[net.audio] more digital ramblings

newman (03/15/83)

The duke of denet somewhat missed my point when commenting on my statement
that all CD players will sound essentially alike; his point about the
shortcomings of the analog side still being there are of course correct,
but that has nothing to do with my statement. All I said or meant was that
if you take two CD players connected in a given system, there is not much 
point in A-Bing them for sound quality, naturally assuming they are 
operating correctly and aligned properly. There was another article that
said that some CD players drop the two LSB's out - I find that hard
to believe, because of the heavy dependence on word length for quality
D/A conversion; the current word length (14?) is minimal to keep cost
down to the point where people will buy the things. Can you name
players that do this?
I'd like also to toss in my two cents on the Telarc 1812 "torture record".
The only cartridge that I'm aware of that can track the cannons is the
Shure V15 V, and maybe the IV. (Not the plain vanilla Telarc; there have
been ultra-fi JVC pressings that are even more extreme). I think the quote
"If you can track those, your system is a real winner!" incorrectly equates
cartridge performance to the tracking of HIGHLY unreasonable groove
excursions that are found on only one disc. The peak velocities found
during the cannons are enough to cause many fine cartridges to mistrack
badly, but I would hesitate to dismiss the performance of these cartridges.
Let's be realistic - no matter how good cartridges get, cutters can
probably be made that will produce an untrackable groove. This is another
problem that conveniently goes away with CD's.

Cheers,
Ken Newman

jeff (03/28/83)

An interesting article in BILLBOARD for 3/19, about the North American Philips
(NAP) CD press conference held on 3/7, noted that the NAP (Philips, Magnavox)
player is 14 bits, and will cost $800.
Another article notes that the Denon (nee Hitachi) CD player will not
be marketed now.
Jeff

jeff (04/01/83)

Sony has announced a new CD player in Japan, the CES-701, for Y260,000 (about
$1100).  This unit, which has 5(five)5 built-in microprocessors, allows 
direct keypad input of the location on the disc where play is desired.
Also, the dynamic range is up to 95dB (vs. 90dB claimed for the CDP-101)
and the separation is at 90dB (vs. 60dB, I think, for the CDP-101).  Now,
weren`t we really all quite satisfied with a d.r. of 50dB (on the outside tracks)
and a separation of 30dB for analogue disks?
jeff