Well
I do not believe Mike is confused but sounds like someone is and the last
direct reply to my explanation "rested my case" for me whether you knew it
or not, LOL... I never said ATRAC degraded anything people can hear and do
not believe the modern versions do to any extent that a human ear can hear
it.
Next time you are in a hi fi shop ask for a demo and compare the same cd on
a high end Onkyo or HK unit with high end speakers then listen via the same
amp and speakers to a Technics or JVC and you will see (hear) EXACTLY what I
have been talking about. The differences are so subtle you will only notice
it at a very low volume...The guys jumping on the volume issue and claiming
they never listen to theirs "that loud" have no idea what I tried to explain
because anyone will listen past the 10% level unless they are perhaps
pushing thousands of watts..
Consumer reports and others who do honest evaluations will claim there is
zero sound difference in CD players. I believed this for a long time but
now realize their tests were flawed because they were listening to average
speakers which are not capable of producing the differences. The same
should be reasonably expected from MD decks if such high end units even
exist.
I have 26 years experience in this stuff and some of the "analogies" just
floor me. I have one customer that pays double the price to get his CDRs
colored red because he KNOWS they sound better when they are the same disc
and dye; just a different reflective coating (which the red color reduces
reflectivity by the way) so if they sounded different at all (they do not)
he has the quality backwards, LOL...
In any case, nothing should ever be noticed on an average system and only
those of us willing to spend the bucks on speakers alone that most would
flinch at for an entire home theater including a large screen tv would (or
should) even care about such minute differences.. Now I am resting my own
case because I am tired of trying to explain this and think I gave it my
best shot anyway...Anyone who thinks they can hear a difference would not
believe anything other than what they hear anyway; never mind that very
expensive test equipment can't measure a lot of what we "think" we hear,
LOL..
Les
Music Mixers
www.musicmixers.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Frakes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 7:34 AM
Subject: Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
> On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 10:39:46 -0700, "Les" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Guess what, any music in the hands of a consumer is in the end
> >converted to analog since standard speakers can not convert
> >digital information. This means each piece in the system used to
> >reproduce sound has an effect and you have almost proved my
> >point. You are asking a standard JVC deck to compete with your
> >NAD. It aint gonna happen.
> >
> >Try hooking up a JVC CD player in your system and compare that to your
NAD..
> >While HDCD units themselves should not make a difference on non HDCD CD
they
> >usually do for all the same reasons; the internal circuits are usually
far
> >superior on these decks than a standard one.
>
> Not necessarily true. JVC has a reputation for having some of the best
> "consumer-grade" CD and MD players on the market. In fact, for years JVC
> was the only mass-market company to have one of their players listed in
> Stereophile's "Recommended Components." My NAD CD player isn't
> top-of-the-line by any means. Is there a difference in quality? Sure. Is
> it the *real* reason I can hear differences? Not solely, and possibly not
> at all. I do have a receiver that has its own D/A converter. Maybe
> sometime I'll plug my MD player and my CD player into that, then run that
> line to my "main" stereo, just so that both will be using the same D/A
> converter.
>
> But back to the real topic of this discussion, as I mentioned in my
> initial message, the comparison I outlined was just *one* example of
> situations where I can tell the difference between CD and MD. It's not
> the only one. My CD portable sounds better than my MD portable (even
> though the MD portable has a better headphone amp). Even on our JVC 9000
> mini-system with PSB speakers (which uses the *same* D/A converter for CD
> and MD), I can tell the difference. I was simply trying to provide one
> example that would, to some extent, be a bit more methodologically sound
>
> >The single largest difference folks are going to hear from MD to the next
is
> >the deck that was used to record it. This is not necessarily the ONLY
> >difference but it is the largest difference. So, you can also try
someone
> >else's MD recorded on at least an ES machine to listen to the difference.
>
> As I've said, I disagree. Simply because of the compression involved, the
> CD and MD are going to be different. And as I've already mentioned, as
> long as there *is* a difference, there are going to be some people who
> can hear it. But (also as I've said before), this is really a silly
> argument, because we all agree that the sound quality is excellent ;-)
>
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