If the CD medium is so inferior.......

[The_Lhc]

I have to admit, given all the comments elsewhere about how PC rips are better because the PC re-reads the cd many times over so that it doesn't have to do error-correction on the fly, I fail to understand why someone doesn't make a CD player that spins at more than single-speed (what were PC drives up to 50x?) and effectively rips the entire CD to a buffer (memory is CHEAP and you don't even need 1 Gig with wav files!), complete with re-reads and then plays you the buffered music as if it were the CD. Yes you'd need to give it a couple of minutes to "rip" the CD, which might be annoying, and high-speed CD drives are noisy (but you could shut the CD drive off once it's ripped the disc). That way you'd bypass the whole error-correction side of the mechanism and enjoy the "improved" sound that people reckon they get from loseless ripped music.

After all, the format on the CD is just WAV, so in theory it makes no difference whether you're playing it from the disc directly or from memory AND you get all the benefits of reading the disc more than once.

Or am I talking nonsense?

 

[Anonymous]

Trevor what lossless files do the sony dvd recorders support

thanks

 

[Anonymous]

Had to get the manual out and look it up!

It will record up to 99 CD's in Dolby Digital 2 ch.

Has 3 settings - EP (256 Kbps), SLP and SEP (128Kbs).

It has no more info than that, other then it can rip your MP3 files off its USB port which is handy if you want your iPod music on its Hard Drive.

 

[Tony_R]

the_lhc:
I have to admit, given all the comments elsewhere about how PC rips are better because the PC re-reads the cd many times over so that it doesn't have to do error-correction on the fly, I fail to understand why someone doesn't make a CD player that spins at more than single-speed (what were PC drives up to 50x?) and effectively rips the entire CD to a buffer (memory is CHEAP and you don't even need 1 Gig with wav files!), complete with re-reads and then plays you the buffered music as if it were the CD..........

I believe at least one manufacturer (Meridian?) already has a player that does this.

It doesn't rip the entire CD at once however - it simply buffers the first few seconds of playback (all that's needed I think) and then plays back effectively from memory.

For accurate reads, it's not even necessary to spin the disc faster - however my guess it probably helps - all that's needed is the time to re-read the disc in the event of errors.

 

[chebby]

the_lhc:
I have to admit, given all the comments elsewhere about how PC rips are better because the PC re-reads the cd many times over so that it doesn't have to do error-correction on the fly, I fail to understand why someone doesn't make a CD player that spins at more than single-speed (what were PC drives up to 50x?) and effectively rips the entire CD to a buffer (memory is CHEAP and you don't even need 1 Gig with wav files!), complete with re-reads and then plays you the buffered music as if it were the CD. Yes you'd need to give it a couple of minutes to "rip" the CD, which might be annoying, and high-speed CD drives are noisy (but you could shut the CD drive off once it's ripped the disc). That way you'd bypass the whole error-correction side of the mechanism and enjoy the "improved" sound that people reckon they get from loseless ripped music.

After all, the format on the CD is just WAV, so in theory it makes no difference whether you're playing it from the disc directly or from memory AND you get all the benefits of reading the disc more than once.

Or am I talking nonsense?

That's a lot of effort to re-invent the wheel (computer based music but without the computer) only without all the other benefits like being able to make any number of personalised playlists quickly just by dragging tracks into them or being able to instantly find any artist, album, track etc. with just a click or two.

Without things like tape decks around anymore, how do you make your own 'customised' compilations? I make mine very swiftly (seconds) in iTunes by just dragging stuff around with a cursor and - unlike the tape decks of the past - these are all bit-perfect and sound at least as good as a CD player and have all the cover artwork displayed.

Assuming you only have a CD player (and don't wish to have music on a computer) then you have to buy compilations that the record companies make for you. Their choice of tracks not yours. (Unless you still use a cassette deck of course.)

