Re: Is this digital bashing true or false?
Reply #19 – 2017-02-23 17:18:06
Michael Fremer bascially SCREAMED at me a few months ago on Youtube... Lucky me, he did it to me live and in person just before the 2005 Stereophile debate between John Atkinson and I. Somehow I recovered, I hope you do to, if you have not already done so... ;-) Fremer also added on Youtube that his friends call him friendly and agreeable, but that's not how he comes across online at all, where he often has CAPS LOCK on AUTO and calls everybody morons if they simply present facts or voices their opinions, if any of those two go against his "all analogue medias are technically superior to digital". Two more things: Arny, do you know if other types of digital filters, for instance minimum phase filters or the filterless non-oversampling DACs, have audible phase shift? And lastly, here's a quote from a different website. I tried what this person suggested with several CDs. With many CDs I couldn't hear any difference, but with some I actually heard a big difference (and no, not like a $2000 power cord difference, but a real, immediately noticeable difference). If any of you happen to have the "About a boy" soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy (or you could download and burn a CD-R, or get it from the library) that was the one where I heard the biggest difference, but I heard differences with other albums as well. I connected the speaker wires as red to red and black to black on my speakers, and black to red and red to black on my amp when doing this. On a different website, someone claimed that 92 % of CDs and CD players inverted the polarity, and he listed many albums where this was the case. If you're able to try this out, what do you think of this? I've tried hitting the "switch polarity" in Wavelab, and there was no audible difference.The answer to this age-old (well, the age of the first CD player anyway) argument among audiophiles is far more simple than the above explanation. I’ve worked on (repair and restoration of) high-end audio equipment for years now. The reason vinyl is perceived as “better” than CD does indeed lie in the DAC, but the reasons listed above are minor compared to the real issue: The inversion of the polarity of the signal. Some people mistakenly call this “phase inversion”, but that is an argument for another time. Unless someone makes a mistake installing the cartridge, turntables do not invert the polarity of the signal. As long as the rest of the amplifier/speaker combination is set up or built correctly, the signal is presented in the correct, natural polarity. I have yet to run across ANY CD player/DAC that DIDN’T invert the polarity of the signal, even the $12,000 Sonic Frontiers CD player I changed the laser in once. I don’t know why this is, unless the red book specifications did it to limit the dynamic range of CD playback. You see, back then it was a common mistake for people to turn the volume up too far, because once they hit “play”, they were expecting to hear a little bit of the “hiss” of a tape or (cheap) high-gain phono preamp. Anyhow, in defense of that Sonic Frontiers player, and a few nicer other machines as well, there is a “polarity invert” button, which in most cases corrects the polarity of the signal. Once the sound is presented to you in the correct polarity from the CD player, there is basically no perceivable difference. We’ve tested it many times, with turntables and CD players ranging from $50 to $22,000. Always the same results. Before you call me crazy (something I will not deny actually), try this simple test: Listen to a recording using anything you like for a source. Then, immediately after, switch your speaker connectors to be “backwards”, i.e. + to – and – to +. You will most likely find that if you are using a CD player (or an iPod or computer, they all tend to invert polarity), the sound will be MUCH improved, and if you are listening to vinyl, the sound will get MUCH worse. If you find the opposite to be true, your system may have been inverting from the very beginning.