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Silver Member Username: PaulfolbrechtPost Number: 101 Registered: Dec-05 | Anybody got recommendations in the <$1500 range? Just starting to do some research now. Thanks. (I may buy speakers with tweeters that go to 50K and if I do I figured, heck, I might as well try to make more use of that ultrasonic range.) |
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Silver Member Username: EdisonGlendale, CA US Post Number: 842 Registered: Dec-03 | Toshiba sd9200 is a dvd player that upsamples to 192/96 You can enjoy quality video as well with this. |
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New member Username: Fv333Post Number: 2 Registered: Mar-06 | Shanling CD T-80 Has upsampling, got great review in UK HI-FI mag HI-FI WORLD cost in UK £650.00. Cost from Ornec.com £244.00.(plus postage and taxes but still a big saving)Ornec.com deal all over the world. Shanling is upgradable via Tubes and plug in op amps. HI-FI WORLD mag is independant and very critical so you know the kit will be decent. In the following issue they done a test with different tubes to upgrade and concluded with RCA's. ( Issues December and January 2006) Hope this helps! |
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Gold Member Username: John_aLondonU.K. Post Number: 3987 Registered: Dec-03 | Paul, A week ago I bought a Rega Apollo and can recommend it. Anyone hear the new rega apollo yet ??? It do not think it up-samples, but it has some impressive DACs and sounds wonderful. |
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Gold Member Username: ArtkAlbany, Oregon USA Post Number: 2844 Registered: Feb-05 | I have to say the same about my player. I don't think it upsamples but it sounds fabulous. 1) Audio Refinement CD Complete Alpha 2) Rega Apollo (comes highly recommended from folks that I respect). 3) Musical Fidelity A3.5, a little more than you want to spend but a very good player. 4) Arcam CD 192, Again a little more than you want to play but it is a very capable player. I own the first one and highly recommend it but its sound isn't for everyone. Best thing to do is go out and audition a few and see what sound you like. |
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Gold Member Username: John_aLondonU.K. Post Number: 3992 Registered: Dec-03 | Good suggestion, Art. Frank is also correct about the reviews of the Shanling CD T-80; that could be one to add to the list. Paul;- People have discussed upsampling on this forum, and, if I understand correctly, it does not really extend the frequency range. A CD cannot go beyond 22 kHz in the signal it carries; that limit is at half its sampling frequency. Beyond that, if one could hear, is a horrible noise; a digital artifact. What upsampling does, instead, is to create an audio signal with a higher frequency than the actual signal, so that the high frequency band-pass filters - which filter out the inaudible, horrible noise - have more room to operate and are less likely to intrude into the audible range. I stand to be corrected on that. A second point is that no-one can hear beyond 20 kHz. If someone could demonstrate the difference made by "supertweeters" I would be interested. Even then, it is by no means obvious that upsampling is going to give one anything more from the original sound. This is where DVD-A and SACD have something to offer over CD, at least in theory. Two-channel DVD-A at full spec can contain recorded sound up to 96 kHz (again; half its sampling frequency). But 96 kHz is more than two octaves higher than anything anyone can hear. So I have come round the view that their is sufficient frequency headroom in the original CD specification. |
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Silver Member Username: PaulfolbrechtPost Number: 108 Registered: Dec-05 | Hi guys, Real quickly: 1) My MiniMax non-upsampling CDP also sounds excellent. I have been extremely happy with it. 2) I'm aware that upsampling certainly cannot extrend the freq range but I've been under impression that it does make those highs *better* up to 22Khz for just the reasons touched upon (filtering). 3) While definitely nobody can hear test tones above 20Khz (I can't hear above 16), there's evidence that our brains still react to ultrasonic energy in the form of harmonics when present. Don't know if I buy it or not either, frankly - but it's certainly been one of the selling points of SACD (though there are other benefits to the format of course). I may, at some point, get an SACD player instead of an upsampling player. I am very happy with the MiniMax for CD and HDCD. It does seem that SACD is here to stay. Sorry, short on time now, will write more later. Paul |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7855 Registered: May-04 | In the discussion of upsampling undertaken of the forum a few months back, I pointed to the designers' admisssions that extended frequency response was not the primary goal for upsampling. Lowering the noise floor, a favorite passtime of high end designers over the last half century, is the benefit most upsampling advocates point to. As John states, the original signal is bandwidth limited and cannot be extended beyond the frequency response on the disc. DSP technology allows many things most of us wouldn't have thought possible not that long ago, but the optics of a CD playback system still only get two shots at getting a 20kHz signal off the disc. You cannot accurately create what isn't there to begin with. Also, as John states, the filters are what designers are trying to improve. Most specifically, they are trying to reduce the audible effects which the filters inject/infect upon the music. The key here is aliasing. Aliasing produces signals which are related to the sampling frequency and the music frequency being passed through the system. In any conventional