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As a rule, when looking into CD players, they all have good specs, but can sound very much worse. And because they have typically 100 ohm or so output resistors so that you can short the output and not damage anything, the sonic result is then very dependant on the capacitance of the interconnect cables. So what you hear is very much the cable. So if you compare two CD players, you should use the same cables.
I gut much of the analog output and filters and replace the output opamps with very high quality units that cost $10 to $20 each, instead of the $0.35 types. And with the good opamps with very high slew rates acting as direct cable drivers, the capacitance of the cables is swamped and RC and phase delays then do not occur. A test system would see some very high frequency stuff at the output jacks, but amps and preamp inputs have hi-freq filtering built in. Just replacing the output op-amps and removing the output resistors makes a really big improvement.
Test gear looks at one frequency at a time and cannot detect phase shifting. One has to listen and that will tell you more than any test gear can.
Even some high end CD players have crappy opamps. And if you socket a CD player and try different opamps, you can hear a diference. Meanwhile all of these combinations will have really nice specs. But the specs will not tell you what sounds the best. To do these things you have to have a really revealing system and you guessed it, you can't buy that o specs and one really has to mod things to get there. The only rule is that cheaper will most of the time not sound as good. And a good CD player properly modified will sound better than some very exotic very expensive gear. Another rule is it handles a single disc. As for CD players, preamps and amps, I usually make choices based on circuit technology. I have purchase new amps and CD players and modified right away, one amp the same afternoon.
So no easy answers, but I hope that you get that idea that you should listen and not make dicisions based on the numbers. Stuff will not sound the same at the show room and at home. One can get speakers that are known to be really good then test amps, then you can hear the amp, the work baclwards to preamps if used and CD players.
I can't advise on anything in current production. When you spend weekends for a few years hacking stereo gear, you are then very reluctant to replace anything.
OK, I take that last one back. If you are looking for a really good subwoofer, Velodyne DD series, DD-12, DD-15, DD-18 cannot be beat. These come with a microphone and have internal EQ, that you can manually do the parametric stuff with or auto EQ. It outputs a bass frequency sweep to go through your amp and speakers. Its' video out goes to your TV or monitor for the EQ display.
, Mon, 12 Sep 2005 21:47:09
, Mon, 12 Sep 2005 19:49:37, Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:15:48
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