On Fri, 9 May 2008 21:52:02 -0700, 223rem wrote
(in article <g039li01t42@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>):
> My (limited) understanding is that what makes high-end CD players so
> good is their superior Digital to Analog conversion. So if you're going
> to take the digital output (optic or coax) from such players and plug it
> into a amplifier you're NOT going to get any benefit; you might as well
> play the CDs on a 20 dollar CD player. To really enjoy their superior
> playback quality you have to use the analog output and a good quality
> amplifier.
>
> Am I right?
First of all, if you take the digital output and plug that into an
amplifier,
all you will get is "computer noise" (actually, you likely won't get
anything
that you can actually hear, at all.) because you must go through some kind
of
DAC first. :->
But makers of high-end CD players do a number of things to justify their
price. Many use special trans****ts (the mechanical part of the player)
designed to reduce jitter and stabilize the CD as it spins. Many use
special
clock circuits, again to reduce jitter and some separate the analog power
supply from the digital power supply, in an effort to keep digital
clocking
noise out of the music. Some use expensive DACs designed to reduce
quantization error by making each stair-step more precisely the same size.
Others use discrete transistor or even tube analog stages over IC
operational
amplifiers for "better sound". And still others use such tricks as
processing
a 16-bit CD with a 24-bit DAC and oversampling at 96 KHz. None of these
measures will hurt the sound of the CD, and on a theoretical level, many
of
these things should be improvements over a cheap CD player with a cheap,
run-of-the-mill chip set. The problem is that nobody has been able
demonstrate that any of these "featured improvements", either alone or in
concert with others, makes for better CD playback.
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