Am I missing out on a ton of SQ by playing CDs through my PS3 for home listening?

LOL.......Well ........that is strictly the right answer to the OP's question!!!!.......

But if anyone is using a PS3 and an entry level AVR for stereo listening.............I guarantee they're missing something!!!!

The question simply becomes whether that matters to them or not.

 

You've got it all figured out. Do help us out and complete your gear profile. Elaborate on this specific topic as well. Much appreciated.

 

There is some fun to using the PS3 as a CD player I suppose. IIRC it automatically pulls down metadata from the Sony-owned Gracenote DB, and let's be honest, those visualizations are pretty lit.

 

Yea sorry m8 didn't have much time to do a proper reply last night, -

About the ps3, - or in fact any cd player, digital is digital a process of 1s and 0s, simple as that, playing the cd through the optical or coaxial out (same thing) on different players is identical, only when you play one via analog out do things change.

Avoid like the plague ANY AV amp for stereo music, you will be missing out on quite a bit of sound quality, the last AV amp i tried its stereo outputs were rated at 80hz to 16KHz, this is because they are designed for a subwoofer for films, and vocals for the center speaker, the amplifier circuits for stereo music are much smaller in AV amps, remember they have to squeeze 5 separate amplifiers in one box.

The main reason AV amps tend to use small satellite speakers for the front left and right outputs.


Its for this reason i use a SONY TA-636 for stereo music and a DENON POA-F100 3 channel amp for when i watch films in 5.1 all connected to my HTPC computer in my livingroom, they are all connected together via phono to 3.5mm jack cables into the pc's soundcard.

So with an AV amp you are losing about 25% of the sound, whether it be with CD or any other stereo music input.

DTS and Dolby Digital stereo music are compressed lossy formats.

 

What are these 1s and 0s you speak of? Factually, speaking.

Do digital ouputs simply never matter? S/PDIF, optical, USB, etc. All the same?

 

1 and 0 is binary m8, its the building block of digital, only analog colours the sound. believe it or not theres no such thing as digital sound, digital is a transport mechanism, a way of transporting sound from A to B, all sound is analog in the end, theres no such thing as a digital speaker either.

Digital is used in many ways, for preserving analog recordings for example, but if you recorded a 1khz sine to a cd at -3db, it will play identical in any other player through a digital output.

So the longer you keep things in the digital chain, the purer the sound will be.

Perfect example of this is on my DENON DCD-715 CD player, if you play a music CD via digital the front pitch controls wont work, but play that same CD through its analog outputs the pitch buttons work -12 to +12, digital is very strict, it doesnt let you change anything.

toslink optical and coax digital are identical, apart from one thing, coax "can" pick up electrical noise during transmission

 

Oh, I believe! You've really got your arms around this topic. Is your Denon on transport duty? If so, which DAC do you have?

 

Just fitted a new laser to her mate, while there wasnt really anything wrong with the one that was in, it was 18 years old so i thought it would be best to fit a new one, they arent expensive only 20 notes from ebay.

The denon is connected to my technics SU-X502 amp, she sounds sweet! if im doing any direct copying from CD to Tape i use digital coaxial, however i have a lot of Oldskool house mixes on CD from 1988 to 1994, and as house music isnt really pitch sensitive as much i use the denons pitch control in analog mode to fit mixes dead on a c46 per side tape! very handy thing to have is a pitch control.

Ive actally fitted an internal digital input to my technics rs-bx727 tape deck, so if i copy a cd to it, it cuts all the rest of the signal path off, 100% direct copies! one of these here, ive taken apart and fitted inside my tape deck, now its digital in aswell to keep things as pure as possible whilst recording:

Optical Coax Digital Toslink to Analog Audio RCA L/R Adapter Stereo Converter | eBay

they work on 5v DC i had no trouble finding a 12v DC tap inside the deck and fitting a current limiting resistor.

I have a valve/tube preamp that sounds quite good for oldies music

If i record my tapes with lets say a +6 in pitch, i write it down on the j card, then i can play it back at the right speed on a tape deck with a pitch control

so many possibilites mate its unreal, thats where all the fun is for me

Another side note, ANY cd player with a digital out can play DTs 5.1 music from a regular CD, you just burn the 5.1 files as you would a regular music CD, but the amp has to be DTS capable to decode the music. for this you use SURCODE DTS software for windows 7

just recording this classic to tape as we speak:

 

Also this beautiful track, god music was good in the late 80s

 

Even the big name DAC manufacturers often miss the boat with respect to the power supply and analog section. Without it you will not get dynamic high end sound. Good call.

