[Playdrv4me]

It blew the doors off some of the biggest gimmicks and perceptions in the audio industry in their current issue. Great magazine, I sat down with it at Borders yesterday and read the "Skeptic" section. I wont give too much of it away, but if you believe that upgrading power cables, using 10 inch thick audio cables, and 50,000.00 CD Players are the only way to achieve "pure" sound, it might be an eye opening read.


Plus they had a nice review of my HSU VT-12 Speaker system (got mine combined with the Velodyne CHT12 though, not the HSU).


Anyway, it was such a neat read I thought about posting about it here.

 

[DMF]

Let's see if they make it to a second issue...

 

[knutinh]

hehe =)

 

[Playdrv4me]

That was issue 101, and it was actually called Sensible Sound I believe. They had some very good points about reviewers commonly making claims based on improper testing procedures, not time Synching cd players when comparing them and other stuff.

 

[Bulldogger]

The writer even claims that there is no difference between SACD and CD. Do you believe that ? He makes some good points but comes off as just a cheap skate to me. I know well that the 250 dollar cd player that I owned doesn't sound as good as the 2500 dollar one that I have. The 250 one has a hard digital sound. Is it Sensible to believe that to some extent you get what you pay for or that price doesn't matter? What sounds more Sensible to you? If you read some of the reviews you'll see that many of the reviewers are even using what I would consider "high-end" cables.

 

[bgeiger]

No difference between CD and SACD? Hmmm, lets see:

2 channels vs 5 channels???

 

[BrownRB]

"SACD" does not by definition mean 5.1 or multichannel - there are many 2-channel SACD's out there.

 

[Playdrv4me]

Quote:

Originally posted by bgeiger No difference between CD and SACD? Hmmm, lets see: 2 channels vs 5 channels???

Alot of times its just fancy down-mixing of the left and right channels.


As for the CD Player analogy, I think I can see both sides of this argument. It seems according to the review that some high end CD players sound different not always because they are so superior, but rather because they are just engineered to sound "different", like changing treble roll-offs to give the music a mellower tone.


Dont get me wrong, I think Ive seen a CD player or two with tube based output stages I would die for, and those are probably a different story, but I have auditioned some high end gear that was a joke, and then Ive auditioned some terrific stuff from cheap to ultra elite in the high 70,000.00 range. A good example is these speakers I bought, cheap as all get out, but they perform... perhaps not spectacularly... but at least to the expectations generated by the positive reviews Ive seen about them. I.E., they were not inflated beyond their true limitations. The HSU Sub however, was a different story, which was why I decided to go with a Velodyne unit.

 

[Tedd]

You'll find an extensive thread about SACDs and CDs in the Ultra High End HT Gear thread. All I know, with my last upgrade, I am hearing alot more in cds that I never heard before. And that I own a few stereo SACDs that are disappointing.


Sensible Sound has been around for awhile, and does indeed offer a good no nonsense approach to getting good value components.

 

[SteveH]

Playdrv4me, what issue was the article in?? I'm sure I agree with a lot of what he wrote but I wanted to see his testing methodology.

Should be a fun read!

 

[CUclimber]

Quote:

I know well that the 250 dollar cd player that I owned doesn't sound as good as the 2500 dollar one that I have.

But did you do a properly conducted double-blind listening test to come to this conclusion?


If not, your statement doesn't hold water.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Are you serious? Are you actually arguing that CD players all sound the same? Give me a break.

 

[Ovation]

Quote:

Originally posted by Playdrv4me Alot of times its just fancy down-mixing of the left and right channels.

I think this is true in the case of DVD-A, where many of the discs are in m/c only and some players with two channel outputs mix down the m/c channel tracks on the fly. However, though I could be mistaken, I believe that SACD protocols require a separately mixed two channel hi-res layer (though hybrids sometimes have a different two channel mix on CD and SACD, so I've read) and the only exceptions to this are the few mono SACDs out there.

 

[CUclimber]

Quote:

Are you serious? Are you actually arguing that CD players all sound the same? Give me a break.

Show me where I said that.


I'm just open to the possibility that a $250 one could sound better than one at 10x the price. I'd love to see you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that more money = better sound.

 

[Larry Fine]

Quote:

Originally posted by CUclimber I'd love to see you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that more money = better sound.

It can't be done; Bose exists.

 

[CUclimber]

Well Bulldogger dug himself into a hole the way he posed the original statement. If he'd said "My new cd player has features X, Y, and Z that are proven to give a cleaner signal by doing a, b, and c" then I wouldn't have had a problem with it. Instead he just said that one of them cost 10x what the other one did and apparently didn't do a double-blind test to see which was really better.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Well, your post very much sounded like you assumed them to be the same unless proven otherwise by a DBT.


Perhaps you could fault me for missing what you meant, but it seemed clear to me that you meant something along those lines.

Quote:

I'd love to see you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that more money = better sound.

I never said that either. so .

 

[Randybes]

Sensible Sound has been around a long time. Howard Fersler (Skeptic section) has also been around a long time and posts fairly regularly on the audio news boards. He is very much in the objectivist camp of Nousaine, Pinkerton, Pierce etc.