cline@aero.ARPA (Ken Cline) (09/25/85)
My friend's portable Sony Compact Disk player has some 'interesting' properties that may or may not be typical for the device. I would like to hear to hear evidence to the contrary, but in the absence of such, I suggest my tale be read as a warning, especially to the silver eared out there (*everyone* knows that silver sounds better than gold, despite its need for periodic cleaning). .Here's what happened... . .The scene: . .The Guest arrives for an exciting afternoon of automobile maintenance and .darts. Before any alcohol has been consumed, he voices his need to purchase .a new cd player with his newest plastic card. Analog, and proud of it, I .yawn, but by the time I open my eyes the Roommate has produced a portable .Sony CD player. The Guest exclaims "this is a showdown." Fearing not, I .warm up my DC to light pre-amplifiers, check the power cords to my .electrostatic speakers (for kinks which might impair their almost faultless .sonic reproduction), and rev up the turntable. The flimsy stereo micro jack .interconnects from the portable are plugged into the "tape" inputs of the .pre-amplifier. I laugh with glee at the thought of these puny magnet wires .competing with my teflon insulated superpure audio cables. Then, the Guest .inserts a recording of Symphony Phantastique, foreshadowing the evil about .to escape. The play button is carefully depressed, and the volume controls .are adjusted. We huddle in the sweet spot and listen... . .The result: . . Almost instantly, I find myself in uncontrollable fits. What is .happening... Prepared to sue the Dentist for every penny he's worth, I .stagger to my feet. The sound. The horrible sound. My hands race to cover .my ears, and the pain lessens enough for me to remember where I am, I .recognise wonderful music behind the curtain of some cruel alien death ray. .Staggering to my feet, I stumble out the door and collapse on the front .lawn. The death rays incapable of penetrating solid walls. . . After a seemingly long time, the Roommate and Guest arrive on the porch, .and they agree with me. "Fatiguing," says the Roommate. "This two bit .orchestra has nothing on the Berlin Phil!" exclaims the Guest. We reenter .the living room and listen to Karijan conduct the music, reproduced from real .vinyl. Magic fill the air... . . Meanwhile, the portable is analyzed, and the defect found to be a 770 kHz .ringing only a few db down from the signal! No wonder it sounded so .terrible, so horrible. Further tests confirm the worst, and the unit is .returned. ----------------- Seriously though... This particular unit did exhibit a large 770 kHz component of the signal, as well as the 20 kHz ringing we measured (and I HEARD!). We all agreed that the sound was not audiophile quality, although I do not know whether the harshness, or "edge", we heard would be a problem in a car stereo or on cheap headphones. I personally could not stand to listen to for very long because of the squeal - hissing is far less annoying to me. We all felt some discomfort in our ears after listening at a moderate volume level. Has anyone else out there noticed similar problems with this player? It seems to me that the unit we tested had FAR LESS dynamic range than was advertised. However, when my roommate found he could return the unit in exchange for cash, testing stopped. Thus I have no experience with other players of the same model. If someone can convince me that this behavior was an anomaly I'll retract my statements, but until then I'm going to listen to a portable cassette player, and choose my home cd machine with care. B>) - Who was that masked man? Ken Cline Cline@Aerospace.ARPA
pmr@drutx.UUCP (Rastocny) (09/27/85)
Yes...with this player and many others (mostly the first generation brick-wall filtered types). I too experienced ear fatigue. It seems that the more revealing/refined the rest of the reproductive chain is, the more pronounced this undesirable effect is. (And if audiophiles didn't complain about it, would anything be done? Probably not...) Yours for higher fidelity, Phil Rastocny AT&T-ISL ihnp4!drutx!pmr
sjc@mordor.UUCP (Steve Correll) (09/27/85)
> . Meanwhile, the portable [CD player] is analyzed, and the defect found > .to be a 770 kHz ringing only a few db down from the signal! No wonder it > .sounded so terrible, so horrible. Further tests confirm the worst, and > .the unit is returned. > > Seriously though... > > This particular unit did exhibit a large 770 kHz component of the signal, as > well as the 20 kHz ringing we measured (and I HEARD!). We all agreed that > the sound was not audiophile quality, although I do not know whether the > harshness, or "edge", we heard would be a problem in a car stereo or on > cheap headphones. I personally could not stand to listen to for very long > because of the squeal - hissing is far less annoying to me. Sounds to me like you need to upgrade your system. :-) Your speaker cables must have excessive IM distortion in order for the 770kHz component to beat down to a difference frequency within the audible range. (If your ears really do transduce 770kHz directly, then you must be in agony, poor soul, whenever an AM radio broadcast impinges on the filaments of an audiophile-quality tube amp, causing them to vibrate in sympathy.) Seriously, quite a few CD players put out a spurious tone at around 24 kHz (I've never seen it reported as low as 20kHz), apparently as a result of internal clocks beating against each other. Others (notably the new high-priced Sony full-size players) do not. -- --Steve Correll sjc@s1-c.ARPA, ...!decvax!decwrl!mordor!sjc, or ...!ucbvax!dual!mordor!sjc