparable perfomance to your CD player (what is it btw) ? What difference (if any) do you clearly notice ?
-DJ Mo
ok, i think it goes something like this:for each sample, you have to record amplitude
amplitude ranges from positive X to negative X.
the number of levels of volume is determined by a 16 bit number, something between -(2^15) and 2^15
44khz is the number of those 16 bit numbers per second.cd's can go up to 20khZ (freq) and maybe higher. the 24bit/96khZ means that you have a greater accuracy in saying exactly how loud any particular sound is. (kind of like 65k colors vs. 256) the 96khZ means that you have more of those measurements per second. (roughly double what regular cd's do)
how that translates into perceived improvement in sound quality is not that simple, though. a poorly recorded 96/24 dvd will still sound bad. people have reported that 96/24 is definitely better than cd, but it still has some of that "electronic haze" associated with it. supposedly sacd is good enough to finally surpass vinyl for "musicality" whilst retaining an extremely low noise floor.
i don't know why dvd audio or sacd will be the next standard instead of 96/24 audio dvds. maybe 96/24 is not enough of an improvement so people want to just leapfrog that step? it will probably benefit consumers in the long run. i'm not entirely sure, but i think at the present, sacd's are available as hybrids, where they have two layers. one can be read at the standard 16/44 by regular cd players, and the other layer takes advantage of the sacd technology and can only be played by an sacd player. dvd-audio does not have provisions for a similar "backward compatability." with such an enormous installed base of cd players, things seem to favor sacd. i think sacd is supposed to sound better too. though it is only two-channel at the moment. moreover, i am doubtful as to the benefits of multi-channel music. if i were making the decision, i would make sacd the standard, keep it at 2 channel, and if people want more ambience, use "5-channel stereo" or "circle surround" on your receiver/pre-amp.
the pioneer plays cd's fine. my cd player is a non-es sony jukebox (cdp-cx220), so it's not that great. i am using them both as transports (optical from sony, coax from pioneer) to my denon receiver (decent quality 96/24 DACs). i couldn't tell a difference switching between the two with the same cd playing in each, but that's not surprising. for one, i'm only comparing their performance as transports, not as whole cd players. i bet there's a greater difference between the two if i was using their built-in DACs instead of just as transports. also, the receiver and speakers (denon avr-1700, infinity rs-5) might not be capable of demonstrating the differences. that being said, it sounds great to my ears, and that's what counts, right?
richard h
I would agree with your assessment except that I heard a very convincing demo of multichannel music (DVDA DD5.1 96/24). The comparison was to the original eight channel studio master tape on some very impressive equipment. I was thrilled and excited. I get flamed everytime I try to bring up multichannel music here, but I think it is coming and will be accepted by enough people to last. Who knows? It wasn't the old ping-pong of Quad days. And DVDA is compatible with installed DVDV players whereas SACD is radically different. My guess is that manufacturers will make all-in-one players and it won't matter. Between this and digital TV standards changing, these are interesting times.
In my system, using the Pioneer DV414 as a CD transport to feed a Mark Levinson No. 360S processor, the sound was disconcertingly sibilant. When I routed the signal from the Pioneer through an MSB Technology Digital Director, which is a digital video switcher with a built-in anti-jitter device, the sibilance decreased to a more natural level. Bass also firmed up. Although the Pioneer can read CDs, it doesn't do so without laying a lot of jitter onto the music. I was hoping a cheapie DVD player would make a decent CD transport, but there's no free lunch.JS
To answer your other questions:Sampling rate has nothing to do with frequency response. 16 bit means it samples 16 at a rate of 44.1 kHz. Thus 24 bit sampled at 96 kHz.
In terms of releasing more stuff on 96/24. It takes time for changes in format which is what we are talking about here. That takes time. Besides it would mean everyone would have to replace their cd players with new players & all of their software. Not a happening thing. Finally with 2 formats which are incompatible with each other (shades of beta & vhs?), most people will wait.
According to the Nyquist Theorem, audio bandwidth is half the sampling frequency.eg at 44.1kHz the max freq. is 22.05kHz
at 96kHz 48kHz is attainableDVD-A will allow sampling rates of up to 192kHz, allowing a 96kHz bandwidth.
Compare that with SACD's Direct Stream Digital's 2.8224Mhz sampling rate which allows a theoretical bandwidth of 1.4Mhz.
Hope this clarifies things for you re; sampling rates and frequency response.
michael w
Yes it does. Thank you. This is the first clear explanation I have seen.
no problemo
michael w
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