I have a cd100 bought in 1983. It sounds pretty good on modern cds, but is
horribly slow to find any tracks and skips if a fly lands on the case.
Brian

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The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

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"Woody" wrote in message
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"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
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On 13/11/2017 12:39 AM, D.M. Procida wrote:
Now that the contents of a CD can be held in RAM, never mind in other
cheaper and still very fast digital storage, what does an expensive CD
player offer that a cheap transport and a decent digital-to-analog
converter cannot?

If DAC products can buffer seconds' or even minutes' worth of data, and
can stream it out to the actual DAC circuitry with GHz precision, there
doesn't seem to be much need any more for costly CD players.

Am I missing something?

**A CD player, unlike a computer transport, interpolates errors. It does
not re-request information be re-read. An argument can be made that a
higher quality transport (more expensive) may read disks without issuing
as many errors. Are those errors audible? Unlikely, except under extreme
circumstances. Nonetheless, high quality transports add very
significantly to the cost of a CD player.

More expensive CD players tend to use the (now old fashioned) multi-bit
DACs (parallel), rather than the more common (and FAR less expensive)
single bit DACs (serial). Parallel DACs are MUCH more expensive to
implement, due to the large number of precision resistors and capacitors
required (one for each bit).

Some expensive players use multiple DACs, whose outputs are summed,
allegedly in order to reduce errors.

Some expensive players use very high performance OP amps. Some use
discrete component output stages (my own Harman Kardon HD-970 does),
which inevitably cost more than integrated OP amps.

Some expensive players use valves in the output stages, for some
unknowable reason. This requires a bunch of expensive support circuitry.


Best sounding player I've had in my system?

A Marantz CD80 (ca. 190-ish). Fabulous sounding player. Not stupidly
expensive. Not cheap either.




Interesting observation.

For some reason I always thought my first 14-bit Philips (CD104?) sounded
better than anything I had later, and that the one that I bought to
replace it some years later (16-bit parallel) also sounded better. That
machine now sits with a very elderly lady we know and I will reclaim it
when she passes. Comparison with my present Marantz CD5400SE will be
interesting.


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Woody

harrogate3 at ntlworld dot com