Does a Rega Apollo sound better than a PS3?

[Anonymous]

All I can suggest is that your ears are not that great. I was recently involved in some blind testing and the conclusions were stark. I've never thought of myself as being someone with golden ears or anything but I would confidently pick out the differences in such a test that you performed. Even if you found that the PS3 was decent as a source, there is no way that it should sound the same as a decent cd player or in fact being used with the Beresford.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I did do a lot of DJing when I was younger and my ears have taken some abuse. I am planning to get some mates over to see what they think and see if I can rule out this question (I have also been wondering about this). If you're around Surrey I would happily see if you could pick out the different sources in a blind test

 

[Gerrardasnails]

hipe:
All I can suggest is that your ears are not that great. I was recently involved in some blind testing and the conclusions were stark. I've never thought of myself as being someone with golden ears or anything but I would confidently pick out the differences in such a test that you performed. Even if you found that the PS3 was decent as a source, there is no way that it should sound the same as a decent cd player or in fact being used with the Beresford.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I did do a lot of DJing when I was younger and my ears have taken some abuse. I am planning to get some mates over to see what they think and see if I can rule out this question (I have also been wondering about this). If you're around Surrey I would happily see if you could pick out the different sources in a blind test

Purley.

 

[Anonymous]

Gerrardasnails:hipe:

All I can suggest is that your ears are not that great. I was recently involved in some blind testing and the conclusions were stark. I've never thought of myself as being someone with golden ears or anything but I would confidently pick out the differences in such a test that you performed. Even if you found that the PS3 was decent as a source, there is no way that it should sound the same as a decent cd player or in fact being used with the Beresford.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I did do a lot of DJing when I was younger and my ears have taken some abuse. I am planning to get some mates over to see what they think and see if I can rule out this question (I have also been wondering about this). If you're around Surrey I would happily see if you could pick out the different sources in a blind test

Purley.

You are not far at all. I'm in Cobham. So, how about it, do you fancy coming over for a listening test? I would be very interested to get a second opinion...

 

[Gerrardasnails]

hipe:Gerrardasnails:hipe:

All I can suggest is that your ears are not that great. I was recently involved in some blind testing and the conclusions were stark. I've never thought of myself as being someone with golden ears or anything but I would confidently pick out the differences in such a test that you performed. Even if you found that the PS3 was decent as a source, there is no way that it should sound the same as a decent cd player or in fact being used with the Beresford.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I did do a lot of DJing when I was younger and my ears have taken some abuse. I am planning to get some mates over to see what they think and see if I can rule out this question (I have also been wondering about this). If you're around Surrey I would happily see if you could pick out the different sources in a blind test

Purley.

You are not far at all. I'm in Cobham. So, how about it, do you fancy coming over for a listening test? I would be very interested to get a second opinion...

try your friends first, I'd be surprised if they couldn't tell the difference.

 

[FunkyMonkey]

PJPro:FunkyMonkey:

Set the output frequency to 48kHz.

That can't be right!

Aye, when listneing to CD's. It sounded better than 44.1kHz output.

Plus, if anyone thinks all 0's and 1's are the same, please don't assume that reading bits and tranlsating them is teh same thing. The PS3 has 3 Bitmap modes - 1, 2, and 3. They all sound different, with 3 being considered the most "audiophile". Remember, PCM is a coded signal, and a machien can shape that any way it sees fit.

 

[gpi]

Gerrardasnails:hipe:
All I can suggest is that your ears are not that great. I was recently involved in some blind testing and the conclusions were stark. I've never thought of myself as being someone with golden ears or anything but I would confidently pick out the differences in such a test that you performed. Even if you found that the PS3 was decent as a source, there is no way that it should sound the same as a decent cd player or in fact being used with the Beresford.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I did do a lot of DJing when I was younger and my ears have taken some abuse. I am planning to get some mates over to see what they think and see if I can rule out this question (I have also been wondering about this). If you're around Surrey I would happily see if you could pick out the different sources in a blind test

Purley.

Aw chucks, at this time of year too. Hope you feel better soon. ;o)

 

[floyd droid]

Snigger.

 

[RCduck7]

FunkyMonkey:

The thing that makes the PS3 stand out is that it can play both file-based music (from a USB stick, hard-drive, etc) or a CD. The older model from a SACD.

You have to do certain things to get the optimum performance from a PS3:

Set the output frequency to 48kHz.

Set Bitmap Type to 3.

Set the volume to 0.

Use an external DAC.

With these settings, I think the PS3 would sound better than ANY - I mean that - ANY transport this side of £1k.

