"George M. Middius" wrote in message


You're still fantasizing about me, aren't you. Allow me to feed your
paranoia.... Yes, I am great and powerful. I have commanded people
with a vested interest in the audio industry, such as Paul
Bamborough, Glenn Zelniker, and John Atkinson, to take time away from
their businesses in order to discredit the lowly Krooborg on Usenet.
And these people have done my bidding, for I am lord of all I survey,
and they are terrified of defying me.

Seems like a serious waste of modest audio talents.


You put on a raincoat before hopping on a hooker.

What hooker?

You molest your children after they die.

I leave that to you Middius. You molested my child after he died.

You write a check for the doctor bill and then put your stool sample right
on the
check.

Never heard of medical insurance, did you Middius?

You get thrown out of your church because of accusations of
pedophilia and collecting kiddie porn, then you tell the world the
accusations are true.

You're delusional, Middius.

Do you remember your previous conspiracy theories, Turdy? In the
past, the mastermind was always Lord Atkinson.

You might actually be Atkinson, Middius.

Are you telling us all
those crazy rants were lies? Why did you tell dozens of lies about
John Atkinson?

What lies were those, Middius?

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:51:07 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:


Arny Krueger wrote:

We did some investigations of high end CD/DVD players a few weeks ago, and
found that common high end practice seems to be to assemble the drive and
circuit boards from mid-fi machines into a nice looking case, maybe add a
gratuitous output buffer board, jack the price up by a factor of about 20,
and let the fun begin.

Sounds about right to me.

Except he claimed 50 times back then.

Oh yeah, ask him if he's even seen in person the unit that he
"investigated", much less heard it.

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 23:12:33 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 16:52:56 +0100, tony sayer
wrote:

In article , Arny Krueger
writes

We did some investigations of high end CD/DVD players a few weeks ago, and
found that common high end practice seems to be to assemble the drive and
circuit boards from mid-fi machines into a nice looking case, maybe add a
gratuitous output buffer board, jack the price up by a factor of about 20,
and let the fun begin.


Now that...I could believe!.......

You'd better believe it! Deep inside the beautiful alloy casing of the
Mark Levinson 'Reference' transport at some $15,000, you'll find
exactly the same Philips industrial transport mech (and associated
electronics) as is used in the jukebox at your local pub.......

No surprise there then !

Wasn't there a better transport available ?

No, that *is* the best available transport (now that Sony have stopped
making the CDM-14). Costs all of $60 in OEM quantity, complete with
it's electronics pack.

At least my old Denon DCD-1700 has a transport that feels of 'battleship
quality'.

Actually no, that's just the loader, which has no function once the
disc starts to spin. You never see the actual transport, except in
some top loaders and a couple of Naims. And for the older nitpickers,
the Meridian 200 series.

In fact the entire player is built like that. Unlike many modern CD
players that you could pick up with your little finger, this is one that
actually inspires confidence due to its sheer weight !

Such confidence is however misplaced, as a really good transport must
have extremely low-mass moving parts - CDs do *not* spin at a constant
rate, so the rules are diametrically opposed to those for LP. Those
'high end' belt-drive transports are particularly hilarious!
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 01:00:59 +0200, Sander deWaal
wrote:

Pooh Bear said:

You'd better believe it! Deep inside the beautiful alloy casing of the
Mark Levinson 'Reference' transport at some $15,000, you'll find
exactly the same Philips industrial transport mech (and associated
electronics) as is used in the jukebox at your local pub.......

No surprise there then !

Wasn't there a better transport available ?

What's wrong with the Philips CD12 or their later reincarnations?
It's a teriffic mechanism. Arcam and many other good players use them
as well.

To be fair, Arcam only use Philips now because Sony stopped making the
CDM-14 'Fine Drive' mechanism.

