2. digital
  3. 1422368419

Is revealing always good?

I recently bought a very revealing and transparent CD player (and AVM player). Because I listen to redbook CD's and 705 of the CD's I listen to are jazz recordings from ca. 1955-1963 the recordings often have bad "digititus." The piano's ring, clarinet is harsh, transients are blurred --- just the nature of the recordings. With a revealing CD player, all this was palpably evident so much so that at least 1/2 those CD's were rendered unlistenable. Now, with a cheaper, more colored CD player (a new Creek) --- not nearly as revealing --- one that "rounds off" some of this digititus, these CD's are again listenable.

So... is revealing a particularly good thing for redbook CD playback? I think not. is "colored" always a bad thing? I'd say no. At least for CD playback. Thoughts?
robsker

Showing 3 responses by audioengr

audioengr
3,282 posts
 
There are many dimensions so digital sound. Revealing or "focus" is only one of them. Jitter is the biggest issue with most digital. Jitter can make things harsh, even though the mid-frequencies are in sharp focus. Other frequency ranges can be blurred. Jitter has a frequency component, amplitude component and distribution component. You can have any mix of these.

Another thing that can cause the kind of sibilance you are experiencing is HF extension that you have not had before. If you have a sibilant component or cable in your system, once the signal is extended and focused it can cause this sibilant component to "activate". Suddenly you have sibilance where you had none before. This is fairly typical of preamps based on op-amps or poorly fabricated silver interconnects. The way to fix this is to eliminate the sibilant component or cable from the system. You also may have a ground-loop that is getting more noisy with the new transport in the system. Try using cheater plugs to determine this.

If you get better focus, this is usually the right path, so think twice about eliminating the transport. It may be something else.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
I recommend NOS Siemens or Telefunken tubes. At a minimum, military tubes. Nothing in current production is very good. Same with most tubes.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
A revealing, resolving system is superior, however all it takes is one sibilant component or cable to skew the balance and make it harsh sounding. It is possible to have your cake and eat it too, but not inexpensively.

One can certainly add tubes or cables with roll-off to deal with this, but ultimately you are going down the garden path, not improving the overall system.

The best thing is to identify the offending component or cable and replace it.

Typical offenders are active preamps that are too cheap. I have found that active preamps under the $10K mark, particularly solid-state are usually poor and add the most sibilance and compression to systems. This is why I use either a transformer passive linestage or the volume control in my DAC, which is not like a preamp.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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