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In Reply to: Dennon 5000, dealer says it's worlds best CD player... posted by dy/dx on March 23, 1999 at 15:02:19:
Here's a post I made in another forum:
In my experience, CD players all sound about the same. I know this flys in the face of a lot of opinion. Compare for yourself. I've compared cd players plugged into my current set up and haven't noticed a difference. Currently I have two CD players and a mini disc running into my pre amp. One of the CD players is JVC 100 disc changer connected to my preamp with analog interconnects. The other is a Marantz cd67se connected with a digital coaxial interconnect. I've tried the Marantz with analog interconnects too. When I match levels as closely as I can by ear, I notice no difference. I think I can hear a slight roll off of the highs with the minidic compared to the CD players but am not sure. In case you're wondering, I'm not hard of hearing. If you want to read a good article, order or pick up a copy of the April/May issue of The Sensible Sound, issue 74. On page 28 they review a $79.95 RCA carousel CD player. It was compared to much more expensive 'audiophile' CD players - no difference in sound quality. What you pay for with expensive CD players is better fit and finish, higher quality materials, pride of ownership and possible longer life. Sound quality remains solidly the same from $79.95 RCA carousel players to multi thousand dollar single drawer players.
I understand why reviewers put $500 CD players in $50,000 systems. There seems to be a threshold of resolution in audio, below which everything sounds the same. Reviewers must be pretty sure they're not going to like stuffing a mass-market piece into their highly-tweeked systems, but it's the only way to evaluate performance. Can you imagine putting studded-snow tires on a Ferrari? You might not even notice them on a Yugo, but they make the Ferrari undriveable. The tire manufacturer would say the Ferrari is not worth the price, as it doesn't perform any better than the Yugo. Mr. Ferrari wouldn't even acknowledge the existance of the tire manufacturer.
If I understand your argument, you seem to imply that at the very high end of audio, you would notice a difference between a low price cd player and a high price cd player. You use the Ferrari analogy for the extreme high end of audio and the Yugo analogy for the low end of audio with the studded snow tire analogy for the low price cd player. You say that the snow tire might not be noticed on the Yugo but that with the Ferrari the difference would be apparent. Let me suggest that this is not an acceptable analogy. A cd player is simply a device that extracts digital data. It either grabs those ones and twos or it doesn't. There are people that will argue the relative merits of the DAC's a CD player uses but they're splitting hairs. I've owned and compared at least six cd players, four of which I've run through the same preamp/amp/speakers. I've compared them with digital and analog interconnects. I notice NO difference. I urge you to try for yourself. Take a cheap but fully functional cd player and listen to it side by side with any other cd player. Make sure you match levels as best as you can. Try to be as objective as possible. It's hard to be objective when you might have hundreds or thousands tied up in your cd player, but try. I think you'll see my point. Speakers and room placement - this is where you'll see the most gain.
I've only done casual listening for 20 minutes or less, using a JVC 1050 player with and without an EAD DSP-7000 III outboard processor, and level matching with the digital Radio Shack meter. My experience was that I heard an immediate and clear deepening and widening of the soundstage, and the entire frequency spectrum became, I don't have the words...easier to listen to. For a reference, I put on a nearly 30-year-old LP of the recording I was listening to on CD (Joni Mitchel). Sorry to say that the LP was so much better at soundstaging and getting the female voice right that I ended up listening to LP's the rest of the night. I find it hard to listen to CD's for long periods of time. But you've convinced me to try my A/B testing again, since I do have a few CD players hiding out in closets.
One final note, in the video system I had another JVC 1050 running digital out to a HK Sig. 2.0 pre/processor. I substituted a McCormack SST-1 transport (surely this qualifies as a premium machine) and was not happy with the sonic result. Once again I did not listen long and this time I did not level match with my RS meter. It was clear to me that this substitution would not work because there was so much "noise" leaking onto the tv screen as to make it unwatchable. I immediately put the JVC back and the noise was gone. This alone should make one wonder about the differences between designs.
Reference system for digital front-end testing:
Celestion SL600Si, lead-filled Celestion stands
Nordost Blue Heaven bi-wire or AQ midnight III bi-wire
McCormack DNA 0.5 reworked by Steve to Revision A level
Have Canare interconnect to closet: (spiked and sand-filled racks)
ARC LS3 in direct mode, Blue Heaven single-ended
EAD DSP-7000 III , Have Canare Digiflex gold,
Celestion DLP600 digital loudspeaker equalizer, Digiflex gold
McCormack SST-1 transport/ JVC XL-Z1050 player / JVC XL-Z331 player
Audio Power Industries Power Wedge line conditioner: feed comes directly from the house box.
the room is small but modified by sonnex and carpeting at first reflection points, and J-10's cardboard box/newspaper tweek in the corners.
the system is down while I wait for the Audio Physic Virgo's to arrive. It will take me a few weeks to position the speakers and break them in. Would you be interested in my conclusions?
Oh yea, one final thing: on a clear, hi-res system, you really don't have a clue about matching SPL. You must use a meter.
after reading some of your posts on the flamer's site I realize the futility of this exercize. Goodby.
Futile is as futile does.
I respect your opinion, but most on this forum would probably disagree. I know I have compared cd players in the same system and they do not sound the same. Many years ago, I thought they all sounded the same. At the time I had a Sony portable which sounded nice musically, but made mechanical noise, so I bought an Adcom 575 thinking it would sound the same, but be better constructed and be quieter mechanically. 3 or 4 weeks later I realized that I had not been listening to cds all the way through and was playing LPs more. I hooked the Sony back up and it was instant relief. The Adcom was very fatiguing. This was my introduction to the fact that all cdps do not sound the same.
I'm not trying to convince you. I can't. Only you can. I don't buy into a lot of tweaks out there, but I don't generally argue with those that do. After all. given the above, I have been wrong before :-)
Anyway, enough said. Lets not turn this into an "is - ain't" kind of discussion. Some people just have a different opinion.
Regards.
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