Issue No. 15 Spring through Winter 1990-91 Retail price: $7 In this issue: A new and highly accredited contributor to our journal discusses in depth the current state of CD player technology, from DAC architecture and digital filters to analog stage design, and rates the various approaches. Inspired by the above, your Editor reviews a baker's dozen (count them: 13) CD players and D/A processors. The introductory firstpa rt of our promised expose of the wire/cable scene makes its delayed appearance. A short (but not last) installment of the "Seminar 1989" transcript is shoehorned between timelier matters. Plus our accustomed columns and features, including the return of "Hip Boots" and lots of CD reviews. Issue No. 15 Spring through Winter 1990-91 Editor and Publisher Peter Aczel Contributing Editor David Rich Cartoonist and Illustrator Tom Aczel Business Manager Bodil Aczel The Audio Critic@ is an advisory service and technical review for consum­ ers of sophisticated audio equipment. The usual delays notwithstanding, it is scheduled to be published at approximately quarterly intervals by The Audio Critic, Inc. Any conclusion, rating, recommendation, criticism, or caveat pubished by The Audio Critic represents the personal findings and judgments of the Editor and the Staff, based only on the equipment avail­ able to their scrutiny and on their knowledge of the subject, and is therefore not offered to the reader as an infallible truth nor as an irreversible opinion applying to all extant and fo rthcoming samples of a particular product. Address all editorial correspondence to The Editor, The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown, P A 18951. Contents of this issue copyri ght © 1990by The Audio Critic, Inc. All rights reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Paraphrasing of product reviews for advertising or other commercial purposes is also prohibited without prior written permission. The Audio Critic will use all available means to prevent or prosecute any such unauthorized use of its material or its name. For subscription information and rates, see inside back cover. Contents 8 The Present State of CD Player Technology: Who Is Doing It Right? By David A. Rich, Ph.D. Senior VLSI Design Engineer, TLSI, Inc. Adjunct Assistant Professor, Polytechnic University 47 Current CD Players and D/A Processors, New and Not So New, Multibit and One-Bit By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher 48 Aragon D2A 49 Carver TL-3220 49 Euphonic Technology Mk II Signature 50 Harman/Kardon HD7600 50 JVC XL-Z1010TN 50 Meridian 208 51 Onkyo Integra DX-7500 51 Philips CD-80 52 Pioneer Elite PD-71 53 PS Audio "Digital Link" 53 Sony CDP-608ESD 54 Sony D-555 "Discman" 54 Theta DS Pre Basic 55 Recommendations S6 The Wire and Cable Scene: Facts, Fictions, and Frauds Part I By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher S8 Hip Boots Wading through the Mire of Misinformation in the Audio Press 58 John Atkinson in Stereophile 59 Neil Levenson in Fanfare 60 Seminar 1989: Exploring the Current Best Thinking on Audio Part III of the Continuing Transcript 63 Records&Recording CD's from the Golden Age of Audio (Meaning Right Now) By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher 63 Beethoven 66 Handel 64 Berlioz 66 Medelssohn/Schubert 64 Bernstein/Barber/Gershwin 66 Piston 64 Bruckner 67 Ravel 65 Dvorak 67 Schubert 65 Elgar 67 Verdi 65 Franck 3 Box 978: Letters to the Editor 1 From the Editor/Publisher: More of That Running Commentary This is the first issue of The Audio Critic in which the editorial "we" has been dropped. I have decided that it's a little stiffand old-fashioned, not right for the 1990's, especially not in the context of a small, informal publication. (Paul Krasner, radical editor, chiefYippie, and weirdo humorist of the 1960's, had an anecdote about an editor of The New Yorker who used the editorial "we" in the climactic utterance of his most intimate encounters; since then I haven't been truly comfortable with that time-honored usage.) So, from now on, when the speaker is I, the pronoun shall be the same, and the authors of guest articles will also be encouraged to use the first person singular. Another new step in the same direction is the more liberal use of conversational contractions such as "isn't" and "that's." I somehow started offon the wrong foot and became too rigid a formalist on that subject, beginning with Issue No. 10. