Video Asylum

Posted by John C. - Aussie (i) on November 29, 2000 at 12:33:16:

In Reply to: DVD vs. CD sound posted by Gordy on November 29, 2000 at 11:01:18:

... appear to be very successful from reports posted here. The basic problem with redbook PCM (the standard of digital audio recording used on both CDs & DVDs) is time errors known as jitter. Inexpensive players (both CD & DVD) do not have good jitter control and their processors are pretty basic. Also, DVD players usually concentrate on video so, for $1000, a CD player can be expected to give better audio output than a $1000 DVD player which has much of its circuitry processing the video.

Now that is not to say some are not better than others and there are no acceptable $1000 players around. Sadly however there is no cheap road to good audio reproduction from digital encoding. Personally I do not have wide experience with many players so leave it to others to make specific recommendations. Also do a search using AA's search engine as there has been heaps of discussion on all this.

A final note - there is a new generation of DVD players just around the corner, those able to play DVD-A so this is not really a good time to buy. However this is something else to absorb the dollars so the CD audio might not be so good. Against that decoding chips are improving all the time so next year's DVD player might be much better than those available now and might not cost any more. It is a confusing situation.

Good luck, but do LOTS of research befor buying

John