Audio, hi-fi and car audio - CD transports and resonance

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CD transports and resonance

"Paul Dormer" wrote in message
...
"Ian Molton" emitted :

Audibly?? Have you performed the necessary scientific tests to confirm
this degradation with each subsequent listen? ;-)

Having seen vinyl swarf peeling off a record I can guarantee the wear is
audible once it gets bad enough.

Yikes!! What kind of turntable was that on?? Did it have a nail for a
stylus? ;-)

I suspect the ****'s seen a cutting deck in a film or summat!

CD transports and resonance

Keith G wrote:
"Paul Dormer" wrote in message
...

"Ian Molton" emitted :

Having seen vinyl swarf peeling off a record I can guarantee the wear is
audible once it gets bad enough.

Yikes!! What kind of turntable was that on?? Did it have a nail for a
stylus? ;-)

I suspect the ****'s seen a cutting deck in a film or summat!

Nice to see you're feeling better, keith...

CD transports and resonance

This is the snag with making obervations without reliable measurements. You
end up having to try things 'at random' in the hope some might seem better,
but not then be sure if or why... (JL)

This is true, but it doesn't rule out trial and error as a legitimate way of
getting results. When you think how many times Beethoven re-wrote the 5th
symphony (a process typical to composition), you can see that the final result
was in fact a process of trial and error. I think it's quite fair to think of
creating a sound system as an act of creativity, and as we know from the
initial stages of the creative process multiple choices are combined with
feedback of the effects of these choices to gradually narrow down the practical
possibilities. This process of "divergent thinking" is the crucial part of
creativity, since without trying out original and novel solutions there would
effectively be no new solutions and therefore no continuance of creativity. It
is only when the divergent thinking merges into "convergent thinking" as the
solution is approached that testing begins in earnest. The two processes are
essential - without divergent thinking (and by implication trial and error)
there would be no original creations, and without convergent thinking there
would be no worthwhile products. The convergent thinking may range from very
complex testing to something as simple as 'I like it best and it satisfies my
creative needs'.
The other thing to be borne in mind here is that there are several personality
factors which mitigate the manner of creation. The planner will plan an outline
of the work to be done, the spontaneous thinker will experiment. The rational
thinker will use logical steps, the emotive thinker will use instinct (both
processes can be pesent in any one individual, of course, but there are
dominant and shadow processes). We go on to consider Belbin's team role
behaviour patterns. The Creative will try a large number of solutions and be
less interested in following through, the Monitor Evaluator will soberly and
coldly try out a restricted number of solutions in a methodical way, the
Completer Finisher will agonise over details and make sure everything is
correct. In a successful production business all roles may be required, but a
single person can and will be any of these personalities, and a single person's
thinking will be different depending on personality and typical strength of
team role function. We will see, in audio, logical thinkers and instinctive
thinkers. We will see creatives that work by trial and error, and we will see
strategists and detail fanatics. The approach is different, the strengths are
different, the thinking is different, and probably the products are different,
although one would like to think they all work. Clearly we have different
personalities on this newsgroup, and the very first thing to bear in mind with
personalities is the idea of 'gifts differing' (MBTI) - the idea that all
personalities are valid, and that they simply differ. Although the larger
percentage groups in the population - extraverts, practical people rather than
imaginative ones, thinkers (men) or 'feelers' (women) (in a male dominated
society, therefore logical thinking), and planners (rather than improvisers) -
tend to weight the thinking of a society as a whole, this weight of assumed
preference is primarily a question of numbers rather than intrinsic worth of
personality factors. Add to that the differences in micro-groups within the
macro society, and we have another set of weighted parameters. The scientist
will be cool, detached and critical (16PF factor A-) whereas the classical
musician will typically be more instinctive and emotional, though in fact no
less intelligent (16PF data). Sound to each group will have different meanings.
One consequence of the above is that scientists are two things - people trained
in science and its methods and people with personalities typically found in
science. Care should be taken to differentiate necessity from personality. And
vica versa - creatives are good at creating and understand the processes which
bring it about, but they are also creative personalities - prone to trial and
error, disrespectful of and rebellious against the establishment, and
disinterested in following through once the more interesting divergent thinking
has passed.

Not scientific but less tedious... :-)

As above.

Far simpler IMHO to buy a Meridian and listen to the music. :-)

Saying this to a creative is like asking a claustrophobic person to go
potholing.

=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.

CD transports and resonance

Paul Dormer wrote:

I think Im remembering it right. its certainly able to do a full CD in
under 5 mins, which makes it 20 speed or better.

But is that a clean rip??