 

[The_Lhc]

chebby:the_lhc:
I have to admit, given all the comments elsewhere about how PC rips are better because the PC re-reads the cd many times over so that it doesn't have to do error-correction on the fly, I fail to understand why someone doesn't make a CD player that spins at more than single-speed (what were PC drives up to 50x?) and effectively rips the entire CD to a buffer (memory is CHEAP and you don't even need 1 Gig with wav files!), complete with re-reads and then plays you the buffered music as if it were the CD. Yes you'd need to give it a couple of minutes to "rip" the CD, which might be annoying, and high-speed CD drives are noisy (but you could shut the CD drive off once it's ripped the disc). That way you'd bypass the whole error-correction side of the mechanism and enjoy the "improved" sound that people reckon they get from loseless ripped music.

After all, the format on the CD is just WAV, so in theory it makes no difference whether you're playing it from the disc directly or from memory AND you get all the benefits of reading the disc more than once.

Or am I talking nonsense?

That's a lot of effort to re-invent the wheel (computer based music but without the computer)

I think you misunderstand my point, it wasn't "computer based music without the computer" (that's been done already) that was the benefit I was referring to, it was purely the improvement in sound quality that can (apparently) been gained by reading the disc multiple times, that would have seemed to me to be a relatively easy way for CDP manufacturers to improve their players. however I freely admit that the idea's time has probably passed, if it was going to be done it needed to be done at least 5 years ago, although having said that CD players are still being made and sold, so it would still seem to be a relatively easy way to achieve better performance.

only without all the other benefits like being able to make any number of personalised playlists quickly just by dragging tracks into them or being able to instantly find any artist, album, track etc. with just a click or two.

Without things like tape decks around anymore, how do you make your own 'customised' compilations? I make mine very swiftly (seconds) in iTunes by just dragging stuff around with a cursor and - unlike the tape decks of the past - these are all bit-perfect and sound at least as good as a CD player and have all the cover artwork displayed.

Assuming you only have a CD player (and don't wish to have music on a computer) then you have to buy compilations that the record companies make for you. Their choice of tracks not yours. (Unless you still use a cassette deck of course.)

Or unless you've never worried about having compilation mixes, which millions of people presumably didn't when CD players were the only choice of playback device. Even when I had a tape deck I think I only ever made about two compilation tapes, and they were only because I didn't have a CD player in the car!

As it is I do listen to my music from the computer, but I don't bother with compilations even now, I just set it random play on everything.

 

[chebby]

the_lhc:Or unless you've never worried about having compilation mixes, which millions of people presumably didn't when CD players were the only choice of playback device.

I should follow the millions because....? Because they are millions I suppose?

No. Give me the ability to put together jazz, rock/pop, classical compilations that please ME and I will use it. I don't give a FF if millions of other people choose to restrict themselves in some kind of technological hair-shirt in the name of 'purism'.

The 'purists' used to be the folk who eschewed CDs - and all things digital - some 20 - 26 years ago. Now that is conveniently forgotten we have the ridiculous situation of people ascribing all sorts of 'analogue' and 'traditional' and 'tactile' qualities to their CD players and defending them against the 'barbarians' with their computers and servers and DACs. Ridiculous because a CD player IS a computer with a DAC!

(And CDs were never the ONLY choice of playback. FM stereo has never gone away, vinyl LPs have never gone away, and for most of the period CDs have been around, the cassette player/recorder was also there in all it's forms. I used to use a Sony WM-D6C Pro-Walkman until just a few years ago. Recordings from it sounded better than most people's CD players playing the original!)

 

[Anonymous]

A quick point on the difference between a dedicated CD player and a computer as a source and a comment on digital signals:

A CD player is deigned to stream audio. It is designed to take information off a CD at a steady rate, retrying when it encounters errors bt moving on when it runs out of time. A CD player may have enough time to try once or twice to re-read and then it has to move on because the next notes are due to be played. If an audio stream has an error we hear some sort of glitch in the playback but playback continues. If there's a large scratch or whatever the player will lose its tracking and we'll hear skipping until it sorts itself out. with a CD player timing is very important and accuracy less so.

