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Subject: Re: [motm] Re: digital source and its medium puzzle- the answer

From: Neil Bradley <nb@...>
Date: 2002-11-06

> Your average Consumer CD player has approx. 4000 errors per second.

That means that, assuming each of those "errors" are single samples, that
10% of the audio is destroyed. That's plainly absurd.

> A
> HiFi player cuts it down by about half. AudioPhile and Pro Gear
> brings down the error count to below 1000.

Flatly not true. I worked as a repair tech for a short stint on CD players
- many brands (Sony, Denon especially). Not too particularly high end,
either - roughly $200-$500 players - in 1988.

Part of the focus process for the laser was done through checking pulses
coming from the error correction circuitry. That is, one pulse = one block
had an error reading it off the disc. I'm sorry, but the standard
alignment and adjustment procedure required there be ∗NO∗ errors.

> Data is buffered as much as
> > a second ahead of where it is with plenty of time to recover.
> Recover from what, the hit your portable CD or Automobile CD player
> took to avoid skips. :)

That, and a misread can allow the disc to spin back around for it to be
reread.

> For Data CD`s it doesn`t matter as much, but
> for audio, it matters a lot.

Audio == data on a CD. There is no difference. Data CDs cannot contain
errors, so it absolutely must be possible to read a CD with less than 4000
errors per second, otherwise no program or data files would survive.
Doesn't this strike you as completely irrational - that somehow $30 CDROM
drives ∗CAN∗ do perfect data transfers, yet a $150 CD player ∗CAN'T∗?

> > will make no difference.
> Sorry, but this statement is wrong. please read the Article with the
> attached Url`s

Already did. While it may appear rational on the surface, it's completely
baseless and the description is so high level that it can be applied to

Listen, I spent several years listening to "audiophiles" rave about the
increased listening quality of CD sound rings and marking the edges of
their CDs to make them sound better. It's all provably false and anyone
with even the first level of understanding of how it works knows it's
completely laughable.

Anyway, attempting to steer the ship back on topic, I have heard others
say that MOTM gear sounds "digital". I've heard a few of the VCO samples -
they don't sound digital. Clean perhaps, but not digital.

-->Neil

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Neil Bradley In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is not
Synthcom Systems, Inc. king - he's a prisoner.
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