I use EAC I think it's locked at 4x, but reports 100% accuracy.

Yes. identical data both times in a row.

CD transports and resonance

Andy Evans wrote:
This is the snag with making obervations without reliable measurements. You
end up having to try things 'at random' in the hope some might seem better,
but not then be sure if or why... (JL)

This is true, but it doesn't rule out trial and error as a legitimate way of
getting results. When you think how many times Beethoven re-wrote the 5th
symphony (a process typical to composition), you can see that the final result
was in fact a process of trial and error. I think it's quite fair to think of
creating a sound system as an act of creativity,

Thing is that when creating a symphony there is no definable goal.

when creating an amp there is only one definable goal, which is
linearity across the audible frequency range.

if you want to go for a 'coloured' amp design, then all bets are off I
guess.

CD transports and resonance

"Andy Evans" wrote in message

completely @#$ked-up post quoting and formatting corrected. It's the high
price one pays for trying to make sense of the blatherings of incompetents

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

This is the snag with making obervations without reliable
measurements. You end up having to try things 'at random' in the hope
some might seem better, but not then be sure if or why... (JL)

This is true, but it doesn't rule out trial and error as a legitimate
way of getting results.

The word legitimate seems poorly applied here. I don't question the
legitimacy of any positive results that are obtained by *any* means (in my
way of thinking, results speak for themselves) but it is well known that
random trial and error is almost always a highly inefficient means for
investigation.

When you think how many times Beethoven
re-wrote the 5th symphony (a process typical to composition), you can
see that the final result was in fact a process of trial and error.

I submit that Beethoven, being an experienced and excellent composer did not
use trial and error to write symphonies. Music theory had progressed well
beyond trying random sequences of notes long before he was born.

I think it's quite fair to think of creating a sound system as an act
of creativity, and as we know from the initial stages of the creative
process multiple choices are combined with feedback of the effects of
these choices to gradually narrow down the practical possibilities.

Right, but there's a lot that can be said for informed choices. There are
very few people who will stand up and say: "I'm going to forget everything I
know and proceed along the least well-informed lines that I can, with this
investigation." That's simply dumb.

This process of "divergent thinking" is the crucial part of
creativity, since without trying out original and novel solutions
there would effectively be no new solutions and therefore no
continuance of creativity.

Creativity is almost always a process that includes synthesis of existing
knowlege. For example Edison relied on considerable existing technical
knowlege when his team invented the light bulb. He hired an experienced
glass blower to make the bulb, and the vacuum pump (an existing design) that
he used to evacuate it. The idea of evacuating the bulb did not come from
nowhere - it was based on what was already known about why things burn. In
fact operating light bulbs existed before he built his first prototype -
they just didn't last very long and/or weren't economical to build.

In fact Humphery Davy had built a carbon-filament light bulb in 1809, some
70 years before Edison announced his. Edison based his design on a patent
he had purchased from someone else. About 25 later the carbon-filament
light bulb was obsoleted by the Tungsten filament light bulb. Sic transit
gloria.

It is only when the divergent thinking
merges into "convergent thinking" as the solution is approached that
testing begins in earnest.

The process of testing is itself almost always based on a good knowlege of
existing technology. In this CD transport fiasco at hand there was
essentially no technical testing, and the subjective testing was highly
flawed. In fact, good reliable means for both technical and subjective
testing were readily available at almost no out-of-pocket cost.

The two processes are essential - without
divergent thinking (and by implication trial and error) there would
be no original creations, and without convergent thinking there would
be no worthwhile products.

I'm not sure there was a heck of a lot of thought given to either the CD
player construction project itself, or how it was tested. Regrettably, some
try to deify this kind of anti-intellectual wheel-spinning.

remaining self-aggrandizing twaddle snipped

CD transports and resonance

"Ian Molton" wrote in message

Andy Evans wrote:

This is the snag with making obervations without reliable
measurements. You end up having to try things 'at random' in the
hope some might seem better, but not then be sure if or why... (JL)

This is true, but it doesn't rule out trial and error as a
legitimate way of getting results. When you think how many times
Beethoven re-wrote the 5th symphony (a process typical to
composition), you can see that the final result was in fact a
process of trial and error. I think it's quite fair to think of
creating a sound system as an act of creativity,

Thing is that when creating a symphony there is no definable goal.

Horsefeathers. Composers have a variety of goals, some known, some unknown.
Sometimes the goal was on the order of mainting a nice salaried position in
some court, sometimes fame and fortune, sometimes the goal was to simply
pass the time.

when creating an amp there is only one definable goal, which is
linearity across the audible frequency range.