So what I am saying is that, given the versatility of the sources the PS3 can play, and because of the versatility of teh noise-shaping options you can use, I doubt if any source in the world would sound as detailed as the PS3. It literally extracts EVERY single bit of sound from a source. It's waht you do with that that makes a difference, hence my comment about ensuring you use a DAC.

Can you explain any further why and what it does when the output fequency is set to 48Khz and bitmap type level 3 is used?

I can upsample to 170+ khz with my older PS3, my DAC and amp can take it, so why would i go back to 48Khz?

Bitmap type level is 0.

 

[FunkyMonkey]

RCduck7:FunkyMonkey:

The thing that makes the PS3 stand out is that it can play both file-based music (from a USB stick, hard-drive, etc) or a CD. The older model from a SACD.

You have to do certain things to get the optimum performance from a PS3:

Set the output frequency to 48kHz.

Set Bitmap Type to 3.

Set the volume to 0.

Use an external DAC.

With these settings, I think the PS3 would sound better than ANY - I mean that - ANY transport this side of £1k.

So what I am saying is that, given the versatility of the sources the PS3 can play, and because of the versatility of teh noise-shaping options you can use, I doubt if any source in the world would sound as detailed as the PS3. It literally extracts EVERY single bit of sound from a source. It's waht you do with that that makes a difference, hence my comment about ensuring you use a DAC.

Can you explain any further why and what it does when the output fequency is set to 48Khz and bitmap type level 3 is used?

I can upsample to 170+ khz with my older PS3, my DAC and amp can take it, so why would i go back to 48Khz?

Bitmap type level is 0.

To my ears, bitmap type 3 sounds the most detailed and appealign to me. That's all.

Why would upsampling necessarily improve the sound? To me it inroduces artefacts in the sound. A bit like a sizzling sound. It sounds like a quiet cymbal crashign all the while, or very low level static. Awful. I have noticed this on other devices liek my old Philips DVD/SACD player.

 

[RCduck7]

FunkyMonkey:RCduck7:FunkyMonkey:

The thing that makes the PS3 stand out is that it can play both file-based music (from a USB stick, hard-drive, etc) or a CD. The older model from a SACD.

You have to do certain things to get the optimum performance from a PS3:

Set the output frequency to 48kHz.

Set Bitmap Type to 3.

Set the volume to 0.

Use an external DAC.

With these settings, I think the PS3 would sound better than ANY - I mean that - ANY transport this side of £1k.

So what I am saying is that, given the versatility of the sources the PS3 can play, and because of the versatility of teh noise-shaping options you can use, I doubt if any source in the world would sound as detailed as the PS3. It literally extracts EVERY single bit of sound from a source. It's waht you do with that that makes a difference, hence my comment about ensuring you use a DAC.

Can you explain any further why and what it does when the output fequency is set to 48Khz and bitmap type level 3 is used?

I can upsample to 170+ khz with my older PS3, my DAC and amp can take it, so why would i go back to 48Khz?

Bitmap type level is 0.

To my ears, bitmap type 3 sounds the most detailed and appealign to me. That's all.

Why would upsampling necessarily improve the sound? To me it inroduces artefacts in the sound. A bit like a sizzling sound. It sounds like a quiet cymbal crashign all the while, or very low level static. Awful. I have noticed this on other devices liek my old Philips DVD/SACD player.

I just did some testing.

For me it is quit the opposite really, when i upsample the sound becomes more open and more defined, no artefacts, at least not through my upsampling DAC. When i switch back to 48khz it really is obvious how much flatter and thinner it sounds. With the bitmapping on i couldn't dedect much difference though.

Sorry, this is slightly off topic... But yesterday was my lucky day, i am on a quest/dilemma of buying a good CD player and i could borrow someone his Chinese MHZS CD88 CD player, a brand i'm also considering. I thought my Xindak DAC 8 was the best sound i could afford, before that i had compared many sources including a modded DacMagic, a not to bad Marantz player, the DAC in my AV receiver, but all without noticeable difference, i thought all decent sources sounded samey... But when i tried the MHZS... god i was wrong. This CD player sounded much better, more weight to the sound, more musical, not to be stunned by the difference but still very noticeable. And that for a complete CD player costing slightly less then my standalone DAC! Not that my DAC is bad but in my system this MHZS cd player did shine! First i blamed the PS3 as a transport for it, but when i used the MHZS as a transport on my Xindak DAC-8 the sound coming out the DAC wasn't much better with this decent transport. This means the design, DAC and tube output stage must be rather good in this cd player. I also came across a board that with some cheap mods you could make it sound even better.

It makes me wonder how good their 2000£ flagship model with the high end Philips Pro mechanism could sound. If all goes well i might compare to some well regarded CEC cd player. I also like the design of the Chinese Jungson Impression CD player but will it sound better?? A demo with a dealer in my neigberhood is out of the question for that sort of chinese brands, that makes it a risk when you buy one sadly.