 

Defo with analog yes, at the analog stage thats where all the noise and distortion happens and colouration, a good smooth power circuit is essential here. a number one candidate for recapping.

 

There's allot happening in the digital domain that has to be implemented well. Clocking, filter and oversampling if the DAC is designed to do so. PCM to SDM conversion if the DAC chip is sigma delta. Etc

The digital implementaion can color and change the feel of the sound. The power supply and analog implementation all be it important, aren't the only deciding factors to the sound of a DAC.

 

In a CD, music (or other information) is stored digitally (as a long string of numbers). After the music has been recorded, it is converted into numbers by a process called sampling. Almost 50,000 times a second (44,100 to be exact), a piece of electronic equipment measures the sound, turns the measurement into a number, and stores it in binary format (as a pattern of zeros and ones). The sampling process turns a CD track lasting several minutes into a string of millions of zeros and ones. This is the information stored on your CD. In other words, there is no music on a CD at all—just a huge long list of numbers.

 

Oversampling is virtually never discussed because it's easier to simply name the chip and draw conclusions. All delta sigma DACs have filtering, which is separate from how the conversion chip is being implemented. The filter is often the difference. Much R&D is put into them at the hi-end.

 

There are no numbers stored on a professionally pressed compact disc. There are physical pits and lands. I don't even think that binary comes into play. More complicated. We might have a pro around here who can expand on Red Book encoding, but that would go over my head quickly. Bottom line is that everything in the signal path impacts fidelity. For those interested in such things.

 

Inside your CD player, there is a miniature laser beam (called a semiconductor diode laser) and a small photoelectric cell (an electronic light detector). When you press play, an electric motor makes the disc rotate at high speed (up to 500rpm). The laser beam switches on and scans along a track, with the photocell, from the center of the CD to the outside (in the opposite way to an LP record). The motor slows the disc down gradually as the laser/photocell scans from the center to the outside of the disc (as the track number increases, in other words). Otherwise, as the distance from the center increased, the actual surface of the disk would be moving faster and faster past the laser and photocell, so there would be more and more information to be read in the same amount of time.

The laser (red) flashes up onto the shiny (under) side of the CD, bouncing off the pattern of pits (bumps) and lands (flat areas) on the disc. The lands reflect the laser light straight back, while the pits scatter the light.

Every time the light reflects back, the photocell (blue) detects it, realizes it's seen a land, and sends a burst of electric current to an electronic circuit (green) that generates the number one. When the light fails to reflect back, the photocell realizes there is no land there and doesn't register anything, so the electronic circuit generates the number zero. Thus the scanning laser and electronic circuit gradually recreates the pattern of zeros and ones (binary digits) that were originally stored on the disc in the factory. Another electronic circuit in the CD player (called a digital to analog converter or DAC) decodes these binary numbers and converts them back into a changing pattern of electric currents.
So no there is no music on a CD it is software, it has to be decoded first into music by the player or amplifier.

 

I'm sorry, buy your understanding is far more limited than you believe. I'm not qualified to get into the weeds on red book encoding, but why is that necessary? There are few on the forum who could get deep into the engineering. Additionally, there is no digital decoding in a pre or power amplifier unless there is a DAC section preceding the amplifier.

If you believe that digital is digital, then fine. You will find plenty of company. That said, you are doing a disservice to a member asking, in essence, about digital outputs. The clock which comes with the data has an impact on the sound. That's merely one example. If you take your old cd player and use it as a transport to a modern, well regarded DAC, then you will have a far better analog signal. Your gear may not take much advantage of it though. If you then replace your cd player with hi end transport, then you will indeed experience even better sound. The rationale is that your digital output will no longer be compromised.

 

Okies so the audio science and technology sites are wrong? they are saying exactly the same as me, binary is not music it is code that has to be decoded by the chip in the player. A simple google search.

As for the ps3 playing cds, they work no different than any other player

 

This is why i love my PC, its replaced my TV, music player dvd and bluray player, you just cant beat a good computer they do everything under the sun. Every part is fully upgrade-able aswell there is literally no limits these days.

 

That article is incorrect. "The lands reflect the laser light straight back while the pits scatter the light." is not quite how it works. Perhaps this will help.

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