A hard disk is designed to move data error-free and timing is not important. Sometimes you'll open a document and it will take 3s, other times it may take 5s. The document when it opens is perfect and you're happy. If this was a bar of music which was supposed to take 3s and took 5s it would sound very odd indeed.

Of course in theory a computer source should sound as good (or some would say in theory better) than a CD player but a CD player is tuned to deliver audio whereas a computer isn't. A computer is doing a multitude of things at any given time and moving data from a hard disk to an audio application is just one of those. With enough free processing power and a fast hard disk it will be fine to the ears but there's a reasonable chance of audio glitches due to the other tasks being handled. If the computer is maxed out for 0.25s on an other operation then you will get 0.25s of audio glitches. It's no use having the 0.25s portion of bit-perfect audio being delivered 0.25s late. This can be helped to a degree with buffering and all digital circuits will feature de-jitter buffers for smoothing out the bitstream (re-clocking) but not all applications will feature larger buffers to cope with the times when the PCs attention is elsewhere. If you have an audio buffer like this the late 0.25s portion can be added to the end of the buffer and the 0.25s pause is effectively removed.

As far as digital signals are concerned: It may all be 1s and 0s but it's a little more complicated than that

 

[Anonymous]

A quick point on the difference between a dedicated CD player and a computer as a source and a comment on digital signals:

A CD player is deigned to stream audio. It is designed to take information off a CD at a steady rate, retrying when it encounters errors bt moving on when it runs out of time. A CD player may have enough time to try once or twice to re-read and then it has to move on because the next notes are due to be played. If an audio stream has an error we hear some sort of glitch in the playback but playback continues. If there's a large scratch or whatever the player will lose its tracking and we'll hear skipping until it sorts itself out. with a CD player timing is very important and accuracy less so.

A hard disk is designed to move data error-free and timing is not important. Sometimes you'll open a document and it will take 3s, other times it may take 5s. The document when it opens is perfect and you're happy. If this was a bar of music which was supposed to take 3s and took 5s it would sound very odd indeed.

Of course in theory a computer source should sound as good (or some would say in theory better) than a CD player but a CD player is tuned to deliver audio whereas a computer isn't. A computer is doing a multitude of things at any given time and moving data from a hard disk to an audio application is just one of those. With enough free processing power and a fast hard disk it will be fine to the ears but there's a reasonable chance of audio glitches due to the other tasks being handled. If the computer is maxed out for 0.25s on an other operation then you will get 0.25s of audio glitches. It's no use having the 0.25s portion of bit-perfect audio being delivered 0.25s late. This can be helped to a degree with buffering and all digital circuits will feature de-jitter buffers for smoothing out the bitstream (re-clocking) but not all applications will feature larger buffers to cope with the times when the PCs attention is elsewhere. If you have an audio buffer like this the late 0.25s portion can be added to the end of the buffer and the 0.25s pause is effectively removed.

As far as digital signals are concerned: It may all be 1s and 0s but it's a little more complicated than that
as

 

[Anonymous]

A quick point on the difference between a dedicated CD player and a computer as a source and a comment on digital signals:

A CD player is deigned to stream audio. It is designed to take information off a CD at a steady rate, retrying when it encounters errors bt moving on when it runs out of time. A CD player may have enough time to try once or twice to re-read and then it has to move on because the next notes are due to be played. If an audio stream has an error we hear some sort of glitch in the playback but playback continues. If there's a large scratch or whatever the player will lose its tracking and we'll hear skipping until it sorts itself out. with a CD player timing is very important and accuracy less so.

A hard disk is designed to move data error-free and timing is not important. Sometimes you'll open a document and it will take 3s, other times it may take 5s. The document when it opens is perfect and you're happy. If this was a bar of music which was supposed to take 3s and took 5s it would sound very odd indeed.