If there is only one definable goal for a power amp, then the goal would be
to be the proverbial straight wire with gain.

if you want to go for a 'coloured' amp design, then all bets are off I
guess.

Far better to just get a good parametric eq and a good clean amplifier.

CD transports and resonance

In article , Andy Evans
wrote:
This is the snag with making obervations without reliable measurements.
You end up having to try things 'at random' in the hope some might seem
better, but not then be sure if or why... (JL)

This is true, but it doesn't rule out trial and error as a legitimate
way of getting results.

Not sure how you are defining "legitimate". However I'd agree that we need
not exclude trial and error. But my points we

1) That we have to *learn* from the 'error' part, and be able to understand
the results so they guide what we do next.

2) Using 'trial and error' does not rule out *other* methods which may be
more systematic and better based on a large amount of prior knowledge which
people have collected, analysed, and systematically understood.

Thus as well as 'trial and error' we can then go on to add, 'use the error
as data for a diagnosis to tell you what tests to perform next'. Then
repeat this in a systematic and logical manner.

'trial and error' can work. But alas as soon as there is more than one
variable it can take infinitely long, and not even converge... :-)

Understanding tends in the end to save a lot of time and puzzlement, and
improves your chance of a good end-result. Trial and error, by itself, does
not.

When you think how many times Beethoven re-wrote
the 5th symphony (a process typical to composition), you can see that
the final result was in fact a process of trial and error.

Not really. He spent a lot of time and effort first learning about music.
I'm also pretty sure that he tried things and then considered them
carefully, not just wrote down the first thing that came to him and stopped
there. Hence his 'trial and error' wasn't the functional equivalent of
spraying some music paper with spots of ink, then turing the dots into
quavers! For that reason it is misleading to describe such a process as
'trial and error' unless you include th bits about understanding and
learning and then exploring/using the new understanding as well. :-)

I think it's quite fair to think of creating a sound system as an act of
creativity, and as we know from the initial stages of the creative
process multiple choices are combined with feedback of the effects of
these choices to gradually narrow down the practical possibilities. This
process of "divergent thinking" is the crucial part of creativity,

So is analytical and methodical thinking and being able to be
self-critical, etc. Hence you can't pick one plum out of this cake and
expect it to be the whole cake.

[big snip]

As above.

Far simpler IMHO to buy a Meridian and listen to the music. :-)

Saying this to a creative is like asking a claustrophobic person to go
potholing.

Sorry, I must not be 'creative' then, despite whatever I may have done.
:-)

Must go and get myself a purple hankie to wave about, and perhaps some
frills for my shirt cuffs... ;-

Note that I said 'simpler'. If you just want to listen to music, then
Meridian makes sense. OTOH of you want to fiddle about, then trying things
at random is fine.

However if you want to *learn* from 'fiddling about' or 'trial and error'
and hence both produce improved results, and have the satisfaction of
having learned, then you need more than just 'try things at random and
don't bother with any measurements or actual understanding', I'm afraid.

FWIW I regularly used to get hold of other people's amp and pull them apart
and find out how they worked. Good way to learn in my experience.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

CD transports and resonance

"Don Pearce" got all het up and spluttered...

Well, you *are* saying you have discovered new, and this news group is
the publishing vehicle of your choice. So this, I'm afraid, is where
your discovery is going to be challenged. What you claim (observe)
goes against everything that those of us who understand how CDs work
believe is possible. This makes the claim extraordinary. Of course we
can't simply say well done, we didn't know that. Such a response would
be preposterous given our knowledge (call it belief if you like). So
we say no, your hearing has been deceived in ways you are well
accustomed to from your experience in psychology.

Errr - I think you should go back and re-read the original post.

He did _not_ come in claiming to have found something new.
He reported his observations and asked if anyone else had noticed similar
effects.

Then the rest of the "every observation, unless supported by three years
research, 200 independant witnesses and a Nobel Prize in physics and/or
psychology (preferably both) is obviously a load of crap and should be shot
down in case anyone investigates and finds it has a hint of truth" jumped on
board.

Not one of you has posted anything to say that you have looked at whether
there might be any effects as originally described. None of you have cited
any evidence or research which denies the possibility that the observed
effects might actually have some basis.

All I've seen is a stream of "that doesn't fit with what I've read, and I
can't see any immediately obvious reason for it, so it must be wrong".

Now, why have I just had this sudden recall of the telephone engineer who
was laughed out of the War Office in 1940, and independantly developed the
computer that co-ordinated England's radar defences . . . .???

_________
Geoff B

CD transports and resonance