 

[idc]

RCduck7, any chance of putting some photos of your system on the Your systems part of the forum? It sounds as if it will look amazing!

 

[Anonymous]

I don't know if this surprises me or not.

There are two parts to a CD player - the transport, which lifts the 0's and 1's off the CD, and the DAC, which translates the signals to analogue, and sends them to the speakers so that you can hear the music. With a CDP, the transport has to take all the data on the fly, in virtual real-time, and send it to the DAC. This has the potential to lead to missed bits, or substituted bits where they have been missed. I would imagine that much of the quality of a CD player comes down to how well it does this. I believe the reason why the new Cyrus CD players sound so good (apparently) is because they claim to have found a more efficient way way to maximise the amount of data that can be read in near real-time. After that, it's down to the quality of the DAC and the speakers. CD player technology has been around for over 20 years, and hasn't really moved on. It is highly likely that the vast majority of CD player manufacturers do not use their own transport technology - it is likely to be third party, e.g. Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony etc. If you can bypass the DAC in your CDP, there is no reason why there will be too much difference between the PS3 and the Apollo, assuming the PS3 is doing a good job of extracting the bits from the CD.

If you take music from a hard drive, like me, this is not an issue because the CD drive rips the info off the CD, and keeps going until it has a perfect file. The DAC in my AVI's always receives a lossless file from my Squeezebox, which has already buffered the track that is playing. This is almost certainly a more efficient way of playing a CD track than using a CD player. In addition, when I rip a track using dbPoweramp, it compares the checksum on my files to others who have ripped the same track, therefore I know that the track is perfect. This is a luxury that no CD player has, AFAIK. But it also proves that no CDP, at any price, can do a better job of transport than my cheap PC drive, in my situation.

There is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

 

[Anonymous]

Cable Lover:

There is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

Cable Lover ... don't believe everything you read on that 'other forum!' ... They also say that all amps sound the same and they say that if your system sounds rubbish, its because your ears have not 'adjusted' and you are getting old! ...

 

[Anonymous]

dim_span:Cable Lover:

There is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

Cable Lover ... don't believe everything you read on that 'other forum!' ... They also say that all amps sound the same and they say that if your system sounds rubbish, its because your ears have not 'adjusted' and you are getting old! ...

It's not that forum. And it's nothing to do with AVI, directly or indirectly.

 

[RCduck7]

idc:RCduck7, any chance of putting some photos of your system on the Your systems part of the forum? It sounds as if it will look amazing!

My setup with the TV furniture may look a bit unclean rightnow but i will try to take a picture in the coming bussy days in the search of hifi nirvana.

Cheers.

 

[Anonymous]

dim_span:Cable Lover:

There is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

Cable Lover ... don't believe everything you read on that 'other forum!' ... They also say that all amps sound the same and they say that if your system sounds rubbish, its because your ears have not 'adjusted' and you are getting old! ...

Bump.

Here's the link. This is not to a forum, therefore I wouldn't expect it to be deleted.
http://www.codebunny.org/audio/cdtransports.html#transports
Again, it has nothing to do with AVI, therefore your paranoia is unwarranted.

 

[Anonymous]

there is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

So Cable Lover, if I read your posts correct, you are stating that a £200 brand new CDP sounds the same as a £5000 brand new CDP, and you dont see why some cdp's are priced so high?

 

[Anonymous]

hes saying that will be the case if you use the same dac except where the cdplayer has poorer error correction

personally i cant tell the difference between my cd player and my dvd player going through the same dac

the ps3 did sound much worse however

 

[Anonymous]

dim_span:
there is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

So Cable Lover, if I read your posts correct, you are stating that a £200 brand new CDP sounds the same as a £5000 brand new CDP, and you dont see why some cdp's are priced so high?

Let's put it a different way. If you take the DAC out of the equation, what difference do you expect to hear? I accept that there may be differences in the DAC, and the quality of the transport mechanism, both of which cost peanuts at the manufacturing price level. But tell me how you expect the 1's and 0's to sound diffferent? What does the CD player do to make digital data files sound different? It cannot be at the transport level.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Cable Lover:dim_span:
there is an article on another audiophile forum that shows that even the cheapest CD players are capable of ripping perfect data. I have no idea where the enormously high prices for some CDP's comes from.

So Cable Lover, if I read your posts correct, you are stating that a £200 brand new CDP sounds the same as a £5000 brand new CDP, and you dont see why some cdp's are priced so high?

Let's put it a different way. If you take the DAC out of the equation, what difference do you expect to hear? I accept that there may be differences in the DAC, and the quality of the transport mechanism, both of which cost peanuts at the manufacturing price level. But tell me how you expect the 1's and 0's to sound diffferent? What does the CD player do to make digital data files sound different? It cannot be at the transport level.

