Major Guru Help Needed

[Brucest]

<font color='#000000'>I beg some indulgence from the wise ones as I try to briefly outline my amazement.  I'm not sure I believe I'm hearing what I think I am


The indulgence is that, even tho I have a near high end system, I really haven't been working hard to keep up.

I'm looking for some confirmaton that a cetain perception is other than a placebo effect.

I like very quick loudspeakers; that factor seems to me to be a key element of realistic sound.  Such a focus has actually has led me to be relatively unhappy with the CD format: glare even with fast is unacceptable, and a fast system makes the input glare more obvious.   Not that I don't have vinyl with glare, but all or almost all CD's have glare and many very good vinyls don't.  

Or so I thought.

I made a foray into moderately high priced CD with an early Adcom that was good per the technology ( as far as I could tell) but ultimately not very good from a sonic standard.

So I've mostly espressed distain for the CD medium by playing it through a succession of relative cheap DVD players, that frankly have improved each time I decided to fork out $200 (kind of).

Then comes Sacd and DVD Audio, and true to my vision, I wait for a cheap combo player (SACD, DVD A and DVD V).

On this cheap player now in hand (Pioneer 653 A) the HD audio formats clearly rival vinyl.  Great.

But here's the kick I think I hear: many CD's also sound much better.

Key example: No Doubt Saturn.  I bought No Doubt cause I thought they were lots of fun  The CD's turned out to be almost unplayable no matter how much I tried.  Very  much glare and very flat.  This is on the CD playback of a 1.5 year old cheapo Phillips DVD.  On the Pioneer the very same CD is a sonic marvel.  No glare, lots of quick. lots of presence (tho whether intended or not, the voices were not etched).

Wow how can this be.  Am I imagining this? Help me o wise ones.</font>

 

[Audioholics]

<font color='#000080'>Glare? Flat? Fast? Etched?

Sounds like you've been hanging out on some other forums - this is Greek to me...

Box up those words and put them away for now... Then try to explain exactly what you are hearing so we can understand what you're trying to explain regarding the sound.</font>

 

[Brucest]

<font color='#000000'>Thanks for responding.

Actually you don't need to understand those words to respond. &nbsp;The question most simply put is "would you think there is any objective reason for a modestly priced player &nbsp;DVD, SACD, and DVD A, capable to sound significantly better on normal CD's than a similarily priced player only DVD capable?"

For those not up to date with their Stereophile, and Absolute Sound (or maybe 5 years out of date, I';m never sure) lingo, glare means unpleasently harsh high end sound. &nbsp;Flat means lack of definition and space and dimensional illusion in the sound image created by the two channel sound, etched means seemingly precise location of voices, human and instrumental, within the sound field.

CD's in my experience tend to have an unpleasant, harsh high end. &nbsp;This is not true of all CD's by any means, but the No Doubt CD I mentioned has been such an egregious example that I didn't listen to it, despite the fact I like the music.</font>

 

[dis]

<font color='#000000'><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">
Glare? Flat? Fast? Etched?

Sounds like you've been hanging out on some other forums - this is Greek to me...
</td></tr></table>

I am greek and it still doesn't make sense

glare -> sound brightness
flat -> speaker imaging
etched -> no clue...

I've never heard of slow speakers. What possibly makes a speaker faster is the density of the cone material.

I play all my audio CD's on my toshiba combo DVD+VHS player with a digital coax connection to the amplifier, in short, my cd's sound mint!</font>

 

[petermwilson]

<font color='#000000'>Hi,
In the current issue of TAS in letters to the editor. Someone with an extremely expensive cd player and processor plus a gazillion cds asks Robert Harley if it is possible given the quality of this equipment for it to sound as good as dvd-a and sacd.

He responded NO!!

Peter m.</font>