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to the studied folksiness of Madison Avenue advertising copy, which had been my bread and butter for so many years. Anyway, what I'm doing in this issue reflects my current prefer­ ences in editorial style. I reserve the right to change my mind. * * * All right, all right, you want to know what happened to the promised quarterly publishing schedule and why this issue is again so late. What happened was that I tried my best but just couldn't get the whole act together for 1990; however, I believe I do have it together for 1991. It's mostly a question of staff, contributors, and ready material well in advance. I expect to have a Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter issue in 1991. Famous last words, you're thinking, so I'll say no more; when it happens you'll believe it. Mean­ while, look at this issue: it has at least twice the editorial content (as distinct from the paper bulk) of the typical high-end audio journal that comes out more often, and since you're paying $22 per four issues, not per year, you come out way ahead and I get paid less often. That, of course, is my greatest incentive to accelerate. As far as up-to-date audio information is concerned, don't imagine that I'm withholding from you a great deal that I already know because of the laggard publishing schedule. I always try to play catch-up at press time and cram recent findings into the issue about to be printed. * * * Let me conclude with a rhetorical question. If audiophile A has read every issue of Stereophile and The Absolute Sound ever published but doesn't know The Audio Critic, and if audiophile B has read every issue of The Audio Critic ever published but doesn't know Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, who has a more solid understanding of the realities of audio, and who is likely to make smarter purchasing decisions, A or B ? 2 Box 978 Letters to the Editor Have you noticed that certain high-end audio magazines publish only weak, unconvincing letters of criticism and, on the other hand, always the strongest letters of praise? They obviously want you to think that you are getting a scrupulously fair, balanced sampling of reader opinion. But write them a highly articulate, authoritative put-down that makes them look incompetent or insincere, and they will suppress it. This journal is of a different persuasion. We are not impressed by groupie flattery and we welcome intelligent disagreement, no matter how strong. Tr y us. Letters printed here may or may not be excerpted at the discretion of the Editor. Ellipsis (.. .) indicates omission. Address all editorial correspondence to the Editor, The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown, PA 18951. The Audio Critic: pologies used in the output stages, as well Why have transformer-coupled pure I read with great interest your review as to the output transformers themselves. cathode fol lowers or totem poles not been of Bob Carver's t-mod "Silver Seven" Let us first consider the matter of out­ commercially produced? Probably because clones. I have seen laboratory data on one put impedance. If, for instance, a unity­ of their high drive requirements, which pair of Silver Sevens-a pair which may coupled output stage, or a pure cathode fol­ simply can't be met with the single-ended have been defective-but I have neither lower or a totem pole (series-connected voltage amplifying circuitry that has al­ measured nor auditioned any of the t-mods, output stage), is employed in conjunction ways prevailed in the vacuum-tube realm. so I am not prepared to comment on Mr. with a correctly designed output transform­ With differential circuitry, totem pole or Carver's success in duplicating the output er, the output impedance can be brought to cathode fo llower outputs are entirely practi­ of his big tube amp. I would, however, like well below one ohm. I hasten to add that cal, and amplifiers using such output stages to address your comments on the wisdom this is not mere theorizing on my part. Uni­ do yield low output impedance and good of Carver attempting to replicate the "tube ty-coupled amplifiers are currently manu­ damping. As you're undoubtedly aware, sound." factured by Nestorovic, EAR, and Vacuum both totem poles and pure cathode fol low­ You state that the output of an audio­ State Research, and were formerly made by ers have been used in commercially pro­ phile tube amplifier is characterized by McIntosh. In all cases, output impedance is duced OTL designs, but that needn't con­ high output impedance (over one ohm), a or was a fraction of an ohm. A pure cath­ cern us here becauseOTLs do not have low bit of second harmonic distortion, and ode-follower output constructed with volt­ output impedances. abrupt rises in distortion at the frequency age-regulator-type tubes such as the 6336, More important, such unorthodox out­ extremes.