Of course in theory a computer source should sound as good (or some would say in theory better) than a CD player but a CD player is tuned to deliver audio whereas a computer isn't. A computer is doing a multitude of things at any given time and moving data from a hard disk to an audio application is just one of those. With enough free processing power and a fast hard disk it will be fine to the ears but there's a reasonable chance of audio glitches due to the other tasks being handled. If the computer is maxed out for 0.25s on an other operation then you will get 0.25s of audio glitches. It's no use having the 0.25s portion of bit-perfect audio being delivered 0.25s late. This can be helped to a degree with buffering and all digital circuits will feature de-jitter buffers for smoothing out the bitstream (re-clocking) but not all applications will feature larger buffers to cope with the times when the PCs attention is elsewhere. If you have an audio buffer like this the late 0.25s portion can be added to the end of the buffer and the 0.25s pause is effectively removed.

As far as digital signals are concerned: It may all be 1s and 0s but it's a little more complicated than that
as you

 

[Anonymous]

A quick point on the difference between a dedicated CD player and a computer as a source and a comment on digital signals:

A CD player is designed to stream audio. It is designed to take information off a CD at a steady rate, retrying when it encounters errors but moving on when it runs out of time. A CD player may have enough time to try once or twice to re-read and then it has to move on because the next notes are due to be played. If an audio stream has an error we hear some sort of glitch in the playback but playback continues. If there's a large scratch or whatever the player will lose its tracking and we'll hear skipping until it sorts itself out. with a CD player timing is very important and accuracy less so. Small glitches go unnoticed and our ears and brains can fill in the blanks with smaller events.

A hard disk is designed to move data error-free and timing is not important. Sometimes you'll open a document and it will take 3s, other times it may take 5s. The document when it opens is perfect and you're happy. If this was a bar of music which was supposed to take 3s to play and instead took 5s it would sound very odd indeed.

Of course in theory a computer source should sound as good (or some would say in theory better) than a CD player but a CD player is tuned to deliver audio whereas a computer isn't. A computer is doing a multitude of things at any given time and moving data from a hard disk to an audio application is just one of those. With enough free processing power and a fast hard disk it will be fine to the ears but there's a reasonable chance of audio glitches due to the other tasks being handled. If the computer is maxed out for 0.25s on an other operation then you will get 0.25s of audio glitches. It's no use having the 0.25s portion of bit-perfect audio being delivered 0.25s late so it will be dropped and the stream will move on. This can be helped to a degree with buffering and all digital circuits will feature de-jitter buffers for smoothing out the bitstream (re-clocking) but not all applications will feature larger buffers to cope with the times when the PCs attention is elsewhere. If you have an audio buffer like this the late 0.25s portion can be added to the end of the buffer and the 0.25s pause is effectively removed.

As far as digital signals are concerned: It may all be 1s and 0s but it's a little more complicated than that as you need to make sure that the timing is correct and that the signal quality is maintained:

Timing: Think about this bitsteam:

01001010 01110111 00011010 01001110. If the timing is off by one you see the following:-

10010100 11101110 00110100 10011100. These look entirely different although the bitstream is perfect, the timing isn't. Jitter can have this effect of shifting bits out of sync or some bits could be missing.

Signal quality: 1s and 0s are represented by analogue voltages. As noise increases and voltage decreases due to attenuation by the cable there comes a point where you can no longer clearly tell a 1 from a 0. If a 1 is represented by a voltage >0.2v and less than 0.6v then you will have problems when the noise level reached 0.2v: (0s get mistaken for 1s) and when the voltage drops to 0.2v due to attenuation (1s get mistaken for 0s). There can be spikes of noise which can turn 0s into 1s and there can be transient voltage drops which turn 1s into 0s which is more likely which adds to the odd bit error here and there but if enough of these appear then it could be noticeable.

This is somewhat simplified but if you want more detail you can google for it.

In theory then optical should be better as it's a pulse of light or no pulse of light - truly digital? Again signal strength decreased with distance although not to the same extent as with copper so there comes a point where the light pulse is too weak to detect but there is an additional electrical-optical conversion and an optical - electrical convertion to consider at the other end. Finally optical also suffers from another phenomenon called differential mode delay. Basically this means that there are many different patch a light beam can take as it bounces down a fibre cable and these can be of quite (relatively) different lengths and this induced jitter so although you send pules of light into the fibre in a nice regular stream they don't necessarily come out that way. Which causesd problems and to what extent relies on many factors such as fibre quality, glass or plastic, transmitter quality, receiver quality, length etc. etc.

