From: utzoo!utcsrgv!newman
Newsgroups: net.audio
Title: more digital ramblings
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1181
Posted: Mon Mar 14 19:54:41 1983
Received: Mon Mar 14 20:17:32 1983


The duke of denet somewhat missed my point when commenting on my statement
that all CD players will sound essentially alike; his point about the
shortcomings of the analog side still being there are of course correct,
but that has nothing to do with my statement. All I said or meant was that
if you take two CD players connected in a given system, there is not much 
point in A-Bing them for sound quality, naturally assuming they are 
operating correctly and aligned properly. There was another article that
said that some CD players drop the two LSB's out - I find that hard
to believe, because of the heavy dependence on word length for quality
D/A conversion; the current word length (14?) is minimal to keep cost
down to the point where people will buy the things. Can you name
players that do this?
I'd like also to toss in my two cents on the Telarc 1812 "torture record".
The only cartridge that I'm aware of that can track the cannons is the
Shure V15 V, and maybe the IV. (Not the plain vanilla Telarc; there have
been ultra-fi JVC pressings that are even more extreme). I think the quote
"If you can track those, your system is a real winner!" incorrectly equates
cartridge performance to the tracking of HIGHLY unreasonable groove
excursions that are found on only one disc. The peak velocities found
during the cannons are enough to cause many fine cartridges to mistrack
badly, but I would hesitate to dismiss the performance of these cartridges.
Let's be realistic - no matter how good cartridges get, cutters can
probably be made that will produce an untrackable groove. This is another
problem that conveniently goes away with CD's.

Cheers,
Ken Newman