Sorry but this is nonsense. There are cd players and DVD players that use the same DAC but sound different. Case closed. The transport mechanism in a £5000 cd player will be so sophisticated compared to your budget £200 spinners. If what you say is true, all we would need to do is buy a cd player and open it up and replace the DAC for a better one (and it's been documented on here before that they cost peanuts).

 

[chebby]

Cable Lover: But tell me how you expect the 1's and 0's to sound diffferent? What does the CD player do to make digital data files sound different? It cannot be at the transport level.

Getting a bit hung up on that "just ones and zeros" there CL.

I am sure you have read up a bit on EFM signal (EFM = Eight to Fourteen modulation) and the radio frequency nature of the signal from the laser head and the importance of how distorted (or not) the resultant eye-pattern of the electrical signal representing the bits is. This 'radio' frequency signal has a tiny amplitude and must be amplified a lot. The quality of that amplification matters too. Even the nature of the non reflective paint under the disc (or lack of it or even worse shiny surfaces) in the transport can affect the level of 'scatter' and spurious reflections thus also affecting that delicate RF signal and it's eye-pattern.

Even the angle of the leading and trailing edges of the pits on the CD (which vary from disc to disc) can affect this. Mechanical vibration through surfaces (and airborne) can affect the process too, so transports where care is taken over mechanical isolation can pay an audible dividend over those that don't.

Not all CD transports are equal.

 

[Frank Harvey]

I've used both a Teac VRDS10 CD player and Pioneer DV737 DVD player as a CD transport, and both were hugely different. Some products you compare may only show a small difference, but there is a difference in CD transport quality, whatever source you use.

 

[Anonymous]

chebby:
Cable Lover: But tell me how you expect the 1's and 0's to sound diffferent? What does the CD player do to make digital data files sound different? It cannot be at the transport level.

Getting a bit hung up on that "just ones and zeros" there CL.

I am sure you have read up a bit on EFM signal (EFM = Eight to Fourteen modulation) and the radio frequency nature of the signal from the laser head and the importance of how distorted (or not) the resultant eye-pattern of the electrical signal representing the bits is. This 'radio' frequency signal has a tiny amplitude and must be amplified a lot. The quality of that amplification matters too. Even the nature of the non reflective paint under the disc (or lack of it or even worse shiny surfaces) in the transport can affect the level of 'scatter' and spurious reflections thus also affecting that delicate RF signal and it's eye-pattern.

Even the angle of the leading and trailing edges of the pits on the CD (which vary from disc to disc) can affect this. Mechanical vibration through surfaces (and airborne) can affect the process too, so transports where care is taken over mechanical isolation can pay an audible dividend over those that don't.

Not all CD transports are equal.

That's an interesting post that tells me about some of the variables on CD players. Fortunately, when ripping, I use Accurate Rip. This tells me that my checksum tallies EXACTLY with many others for the same piece of music. Therefore, overwhelmingly, there is a statistical certainty that my cheapo transport has pulled the data every bit as well as the most expensive CDP. This is not to say that the expensive CD won't prove more satisfying to use and longer-lasting. If cheapo transports achieve the same checksum as the expensive CD, they are no better or worse as far as the sound quality is concerned - how could they be?

Out of interest, do you believe that 1's and 0's should sound different? If so, why? It's completely illogical. If there is a definitive data file, and all the bits are captured..... The CDP is operating on exactly the same principle as any data drive.

 

[chebby]

Simply answering your question...

"What does the CD player do to make digital data files sound different? It cannot be at the transport level."

.. with a response that pointed out a few of the things that can affect performance of CD players 'at the transport level'.

So really it was aimed more at those who argue... "All CD players sound the same" than the other argument (about bit-perfect streams from ripped files vs CD players). That one I leave to you and others.

I hear a difference between Apple Lossless via my DAC and my current CD player (CD player much better) and I heard the difference between the same DAC and my old Arcam Solo-Mini (CD player much worse). Of course they all posess different DAC chips/op-amps etc. - and the players had different transports - so they would have sounded different.

I am not prepared to spend a fortune investing in a much 'better' DAC and better CD player, and then construct blind tests to make any definitive comparisons for the sake of a forum debate that is never going to end. Too expensive, too tiresome and won't move anyone away from their deeply entrenched positions. (Some held as a result of personal experience and some by personal incredulity that the application of 'science' to audio technology can result in a different sound from two seemingly identical systems to different people.)

 

[idc]

Cable Lover, are you saying that all transports are the same when they are being used to import CDs onto a PC, as opposed to all transports are the same period?