For audio use, I prefer the TEAC VRDS or Pioneer stable platter
mechanism, though. But that's because I'm a DIY-er who always looks
for things to improve. :-)

Some would say that the best TEAC VRDS transport was the state of the
art, others would argue that for actual reading performance, which is
what really matters, the high-speed CD-ROM drives used by Meridian are
the best, even if they do 'look and feel' a little cheesy.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 01:01:24 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:


I have to confess that I'm slightly biased against Philips *mechanisms*.

Going *way back* Philips have engineered very mechanically weak products that
simply break very easily.

I dare say that they may have learnt their lesson but I would like to see evidence
of same !

Going, as you say, *way* back, Philips made probably the best
dedicated CD transport mechanism ever built - the all-alloy CDM9-Pro.
I have never heard of one of those failing, and IIRC Naim liked it so
much that when they heard that it was going out of production, they
bought up the entire stock.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

In message , Stewart
Pinkerton writes
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 23:12:33 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 16:52:56 +0100, tony sayer
wrote:

In article , Arny Krueger
writes

We did some investigations of high end CD/DVD players a few weeks ago, and
found that common high end practice seems to be to assemble the drive and
circuit boards from mid-fi machines into a nice looking case, maybe add a
gratuitous output buffer board, jack the price up by a factor of about 20,
and let the fun begin.


Now that...I could believe!.......

You'd better believe it! Deep inside the beautiful alloy casing of the
Mark Levinson 'Reference' transport at some $15,000, you'll find
exactly the same Philips industrial transport mech (and associated
electronics) as is used in the jukebox at your local pub.......

No surprise there then !

Wasn't there a better transport available ?

No, that *is* the best available transport (now that Sony have stopped
making the CDM-14). Costs all of $60 in OEM quantity, complete with
it's electronics pack.

At least my old Denon DCD-1700 has a transport that feels of 'battleship
quality'.

Actually no, that's just the loader, which has no function once the
disc starts to spin. You never see the actual transport, except in
some top loaders and a couple of Naims. And for the older nitpickers,
the Meridian 200 series.

In fact the entire player is built like that. Unlike many modern CD
players that you could pick up with your little finger, this is one that
actually inspires confidence due to its sheer weight !

Such confidence is however misplaced, as a really good transport must
have extremely low-mass moving parts - CDs do *not* spin at a constant
rate, so the rules are diametrically opposed to those for LP. Those
'high end' belt-drive transports are particularly hilarious!

But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant rate,
(provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio. There's
nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed 'packet' bursts.
--
Chris Morriss

Hi,

In message , Chris Morriss
writes

But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant rate,
(provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio. There's
nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed 'packet' bursts.

With the price of RAM as it is, that might just happen - pop the CD in,
and while it's playing the first few minutes it could buffer all the
rest to memory. It's like a glorified version of what happens anyway,
just with a much bigger buffer.

Maybe that's not such a good idea, though. It might start a whole new
high-end argument about what type of RAM sounds best :-)

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 17:12:16 +0100, Chris Morriss
wrote:

In message , Stewart
Pinkerton writes
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 23:12:33 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 16:52:56 +0100, tony sayer
wrote:

In article , Arny Krueger
writes

We did some investigations of high end CD/DVD players a few weeks ago, and
found that common high end practice seems to be to assemble the drive and
circuit boards from mid-fi machines into a nice looking case, maybe add a
gratuitous output buffer board, jack the price up by a factor of about 20,
and let the fun begin.


Now that...I could believe!.......

You'd better believe it! Deep inside the beautiful alloy casing of the
Mark Levinson 'Reference' transport at some $15,000, you'll find
exactly the same Philips industrial transport mech (and associated
electronics) as is used in the jukebox at your local pub.......

No surprise there then !

Wasn't there a better transport available ?

No, that *is* the best available transport (now that Sony have stopped
making the CDM-14). Costs all of $60 in OEM quantity, complete with
it's electronics pack.

At least my old Denon DCD-1700 has a transport that feels of 'battleship
quality'.

