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From: pmr@drufl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: differences in sounds of CD players - (nf)
Message-ID: <789@drufl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Jan-84 11:15:36 EST
Article-I.D.: drufl.789
Posted: Fri Jan 20 11:15:36 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Jan-84 07:20:33 EST
References: <4291@hp-pcd.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, Denver
Lines: 40

Rick Dow's comments are well taken.  Why do high-end components all
sound different?  Could be a couple of things but I'm not picking
on anything in particular:
	1. The quality of capacitors used in the signal and feedback
	   paths.  Low ESR caps "leak" less and pass a more accurate
	   and correspondingly less distorted version of the original
	   signal.  Low end components use budget capacitors that
	   have significantly higher ESR.
	2. Quality of circuit design.  Low-end components are concerned
	   about things like parts count and individual component
	   prices to make a product sellable in a highly competitive
	   market.  Once you decide that price is no object, you can
	   design more sophisticated and correspondingly more sonically
	   accurate circuits, but the number of people who are able to
	   afford this equipment is very limited.
	3. Attention to detail.  Although it may be hotly debated as
	   to whether design considerations of wide bandwidth and
	   well-regulated power supplies is in fact audible, most
	   high-end stuff will use these considerations in their
	   designs.  Things like board layout, positions of input
	   and output stages with respect to the rear panel jacks,
	   and regulators for each gain stage are commonly incorporated
	   in the high end.  Low end stuff may not have a regulator
	   even on the front-end circuitry.

How does this translate into sonic reproduction?  Very well in most
cases of high-end gear.  But not all high-end equipment sounds good.
There seems to be an art involved as well as a science.  After all,
Fourier never claimed that his mathematical models in any way depicted
reality.  They were just that, models -- nothing more, nothing less --
but still good approximations.

I just don't know why high-end sounds better but I can point to some
circuit differences between low and high end that must be at least
part of the reason.

		Yours for higher fidelity,
		Phil Rastocny
		AT&T-ISL
		..!drufl!pmr