Can Redbook CD equal the best Analog?

[dcathro]

I'm thinking of Betteridge's Law of Headline's : "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Well, I happen to think it can, but i dislike confronting statements - tends to set the tone for an argumentative thread.

The interview is pretty interesting and they are certainly correct about the importance of power supplies with digital. I have yet to hear one of these systems in person, but my impression is that they do midrange really well for acoustic music, but bass, treble, and speed, not so well.

I have listened to Audio Note systems many times at shows, and they tend to do some things extremely well, but have never totally convinced me. I suspect it is their speakers, but can't be sure. Some individual components, I am told (by my friend who has reviewed them for Hifi-Critic), such as their top phono stage and this top level cd player, are the best they have heard.

I remember 20 years ago I was really excited about how good SACDs sounded and my friend would reply "Actually I read that Red Book CDs can sound just as good or better!" When I heard Red Book in his system, it did not sound good or noteworthy. My sense has always been some people have a psychological attachment to the format that they invested in, even if it really isn't fantastic. Granted, the quality of the recording is always most important, and the DAC makes probably as much or more impact than the recording format.

Interestingly, SACDs have always left me emotionally detached from the music, whilst Redbook, with all its perceived weaknesses, kept me engaged. I have found the quality of the transport to be equally, or more, important as the DAC.

I also remember all the discussions about why the earliest CDs sounded so bad. Maybe the converters were garbage and had phase distortion, the mastering engineers still thought they were working with vinyl, second generation tapes were used, etc. The big advantage of that era is the massive amount of dynamic range that was preserved and the lack of digital limiters.

I stayed with vinyl until 1991. My first CD player (an Arcam Alpha) sounded ordinary and I went through many player upgrades through the years. I also bought into the remaster craze and replaced most of my earlier CDs. By 2003 I had way more "resolution", but something was wrong. You know how you impress people with the sound of your system, but you don't spend hours listening to it yourself?

The turning point for me was the release of a remaster of one of my favorite albums - Al Stewart's Year of the Cat. I had loved listening to it on vinyl, and my 1991 CD did not have the same magic, sounding digital, metallic, thin and bright. I bought the remaster in the expectation that it would be closer to the vinyl, only to find the opposite. This lead me into exploring the whole concept that the remasters were an improvement over earlier releases. It also lead me to discover that much of my favorite music had been released on CD very early on. Not all early release CDs sound great, many suck, but the good ones are in a different realm to later CDs.

As an example, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was released on CD in 1983 by EMI/Toshiba for Japan, and (same mastering) by EMI/Harvest in 1984 for USA/Europe. In 1986 there was an announcement in the press about the re-release of the album, because they had not used the master tapes on the first issue. I can tell you with assurance that the first issue CD craps all over all later reissues!

After years working in the audio industry I found very few instances where 16/44.1 sounded better than the same source converted to 24 bit or DSD. The instances where it sounded better were with DACs that were noisy/measured poorly and benefited from not having as much dynamic range to deal with. Perhaps that is true for Audio Note.

A friend of mine, who worked as a mastering engineer for Sony, used to like saying 24bit CDs are 16 bits with 8 extra bits of marketing. People love numbers.

I definitely respect the lengths they are willing to go to get away from "digital" sound. I used to think DSD was the best way to go, but some DSD converters are also very clinical, and maybe there are other ways. I also suspect that the route Audio Note goes in order to constitute digital sources in an analog flavor alters the sound significantly with distortions. People are willing to pay massive cash for their systems, so they must sound really good, at least for some tastes.

My friend who reviews for HiFi-Critic tells me that the Audio Note player is something special

HiFi-Critic review

 

[tima]

Just because it has not been heard by some it does not mean it does not exist or will ever....

That's what they said about truth through LSD.

 

[tima]

Well, I happen to think it can, but i dislike confronting statements - tends to set the tone for an argumentative thread.

Can Redbook CD equal the best Analog?​

But, mom - he started it !r

 

[dcathro]

Can Redbook CD equal the best Analog?​

But, mom - he started it !

You think this will end in tears?

 

[Lampie519]

A friend of mine, who worked as a mastering engineer for Sony, used to like saying 24bit CDs are 16 bits with 8 extra bits of marketing. People love numbers.

Philips thought 14 bit would be sufficiant, then Sony stated that 16 would be optimal... so far so good...
Now indeed we needed more and more until we reached the point where even the consumer thought "enough is enough"... ( i still have a 16x16 Cambridge player ha ha)
Ok, then we try 1 bit !.... now we are at 5 bit and slowly going up again...

 

[tima]

You think this will end in tears?

I think it will never end.

 

[Al M.]

Philips thought 14 bit would be sufficiant, then Sony stated that 16 would be optimal... so far so good...
Now indeed we needed more and more until we reached the point where even the consumer thought "enough is enough"... ( i still have a 16x16 Cambridge player ha ha)
Ok, then we try 1 bit !.... now we are at 5 bit and slowly going up again...