 

[Anonymous]

catalyst:as you need to

Fair enough point it's a bit like saying a TV will give you a picture but don't forget some TVs are black and white. Times have changed and playing an audio track is no big deal to a modern computer, and should continue to play it even if it is heavily dogged down with other applications (or heavy video rendering in my case). Another thing to take into consideration is that more and more people today are using dedicated music streamers with a dedicated NAS, taking the computer with its "multitude of things at any given time" out of the question.

 

[Anonymous]

Of course a decent NAS which is designed to stream will produce a far cleaner bitstream to a DAC and would be the way to go if you are serious about it. I'm not a big fan of downloads though as I see how often hard drives fail so I like my shiny silver back-up disks!

BTW could one of the mods please delete all those postings my dodgy touchpad posted? I get an error when I try to do it.

 

[The_Lhc]

chebby:the_lhc:Or unless you've never worried about having compilation mixes, which millions of people presumably didn't when CD players were the only choice of playback device.

I should follow the millions because....? Because they are millions I suppose?

No.

Did I say you should? No, however companies trying to sell products tend to pay quite a lot of attention to what the masses do, because they want to make money and it's sensible to target your product to the majority of users, rather than individuals. I was simply pointing out that the CD player's lack of "compilation-ability" wasn't much of a barrier to sales when the CD player was in its height.

And, as I'll say AGAIN, I was merely refering to audio quality considerations, because that's what high-end CD player manufacturers tend to hang their hat on, rather than any other bells and whistles.

Give me the ability to put together jazz, rock/pop, classical compilations that please ME and I will use it. I don't give a FF if millions of other people choose to restrict themselves in some kind of technological hair-shirt in the name of 'purism'.

The 'purists' used to be the folk who eschewed CDs - and all things digital - some 20 - 26 years ago. Now that is conveniently forgotten we have the ridiculous situation of people ascribing all sorts of 'analogue' and 'traditional' and 'tactile' qualities to their CD players and defending them against the 'barbarians' with their computers and servers and DACs. Ridiculous because a CD player IS a computer with a DAC!

YES!!!!! Exactly my point!!!! A CD player is a computer with a DAC, so why did CDP manufacturers never go the whole hog and multi-sample the CD prior to playback to eliminate the need for error-correction? That's the only question I'm asking. Obviously the question is irrelevant now but I'm still curious as to why it wasn't taken up by anymore manufacturers years ago.

(And CDs were never the ONLY choice of playback.

Sigh, ok, *digital* playback then...

FM stereo has never gone away,

Hmm, not exactly a user-controllable source though is it (in terms of what you get to listen to I mean, it's a largely user-passive source)?

vinyl LPs have never gone away,

Hoorah, gets my vote but it's still not relevant to how a CD player reads the info from a disc, which is the only thing I was asking about.

 

[Anonymous]

catalyst:Of course a decent NAS which is designed to stream will produce a far cleaner bitstream to a DAC and would be the way to go if you are serious about it.

Not really with you here. The bit-perfect audio currently being read off my hard drive and sent to my DAC is dirty how?

 

[The_Lhc]

catalyst:

Of course a decent NAS which is designed to stream will produce a far cleaner bitstream to a DAC and would be the way to go if you are serious about it. I'm not a big fan of downloads though as I see how often hard drives fail so I like my shiny silver back-up disks!

I do find it curious the way a lot of people think "computer-based music" = "downloads". I listen to all my music through my Sonos and yet I don't own ONE downloaded track! Everything has been ripped losslessly from my CD collection and will be for some time to come.

Yes hard drives fail but that's what backups are for, and it's not that common, I can't remember the last time one of my drives failed (boy, I'm going to regret saying that!), it happens, but it's not THAT common, to dismiss the whole area of CBM on that basis is a bit of a strawman argument, I've had at least 2 CD players fail over the years, does that mean we should dismiss CD playback?

