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Billy Strayhorn - Cue For Saxophone (London). This used to be a tough CD to find but looking at discogs these days, maybe not so much any more.

I really don't want to continue discussing this with you other than to say for years I have been working to eliminate "noise" throughout my system and it has paid dividends in improved sound. That's the simple truth of my experience. I'm done discussing, I don't wish to make any further comments about yours..

Continuing Saga of the Wealthy White Alto Player I may be talking to myself here, but since it's off topic, you can skip it if you want to. ] Since the Wealthy White Alto Player (WWAP), thought the chart I wrote was Classical music, I wrote on the rhythm sections' charts "Strip Joint Music". On the trumpet player's charts I wrote "HARMON MUTE"above the staff so they wouldn't start a fight with me like the dick trumpet player in the other band almost succeeded in doing, and I brought the chart down to the rehearsal last night, expecting the worst. As soon as I walked into the room, the WWAP said to me, "I didn't bring my alto part." Luckily, I brought an extra part to conduct from, so I put it on his stand ( but I felt like shoving it you-know-where...) I gave the trumpet players their parts, and reminded them to use their mutes, which I should have done with the other band, I guess... Since the leader of the band, the WWAP, didn't even bother to send out reminders to the band about the rehearsal, we were missing two trombones, one tenor sax, one trumpet, and worst of all, a bass player.. Instead of conducting the band on my arrangement, I was forced to play the bass part on my guitar, so I just told the band, "Make believe you're in a strip joint and some blonde with big bosoms is doing her thing on the pole." Just to embarrass the WWAP, I added, "This is not classical music like our leader thinks it is." The guys in the band were making all types of lewd jokes which I can't repeat here, and I counted it off and we stumbled through it. The WWAP had obviously worked hard on it, just going off on some of the technical things, but since I was trying to play bass on it, I was too preoccupied to notice specifics. The WWAP just said, "Bring it down again when we have a bass player". To be continued...

David Sylvian - Gone to Earth

I get you are worried about noise in your signal path. That is a valid concern in most audio designs. However, I don't think it's as much of a concern in this particular path as in others closer to your ear. The signal amplification after the internal DAC chip in your DAC box is simply to amplify or attenuate that analog signal to match the required DAC box's line level output voltage, which is typically .3-.4 Volts. If your line level output voltage is much higher than that, you could overload your preamp input and end up with very noisy playback. It's not like it's driving your speakers. From what I've Googled, there's not much of a circuit needed to convert the DAC chip's output signal to a line level output. It looks like it's usually done a simple op amp. There doesn't appear to be a lot of circuit design variations to clean this up. I suppose someone could use a shitty opamp but that would be pretty stupid on their part. To be honest, I would hope that any circuit designer would make sure that the signal coming out of their box, be it a CD player or DAC, had very low noise or they wouldn't be a circuit designer for very long. I personally wouldn't worry too much about it either, as long as you stick with reputable companies and not some cheapie manufacturer like Crosley. Then again, many of my "work friends" over the years have been circuit designers. Sure, I worked with some lazy designers but even they had to make the circuit work as expected or no one would buy the resulting product. I have had to get down into the guts of a lot of these circuits to help these designers debug their circuits when they didn't work as expected. Every single one of them knew their circuits inside and out. When I graduated from college, I tried getting a job in the audio industry but no one was hiring back then. Instead, I stuck with RF products (50 MHz-100 GHz signals) so I worked a little higher in frequency than audio. I bet I've debugged thousands of RF circuits at this point in my life. Sometimes I miss doing that, but then I remember all the office politics and the shitty commutes and I thank my brother Dan again for making me stuff so much money into my 401K so that I could retire early.

Happy Birthday Evan!

Geez Kevin, it seems you have misinterpreted what I meant in what I wrote. I'm not ignoring science, maybe it's semantics that has tripped us up. Once a digital signal is decoded--and there are different designs to do that--there is still the amplification of the signal and how it is output, differing in how the power supply is formatted, what topology solid state or tube or transformer, whether discreet or op-amps are in the signal path and the parts chosen, the quality of the wiring and the connector components, switching and often volume control. . . many other factors. I'm not talking about just a digital to analog chip or board, but the DAC as the stereo component is called. A DAC component is NOT just the decoding of the digital signal. A DAC is a component that is MORE than that. And they can sound extremely different as a result.

👍

nice

yeah, the BFT got me ponderin'. oughta get the CD of Grüne, I guess! hadn't dusted either of these off in quite a while.

Thanks Clifford!

One thing I will agree with Lon about here is that some of the cheaper CD players have lousy transports, which is one reason to look at a set-up like his. I believe that this is due to the manufacturers moving towards cheaper parts or even buying a transport "off the shelf" from a major supplier. A lot of CD players were using PC transports but that market has basically evaporated, as almost all internal optical drives these days are "laptop" or slimline CD drives.

I am in pretty good shape. Exercise alone will not keep the cardiologist away. It will help, but it is not the only thing you have to worry about If you want to check your cardiac health, ask your PCP to have your cardiac calcium score measured. Even if your health insurance won't cover it, it is not very expensive. I think it's around $140. It's a CT of your heart. A score of zero means you have no blockages in your heart. My score was far from 0. I'd recommend any guy over the age of 55 reading this to get this done, if only to establish a baseline. It's a cheap and easy thing to do but it can identify a serious problem. Another it sucks getting old story... We have a bird trying to build a nest above our back awning. We bought some plastic spike strips to mount up there. I get out the ladder and attach the spike strips. Now, I don't use a ladder much, so it involved muscles that I don't use often. The next day (yesterday), my stomach feels like someone kicked me.

Yep, I have had good luck with both those brands. Still using a Marantz player circa 2000 in my office and love it.