Actually no, that's just the loader, which has no function once the
disc starts to spin. You never see the actual transport, except in
some top loaders and a couple of Naims. And for the older nitpickers,
the Meridian 200 series.

In fact the entire player is built like that. Unlike many modern CD
players that you could pick up with your little finger, this is one that
actually inspires confidence due to its sheer weight !

Such confidence is however misplaced, as a really good transport must
have extremely low-mass moving parts - CDs do *not* spin at a constant
rate, so the rules are diametrically opposed to those for LP. Those
'high end' belt-drive transports are particularly hilarious!

But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant rate,
(provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio. There's
nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed 'packet' bursts.

Indeed - but that's not actually how those pathetic drives work. They
are in fact a great example of how robust is the CD standard - they
work well *despite* their pathetically incompetent engineering! :-)

--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 18:58:12 +0100, Glenn Booth
wrote:

Hi,

In message , Chris Morriss
writes

But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant rate,
(provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio. There's
nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed 'packet' bursts.

With the price of RAM as it is, that might just happen - pop the CD in,
and while it's playing the first few minutes it could buffer all the
rest to memory. It's like a glorified version of what happens anyway,
just with a much bigger buffer.

At 40x, less than two minutes would be more than adequate, and only a
couple of seconds with *intelligent* buffering. Check out the latest
Meridian players..............

Maybe that's not such a good idea, though. It might start a whole new
high-end argument about what type of RAM sounds best :-)

Surely, that would be the one with the golden fleece?
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

"Chris Morriss" wrote in message


But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant rate,
(provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio. There's
nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed 'packet'
bursts.

Thing is, its already a solved problem.

Glenn Booth wrote:

Hi,

In message , Chris Morriss
writes

But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant rate,
(provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio. There's
nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed 'packet' bursts.

With the price of RAM as it is, that might just happen - pop the CD in,
and while it's playing the first few minutes it could buffer all the
rest to memory. It's like a glorified version of what happens anyway,
just with a much bigger buffer.

Maybe that's not such a good idea, though. It might start a whole new
high-end argument about what type of RAM sounds best :-)

Interesting comment.

When Never were experimenting with early digital mixing desk technology they
found that using DRAM resulted in audio errors. Didn't get the same problem
with SRAM

Graham

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message

Glenn Booth wrote:

Hi,

In message , Chris Morriss
writes

But there'd be nothing to stop a CD drive spinning at a constant
rate, (provided it was high enough), and FIFO buffering the audio.
There's nothing to stop a maker reading the audio in high speed
'packet' bursts.

With the price of RAM as it is, that might just happen - pop the CD
in, and while it's playing the first few minutes it could buffer all
the rest to memory. It's like a glorified version of what happens
anyway, just with a much bigger buffer.

Maybe that's not such a good idea, though. It might start a whole new
high-end argument about what type of RAM sounds best :-)

Interesting comment.

When Never were experimenting with early digital mixing desk
technology they found that using DRAM resulted in audio errors.
Didn't get the same problem with SRAM

DRAM has to take periodic time-outs for refreshing, SRAM doesn't.

DRAM's basic error performance is functionally perfect. It's amazing how
quickly a PC goes down if there are any memory errors at all.

Pooh Bear wrote:

Correction

When *Neve* were experimenting with early digital mixing desk technology they
found that using DRAM resulted in audio errors. Didn't get the same problem
with SRAM

Graham

Arny Krueger wrote:

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message


When Neve were experimenting with early digital mixing desk
technology they found that using DRAM resulted in audio errors.
Didn't get the same problem with SRAM

DRAM has to take periodic time-outs for refreshing, SRAM doesn't.

DRAM's basic error performance is functionally perfect. It's amazing how
quickly a PC goes down if there are any memory errors at all.

I'm sure that the refresh requirements were taken into account.

The person I got the info from suggested that it was an alpha particle
problem in the IC packaging.