player/DAC, the aliasing will be at typically very low frequencies which are easily within the audible bandwidth, with some as low as a few hundred Hz. They are generated by the process of D to A conversion and will beat against the music frequency with (sometimes quite) audible results. In a sense, and without trying to confuse the issue, it is similar to intermodualtion distortion but rather than two frequencies which exist in the music signal, aliasing is the result of the internally generated sampling frequency reacting to the externally existing music signal. At audible frequencies, the aliasing noise/frequencies will cause an overall rise in the noise floor which will obscure and smear the signal both in time, phase and dynamics. Lowering the aliasing noise floor results in a cleaner signal all the way across and brings into focus the details of the music which had perviously been hidden in those least significant bits and the intentional addition of dithering noise used to fool the DAC's. However, upsampling has been a mixed blessing and still represents just one more approach to calming the digital demons which infest the process of turning pits and flats into music. The transport of any upsampling system must be absolutely accurate to the best of current technology or the system is fraught with problems before the upsampling system even has a chance to mutiply the errors. And, as of last year, current technology was sufficiently lacking in its ability to make most upsampling schemes work properly. Any amount of jitter introduced at the optics end of the procedure will exacerbate the problems which upsampling faces. Since jitter remains one of the most pervasive problems in digital playback from an optical disc retrieval system, upsampling has met with less than stellar reviews. Additionally, the digital upsampling frequency seems to have created yet another problem in applying this technology to Compact Discs. The systems which seem to work best are those based on a 48kHz sampling rate. Moving 44kHz to 48 kHz (where the signal probably originally existed during the recording process) would appear to be the first location where errors can occur. Any error created at this point will only be made worse by the upsampling system. At this point upsampling systems seem to offer yet another technique in resolving the inherent problems of a systen designed with Atari 400 technology back in 1976-77. Just how effective upsampling will be against the newest generation of CDP's with improved transports and DAC's is something I would investigate before jumping into a technology that might have all the resale potential of an 18 bit DAC. |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7856 Registered: May-04 | Quite honestly, from what I've read, a $1500 upsampling CDP is going to get you the low end of a technolgy which requires large dollars to operate correctly. Maybe things have changed in the recent past, but I would shop very carefully. |
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Silver Member Username: PaulfolbrechtPost Number: 109 Registered: Dec-05 | Jan, Thanks for the insights as always. I need to review ditigal encoding/decoding in the couple audio books I have. It's been awhile. Kinda what sparked this interest was a dealer's setup: Tannoy TD8s with their ultrasonic tweeter fed by an Arcam upsampling CDP (thru CJ amps) works hi-freq magic - a "shimmer" that I'd heard before only via SACD. But, the fact is that I don't know if the same affect could be had with redbook CD! Haven't heard that combo. So, since I'm probably going to keep the Gallo Ref 3's I've got now, which also have ultrasonic tweeters (50KHz), you can see what I was thinking. But, again, maybe the upsampling had naught to do with what I'd heard after all. Maybe it was just the tweeter's stellar performance. Dunno. Again, I know even upsampling doesn't take us past 22Khz but even that is well into the ultrasonic range for my 35yo ears. I thought the upsampling players just did the ultra highs better. I wasn't really aware that $1.5K was the low-low end of UpS CDPs. Hmm. Too rich for me, then, maybe. I think the Arcam player is very nice at $1700 or so but that is more than I wanted to spend... though I'm thinking in 6-12 months, not immediately. Paul |
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New member Username: Fv333Post Number: 3 Registered: Mar-06 | HI-World stated in their review of Shanling cd T80 "to be honest it sounds more like SACD than ye old 16 bit". Without being technical, if there are favourable reviews on a product from across the globe, taking into account it wouldn't be reviewed with the same kit(amps, speakers etc..)i would think you could be confident of its consistency and quality. I may well purchase Shangling cd T-80,I was interested in Original A9.8 Davinci but cannot find a review of sound quality only raves about how good it looks! |
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Silver Member Username: My_rantzAustralia Post Number: 354 Registered: Nov-05 | The upsampling on the T80 is also switchable. My brother is still waiting on a new Australian shipment for his new player. Shanling make different transformers for the Aus market - where others think 230 v will do for our "supposed" 240 v system, Shanling I believe make them for 250 v to take variations into account. These transformers are apparantly what is holding up delivery. Well, this is what the dealer told him. They sound like they take care of business to me. |
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Silver Member Username: PaulfolbrechtPost Number: 116 Registered: Dec-05 | Wow, I have looked into these Shanling players and boy am I impressed. Top-grade sonics and about the most beautiful stuff you'll find. Seems the 200 SACD/CDP can be had for under $1500 used sometimes... just maybe. |