DVD-Audiobahn New DVD-Audio music releases and talk about the latest players.

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"Hold the phone"

Posted by Christine Tham (R) on February 17, 2006 at 13:47:52

In Reply to: Sorry Frank, I believed what you believed too, but.... posted by jdaniel on February 17, 2006 at 08:57:44:

You said:

*** I've discovered that digital Lps are far better than their CD counterparts as well, suggesting that digital may not be the problem, it may be the CD or CD player issues. ***

I think you are absolutely spot on on this. It's the only explanation that fits the multitude of conflicting information on digital.

Consider this, when CDs first came out, we had lots of musicians and recording engineerings extolling the virtues of digital, and yet lots of audiophiles were complaining how bad CDs sound.

Can both be right?

I believe so. And a simple experiment convinced me. Record something at 44.1/16 using a high quality ADC. You will notice how good and transparent it sounds, even at so called "low res" (actually, adequate res). Now burn it on a CD-R. You will notice the CD-R does not sound (in many cases) as good as the source or even the digital recording on your hard drive. Amazing, but true (at least, in my experience).

I then did a LOT of research into trying to understand why this might be (after all, bits are bits, right?). I learnt a lot about jitter, and audible effects induced from PLL correction.

I ended up designing and building my own CD player that tries to replicate the kind of jitter performance you get from hard disk playback, and it does work.

The album that started me on this journey is James Newton Howard and Friends - a Sheffield Labs title that sounds great on LP but muddy and confused on CD. Well, when you rip that CD to the hard disk, you get a sound that's very similar to the LP - all the clarity in the high frequencies, and the subtlety and "speed" of the dynamics are restored.

PS - if anyone is interested, I have made a CD-R recording of Sting's "... Nothing Like the Sun" LP - which is a digital recording. If you compare it to the actual CD version of the album, you will notice the CD-R exhibits much better dynamics, soundstage, depth (of course, you also get scratches and surface noise, and a bit of groove distortion - can't win them all). If anyone is interested do their own comparison, I can mail them a copy of the CD-R (provided you can prove you have a copy of the album).

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Schiit Audio

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