It's so long ago now that I expect the whole issue is largely forgotten.


Graham

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message

Arny Krueger wrote:

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message


When Neve were experimenting with early digital mixing desk
technology they found that using DRAM resulted in audio errors.
Didn't get the same problem with SRAM

DRAM has to take periodic time-outs for refreshing, SRAM doesn't.

DRAM's basic error performance is functionally perfect. It's amazing
how quickly a PC goes down if there are any memory errors at all.

I'm sure that the refresh requirements were taken into account.

The person I got the info from suggested that it was an alpha particle
problem in the IC packaging.

That's good for one bit error per gigabyte a month, or less.

Hi,

In message , Pooh Bear
writes


Arny Krueger wrote:

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message


When Neve were experimenting with early digital mixing desk
technology they found that using DRAM resulted in audio errors.
Didn't get the same problem with SRAM

DRAM has to take periodic time-outs for refreshing, SRAM doesn't.

DRAM's basic error performance is functionally perfect. It's amazing how
quickly a PC goes down if there are any memory errors at all.

I'm sure that the refresh requirements were taken into account.

The person I got the info from suggested that it was an alpha particle
problem in the IC packaging.

I don't know about alpha particles, but when I worked for Hitachi
semiconductor a big deal was made about their memory chips having the
lowest 'soft error' rate in the industry. Maybe those two things are
related?

It's so long ago now that I expect the whole issue is largely forgotten.

Probably true, as much has changed in memory architectures in recent
years, especially in error checking and error correction.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

"Glenn Booth" wrote in message



Probably true, as much has changed in memory architectures in recent
years, especially in error checking and error correction.

In terms of the PC on your desk, little or nothing has changed w/r/t memory
checking and correction for over a decade. Because gates are cheap, the
logic for it is now in most chipsets, but the RAM chips to back it only show
up in higher end servers. Furthermore, tons of people run PC with immense
amounts of non-parity memory, error free, for weeks and months at a time.

Hi,

In message , Arny Krueger
writes
"Glenn Booth" wrote in message



Probably true, as much has changed in memory architectures in recent
years, especially in error checking and error correction.

In terms of the PC on your desk, little or nothing has changed w/r/t memory
checking and correction for over a decade. Because gates are cheap, the
logic for it is now in most chipsets, but the RAM chips to back it only show
up in higher end servers. Furthermore, tons of people run PC with immense
amounts of non-parity memory, error free, for weeks and months at a time.

I was thinking more about within the RAM devices themselves, rather than
in designs that use them. I have some (very old now) training
documentation around here somewhere concerning new error checking
systems that Hitachi implemented in DRAM around the time that fast page
memory was coming into vogue, but I'm afraid I don't remember much about
how it worked.

I agree that RAM errors are pretty much a non-issue in PCs though.
Usually a given stick will either work for years, or not at all.

I have had a few weird issues where upgrading a PCI graphics card to an
AGP one (where texturing can be done directly to/from system RAM) has
found memory errors in a system that previously ran faultlessly for
months, but in those cases the fault was always there, it just didn't
present a problem until something changed.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

Pooh Bear said:

You will note that my recently acquired Pioneer stable platter player
sounds way better after I've filled it up to its top with concrete,
note.

Platter ? Vinyl ?

The Pioneer Stable Platter mechanisms are CD mechanisms.
The CD is put upside down on a platter, the laser reads info from
above it.
Less reading errors due to less resonances of the CD leads to better
sound, so they say.
I just like the way they're built (the heavy ones, note, not the cheap
knockoffs).
It's been a good transport so far after my TEAC died, but I'm
intending of using the concertor board of the TEAC. Sounded just
better to my ears (ooohhh, that's a *subjective* opinion!).
..
My Garrard 401 rumbles like crazy if you don't mount it in a 'block of stone' !

Get a Michell Gyrodeck :-)

--
Sander deWaal
"SOA of a KT88? Sufficient."