New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - CD Audio
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Events   Register Register  Login Login

Welcome to the Graham Slee Audio Products Owners Forum

 

Open to all owners plus those contemplating the purchase of a Graham Slee HiFi System Components audio product and wishing to use this forum's loaner program: join here (Rules on posting can be found here)

This website along with trade marks Graham Slee and HiFi System Components are owned by Cadman Enterprises Ltd


CD Audio

 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1 910111213 55>
Author
CageyH View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2012
Location: Toulouse, Franc
Status: Offline
Points: 1678
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote CageyH Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Apr 2021 at 10:31pm
Disc rot is not a joke, but I don’t think it is very common.
Kevin
European loan coordinator, based near Toulouse, France.
Back to Top
CageyH View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2012
Location: Toulouse, Franc
Status: Offline
Points: 1678
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote CageyH Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Apr 2021 at 10:35pm
Kevin
European loan coordinator, based near Toulouse, France.
Back to Top
discrete badger View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 14 Jul 2009
Status: Offline
Points: 479
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote discrete badger Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Apr 2021 at 7:09am
My experience of disc rot is with CDRs. Several years back, I went through a large number of archive amateur recordings on that medium to select tracks to produce a compilation CD for the organisation who owned the archive. 

I used CDParanoia to rip them, which is the Linux library behind many of the available GUIs such as Asunder. This is the Linux equivalent of EAC, but actually better, and is extremely good at "reviving" damaged CDs which have audible artefacts when played in real-time. If the damage is bad it takes advantage of the fact that it does not have to work in real-time and, when it encounters a problem area, goes very slowly and tries again and again to read it, something which a CD or DVD player cannot do because in those cases there is a deadline and failing to meet it would lead to an audio dropout. 

This gives a different twist on the notion of "reference" from an "archive" angle. A CD - especially a degraded one - played on a quasi-real-time CD transport, however expensive that transport is, cannot be "reference", because that transport can't do what a humble cheap laptop CD drive does at the hands of CDParanoia. However, a high-quality rip, stored on a hard drive and backed up, will never degrade in that way, so is arguably closer to "reference". 

Anyway, and somewhat ironically, in my case some discs were so heavily degraded that even CDParanoia gave up trying to read them. For the couple of tracks I wanted to use from those, I re-recorded the SP/DIF stream from a CD player which was - amazingly - able to produce a very good signal from such garbage data!

Back to Top
Ash View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2013
Location: Dorset
Status: Offline
Points: 4334
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Ash Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Apr 2021 at 7:30am
I too am of the opinion that highly expensive CD transports are a waste of time.  They are just a re-packaged computer with less versatility and an elevated price tag because they are in a convenient durable enclosure. A simple desktop computer allows the user to choose all the parts and software at a lower price.

It is cycling's equivalent of thinking that a £10,000 bicycle is better than a £1500 bicycle. Price doesn't mean anything. Luxury is perception.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Back to Top
CageyH View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2012
Location: Toulouse, Franc
Status: Offline
Points: 1678
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote CageyH Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Apr 2021 at 8:55am
Originally posted by Ash Ash wrote:

I too am of the opinion that highly expensive CD transports are a waste of time.  They are just a re-packaged computer with less versatility and an elevated price tag because they are in a convenient durable enclosure. A simple desktop computer allows the user to choose all the parts and software at a lower price.

It is cycling's equivalent of thinking that a £10,000 bicycle is better than a £1500 bicycle. Price doesn't mean anything. Luxury is perception.

So you don’t think that the dedicated circuit to reduce noise is worth it?

Just remember how much this was going to cost with your original PC plan.


Edited by CageyH - 11 Apr 2021 at 8:56am
Kevin
European loan coordinator, based near Toulouse, France.
Back to Top
Ash View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2013
Location: Dorset
Status: Offline
Points: 4334
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Ash Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Apr 2021 at 10:14am
Are the motherboards featured in such transports really "dedicated" (custom) though? Or are they just BIOS/software tweaked for their improvements? I think custom motherboards cost many thousands of pounds for Chinese manufacturers to produce in batches so I am sceptical as to whether even pricey transports/streamers will feature them. Sale volume would have to be high for it to be financially worthwhile and for it to be audibly worthwhile, the designer would have to know their stuff. As for linear power supplies, they're not all equal so if the internal one is okay but not great, you either mod the internals or stick with the stock supply. At least with separates, the user can remove and replace any bits that don't improve the whole. No route is particularly cheap but it's nice to have options that allow easy comparisons.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Back to Top
CageyH View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2012
Location: Toulouse, Franc
Status: Offline
Points: 1678
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote CageyH Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Apr 2021 at 10:39am
Last time I looked, I didn’t have a motherboard in my CD player, but a PCB designed for the specific purpose of a CD player.
Kevin
European loan coordinator, based near Toulouse, France.
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1 910111213 55>
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.01
Copyright ©2001-2018 Web Wiz Ltd.

This page was generated in 0.188 seconds.