All Activity

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.

cool pic ! oh how interesting. I didn´t know that Monk and Montoliu knew each other. Montoliu, together with Siegfried Kessler (german but obviously more French affinity) and "my man and mentor" Fritz Pauer from Austria, were my favourite European piano players. So great, my favourites, together with Albert Ayler, and above all: Pharoah Sanders (because he was a life long companion and "best musical friend" whenever I was happy or sad....

Well, most associate good form with physical exercises or sports. I must admit I never did any of that, and never had any interest in any forms of sport. I´m slim like a nail, but feel strong and being in love with a very young girl, who also says the love is here to stay, I feel more importance in good sexual performance and hip threads and shades than in any other physical effort besides playing the piano 😄 Even when I was a kid or a teenie my only non musical interest was gals, and I never felt well in surroundings of men only. Stuff like football or any other kind of that would have been horror for me, wash- and showerrooms with other guys in it, oh no, smellin other men´s sweat, absolutly horror vision.... Music talk with fella musicians yeah, anytime, but I can´t say nothin about sports, about cars (I drive but am not interested in the car itself). When folks scream over some worldcup or championship or somethin, it leaves me absolutly cold. Don´t even know what happens around in non musical and non fashion-beauty settings....😄 But in my generation of the freaks of the 70´s in the intellectual but weard and neurotic settings of Big Cities and there nightlife, such attitudines like mine where not completly unusual. We were the untypical kids, who might not go to sports after school or on weekend. like maybe others more in the usual way brought up kids.

You say you're "not talking about the digital signal", but this discussion is around an external DAC. A DAC is only involved in the digital stream. What happens after the digital is converted to analog happens outside the DAC, no matter if it's internal or external. I try to stick to one topic but you keep expanding it. Look Lon, I don't want to argue what you hear. You hear what you hear. I hear what I hear. My statements here are for others, as you constantly discount my scientific explanations for what is happening in digital audio systems. I stick to the science because I know it is the best predictor of what will happen to a signal. Do I have to apologize for being an electrical engineer who worked in the semiconductor industry for over 40 years, mostly as a test engineer? I have lived with the science of electrical signals for a very long time. I have used this knowledge to guarantee that many of the components in a lot of the equipment used in many of our audio systems work as they were designed to work. The next time someone pops open their gear, see how parts say ADI or Analog Devices on them. Truth be told, if it wasn't for science, we'd all still be listening to wind-up Victrolas. It's true that people can ignore science, but I feel that is a mistake. Too many businesses out there take advantage of people who ignore science, advocating or selling solutions to problems that don't exist. This is happening everywhere, not just in the world of audio. It's pervasive in our society. It's particularly bad in the area of healthcare these days, but that veers too close to politics, so I won't go down that rabbit hole. Back to the topic... I believe a CD player is fine to use. A transport and DAC is fine to use as well. I would recommend a Marantz CD player. I haven't owned a Denon CD/SACD player but Denon & Marantz are the same company and I have owned a Marantz CD/SACD player. It should sound very good. As for getting into the CD vs SACD debate... SACDs should be able to present the audio better than CDs. But in practice, it all comes down to the mastering. If an SACD is created with a poorly mastered analog source, the SACD will re-create that lousy audio perfectly. I have some incredible-sounding SACDs and some poor-sounding ones. But as we've established already, I hear what I hear.

Much hitting the spot this morning!

Well I seldom need glasses, but it´s so astonishing similar, the photos. I don´t have much Mal Waldron I think, I have him as Sideman on some older Mingusrecords and on a Max Roach record. And I share your opinion, that Mingus with Friends in Concert is not our favourite. I don´t know what went wrong, but I don´t feel Mingus on it. Even on the standards only "Mingus at Carnegie 1974" with Perdido and C-Jam Blues I hear more Mingus drive than on that strange potpourrie from 1972. Last night I finally had time to listen to a rarity I have purchased recently. It was not a second hand, but still sealed. Very fine music, all of them. It´s very interesting how Hank plays a much more agressive approach than in his earlier records. He sounds very modern, but it is still him, such a great musician, such a great musical personality. I had heard Charles Davis once with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band, is that possible. He is great on both soprano and bari. A seldom combination. Usually tenor saxophonists take soprano as a second horn. Because both are notated in Bb

Those credits are for the entire album (The Fastest Train), 1 CD of the box. I don't know the instruments on that specific track. Parker is credited on keringot, hochiku, shakuhachi in D & A, stereophonic bamboo flute, Ojibway overtone bass flute, pocket trumpet, malakan flute, Chinese shakuhachi.