I'm actually at 20 bit ladder DAC. Works nicely for my 16 bit CDs.

 

[Lampie519]

I'm actually at 20 bit ladder DAC. Works nicely for my 16 bit CDs.

But i guess you will have to do something with the missing bits otherwise it will get noisy...
So some kind of processing is needed.
No issue as i know it can be done with great results (i use NOS dac's with seperate upsampler myself)...

 

[Al M.]

Interestingly, SACDs have always left me emotionally detached from the music, whilst Redbook, with all its perceived weaknesses, kept me engaged. I have found the quality of the transport to be equally, or more, important as the DAC.

Fortunately I have never spent any time and money on the SACD format, in other words, I have never owned an SACD player. To this day I am more than happy with my decision.

I strongly suspect even terms of raw detail resolution, the best of current CD playback beats the SACD players around the turn of the milennium, about which all the hifi magazines raved at the time. We just didn't know how much sheer information was encoded on those humble silver discs until decades later.

 

[Lampie519]

Fortunately I have never spent any time and money on the SACD format, in other words, I have never owned an SACD player. To this day I am more than happy with my decision.

I have a number of SACD players to compare so i can say that these are no match against a 16bit disc (until someone convinces me otherwise....please not with words...)

 

[Al M.]

But i guess you will have to do something with the missing bits otherwise it will get noisy...
So some kind of processing is needed.
No issue as i know it can be done with great results (i use NOS dac's with seperate upsampler myself)...

I am sure the designer of my DAC (Mike Moffat, formerly from Theta Digital) has taken care of this. He's one of those who actually know what they're doing in the digital domain, not one of those who take a DAC chip, an ordinary off-the-shelf filter, put that into a fancy chassis with huge power supplies and sell it for big money.

 

[Al M.]

I have a number of SACD players to compare so i can say that these are no match against a 16bit disc (until someone convinces me otherwise....please not with words...)

No match in which way?

 

[Lampie519]

I think there is nothing wrong with a DAC chip as such, just it needs to be used correctly. DAC chips have advantages over descrete R2R converters, first of all they are very stable (if the rest is stable) plus very linear.... (not talking about delta sigma).

 

[dcathro]

I think it will never end.

As long as it stays civil

I am not coming at this from the old perspective that digital is better than vinyl. I know that the best vinyl can sound superb. What I am trying to get at is that there is far more potential to the humble CD format than we may believe.

Our industry is fickle and opportunistic. Vinyl became rubbish in the 80's, you had to relace all your CDs with remasters in the 90's, then SACD was the new King, and now we have "hi rez" streaming or a return to vinyl.

My argument is that each of these formats can sound wonderful, or not.

 

[Lampie519]

No match in which way?

One note and you will know LOL...
We try to compare analog to digital here so SACD falls short in every way.... (as stated earlier i am willing to accept my defeat in case....)

 

[Lampie519]

I am sure the designer of my DAC (Mike Moffat, formerly from Theta Digital) has taken care of this

Yes, i think they know indeed...so do the guy's from DCS, Chord and some "wizkids" from the Netherlands, not to forget some Japanese "sensei's"...

 

[Al M.]

I think there is nothing wrong with a DAC chip as such, just it needs to be used correctly. DAC chips have advantages over descrete R2R converters, first of all they are very stable (if the rest is stable) plus very linear.... (not talking about delta sigma).

Yes, but Moffat does not use an off-the-shelf filter, he designed his own.

He does use DAC chips, but for reasons of linearity he uses industrial precision chips (AD5791 BRUZ), normally used for medical and military precision applications, which he first had to tame for his purposes; they are not audio approved by the manufacturer.

 

[Addicted to hifi]

Some lps sound better than digital . I like to think cd can equal the sound quality of the best vinyl playback.sacds Is even better.

 

[astrotoy]

The best analogue to my mind is 15ips 2 track tape, particularly production or safety masters. Those are used to make digital copies, including CD's which come from analogue sources. They are also used to master LP's which come from analogue sources. Every safety master I have heard when compared with the digital version is better.

There may be some digital copies that exceed the analogue originals, with the right mastering engineer, working his/her magic. Winston Ma had some of the finest mastering engineers working for him producing his CD's which are the best CD's that I have heard. When I worked with him on my Decca book, he had two multi-Grammy award winning mastering engineers doing the four CD's that accompanied the book. Tremendous amount of back and forth between Winston (as producer) and the engineers (Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich).

Larry

 

[tima]

I am not coming at this from the old perspective that digital is better than vinyl. I know that the best vinyl can sound superb. What I am trying to get at is that there is far more potential to the humble CD format than we may believe.

And that's fine. I'll suggest that the thread title does no justice to what you're aiming at - it reflects that "old perspective" from which you're not coming. No need to mention vinyl at all unless you want an analog vs digital discussion - which I gather you did not.

Perhaps something like: "Is CD's potential greater than we believe?" or simply "CD's higher potential." Granted that threads wander all over the place their titles set expectation before post 1 is read. All imo.