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Tom,

Regarding the last paragraph of your post, could you point us towards some
online or print source that illustrates the process you describe? As I have
most fully demonstrated time and again on this list, I am a technical
ignoramus and need more explicit directions even when it comes to what I am
sure is a most simple procedure. My current CD (actually a DVD) player is a
fairly decent Denon unit but it must be over a decade old at this point and
no doubt could use an upgrade. I had been considering asking the list for
recommendations, assuming one can still purchase a decent CD player
nowadays.

As long as I have the floor and am asking semi-dumb, slightly off-topic,
 questions, I'd like to address this to the list in general:

I am wondering if there is such a thing as a DVD player that does not
require you to turn on the video that it is attached to tell what the hell
you are listening to if you are using it simply as an audio player?
Recently, I finally purchased a flat screen TV, with the idea that it would
mostly be used to watch movies and classical music concert/opera on DVD and
secondarily as a satellite music system in my TV area. I thought that
purchasing a DVD player and sound bar each costing several times the
minimum price would mean that I would have a fairly pleasant listening
experience whether watching video or just enjoying music. Not up to my
Mackie monitors that I adore listening to LP, CD, cassette, 78 (FM even
radio) on in my audio lair, but at least decent.

Wrong.

Even though I thought I was dealing with someone at Crutchfield (which I
have been pretty happy with in the past) who knew what he and I were
talking about when I settled on a $500 sound bar (you can get one for way
less than $100 at Tiger Direct and elsewhere) and DVD player maybe in the
$200 range (ditto), I ended up with a player that shows a timing of the
track playing, but does not identify what track that is, assuming that you
will have the TV on and can check onscreen. I was not planning on running a
53" flatscreen just so I would know what tune or movement I am listening
to. Aside from that, despite telling the salesman that I had high audio
standards based more on the traditional audio than on home cinema concept
because many of my DVDs are of classical music in concert or opera and I
was not interested in how the nuclear phaser blasts shook the walls or how
viscerally intense the fist crunching fights sounded, what came from the
bar literally made me nauseous. Unless I am playing polyphonic choral music
at such meditation-low levels that it is impossible to hear how bad the
sound quality really is I am rolling my eyes in disbelief at what purports
to be music the whole time. I am willing to junk everything other than the
TV and start over if there are recommendations. I suppose I could just set
up a traditional old fashioned setup with an amp and traditional speakers,
but I did feel that the compactness of the amplified soundbar was appealing
and wouldn't necessarily be such an impediment to decent sound. Maybe I was
just wrong.

Am I the only one out there that has wrestled with this?

Peter H.

On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> As long as it's new remastering done with care and precision, I prefer
> high-resolution downloads. I miss the physical artifact, but most of the
> time I'm replacing an atrocious-sounding CD and can keep the booklet if I
> need liner notes. The problem with HD downloads is that some sound really
> good (to my ears, the new Blue Notes done by Bernie Grundman sound _much_
> better than the toothpaste-compressed "RVG Edition" CDs or the
> whimpy-sounding early-era CDs, to cite one example), but others are just
> the 96/24 versions of ill-conceived recent-era remasters. Another problem I
> hear in some old favorites is that the master tapes are clearly
> deteriorated, with audible dropouts, bad splices and high frequency loss in
> spots. It's too bad that now when there's technology to make really
> nice-sounding digital remasters, the old tapes are falling apart.
>
> After high-rez, I usually prefer CD. There have been a few really good LP
> reissues in recent times. Depending on your hearing aesthetic, you might
> prefer Chad Kassem's (Analogue Production) all-analog LP reissues of RCA
> Living Stereo albums, or you may prefer the SACD or high-rez download
> versions. Both are superior, to my ears, to the original LPs and the
> earlier-era BMG CD reissues. I've been intrigued with the recent emergence
> of some younger LP cutting aces. It's nice to see some guys a good bit
> younger than me learning the difficult craft and turning out consistently
> nice work.
>
> One other thing about CDs. People still using 1980s or 1990s consumer CD
> players are missing a lot of quality contained on the shiny 5" spinners.
> Get yourself a modern DAC and, assuming your old transport still works
> properly (not always the case, belts wear out and lubricant gel becomes
> pastey over time), hook it up via SPDIF coax or optical cable. If the DAC
> has good jitter rejection. You might be amazed how much better your CDs
> sound. Many early players simply could not deal with jitter, and many early
> built-in DACs did not do a good job with the Nyquist rolloff/filtering.
> Much progress has been made, and some modern DACs with excellent jitter
> rejection and good sound quality retail well south of a grand.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
>
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