Oh and I don't think many people will be streaming directly from a NAS or PC to a DAC, most people will have some kind of streaming device in between (Sonos, Squeezebox, etc) providing a pretty big buffer, thus ensuring that the bitstream delivered to the DAC is identical to the original file.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm with you. I've never downloaded music and only rip from my cd collection and stream directly to a DAC.

 

[ElectroMan]

I assume you posted the same thing 5 times to get some kind of point across about timing!

 

[PJPro]

Yes, I only download music off the web if it's free and lossless.

But the time will come (shortly I hope) where we can take the CD completely out of the equation. I understand that errors are introduced when manufacturing CDs and bitrates are compressed from the original studio recording.

So, imagine the day when you can download the original studio recording. I know this is available now....I mean when it's commonplace; the norm.

The main barrier to this is the internet infrastructure and download speeds. Once this is sorted, I fully expect audiophile downloading to take off. In the meantime, I'll use postal download (CDs from Play) and keep bunging those nasty plastics boxes up in the loft, out of sight.

I also struggle to understand the tactile argument with CDs. I hate trying to get the cellophane off, I usually break the hinges, the cover notes are mostly hard to remove from the box, I often have difficulty getting the cd from the box. Everything's a fiddle. Vinyl? Yes. CD? No. Not for me.

 

[Anonymous]

I remember these arguments going on about Vinyl v Cd when they came out years ago.

Still for me nothing beats a Class A amp / good deck, arm, MC combo.

But nowadays all my music I listen to is on Hard Drive ripped off my CD's!

And it sounds good, very good indeed. So convenient as well.

 

[Anonymous]

PJPro:The main barrier to this is the internet infrastructure and download speeds. Once this is sorted, I fully expect audiophile downloading to take off.

I'm fully with you PJ apart from this point. It's not download/upload speeds that's stopping it, it's how many people are doing it. Even with the massive interest on computer music on here I don't think it reflects the overall audiophile demographic. With time it will change, I'm just pleased there are companies like Linn and B&W around to take the baton.

 

[Tony_R]

Octopo:
PJPro:The main barrier to this is the internet infrastructure and download speeds. Once this is sorted, I fully expect audiophile downloading to take off.

I'm fully with you PJ apart from this point. It's not download/upload speeds that's stopping it, it's how many people are doing it. Even with the massive interest on computer music on here I don't think it reflects the overall audiophile demographic. With time it will change, I'm just pleased there are companies like Linn and B&W around to take the baton.

Internet capacity (bandwidth) is definately the stumbling block right now.

Downloading a single file ripped at 128k results in a (average) 3.5mb download.

But if you want a high quality lossless file, you're suddenly looking at 10x that...

So for an average album, you would soon be nudging the 600mb .. 700mb mark - it would cost a fortune in bandwidth alone, to provide downloads such as this.

Not too mention the fact that 50% (and more) of users would quickly exceed the acceptable download limits set by their ISP.

Maybe when BT have completed roll out of their massive new "21CN" network then possibly some of the bandwidth issues will be solved (locally at least) but until then..

See BT's 21CN plans here.

And you can't really compare internet radio here - that's uses Multicast (this is a slightly complex article - but scroll down the page and there is a diagram which makes it all clear). Multicast is way of distributing streaming media and not all networks support it as yet...

 

[Anonymous]

Tony_R:
Internet capacity (bandwidth) is definately the stumbling block right now.

So for an average album, you would soon be nudging the 600mb .. 700mb mark - it would cost a fortune in bandwidth alone, to provide downloads such as this.

Not too mention the fact that 50% (and more) of users would quickly exceed the acceptable download limits set by their ISP.

You are clearly talking about cost incurred server side, correct? If so then what I said is completely correct. Once the demand for the high quality audio arises the cost of the space to store the music on in comparison will be incredibly cheap. Also as far as I know all of the best ISPs don't have a download limit - and if they do they better catch up quick.

 

[chebby]

What is a download limit?

So very late 1990s

 

[Dave_]

But most isp's still have a "fair use policy" which amounts to the same thing