2nd hand CD player experimentations

Oh no, here we go...

Is supposed to - so we can only infer that you haven't "heard it"..

Oooooooo, look Voodoo Science to justify your purchase. Which magazine did you get the review from. Come on own up..

Keep beleiving... Every 6 months or so another Charlatan will be along to take some more of your hard earned cash...

Well then, if it can't be measured by test instruments, how do the manufacturers know it is working??

If you really trusted your ears, you wouldn't resort to BS like "resonance amplitude thingy" - and appear "dim-witted" yourself.

 

Factually incorrect I'm afraid. Ian J and Uncle Eric had set the wheels in motion to set-up AV Talk long before AVT was viewed as a potential threat to an existing (business oriented) monopoly and an excuse was created to ban Uncle Eric. For someone so keen to avoid mention of the AVT/AVF history, you seem strangely quick to bring up (one side of) the story at any opportunity.

Micheal, whilst I respect the 'never trust a dealer/second hand rulez' ethos at Zerogain, you should not always believe what you're told by those who are so anti-dealers as to plain lie to further their aims.

To put everyone's mind at rest, yes, I am friends with a dealer who sells Auralex... does that make me think Auralex works any better, or any worse, than it actually does? No. Did I name the dealer I know? No. Did I suggest there was only one dealer? No.
Did I actively recommend my fellow forum members use a dealer who sells Auralex at higher prices than another I'm well aware of? No.

I stand to gain exactly nothing from the sale to anyone of any Auralex product.

 

That means its not very well built then doesnt it? I wouldnt part all that cash if it was that sensitive. Life is too short.

 

Pure bollocks I'm afraid. Amplitude frequency response is only a small, and relatively unimportant, part of the equation. Of equal or greater importance are such factors as rise time, settling time and phase versus frequency response amongst others. For CD players in particular, the nature of the high frequency filtering is also crucially important as it affects how natural the player will sound (or how 'digital'). And yet we only ever see published figures for frequency response as if this were all that mattered.

 

If I'm correct, when you were experimenting with different CD players with a view to forking out not insignificant sums of cash, you were still in your pre-Mana/unborn phase of hi-fi life when your mind may have been a little more open to what the different boxes can actuall do...

Even pre-Mana I was always disappointed with CD player 'upgrades'. The salesman would go into eulogies about how great this particular player was, I'd listen to it in comparison to the other not-so-good one, and usually came away a bit perplexed as to what the fuss was all about.

The CDX demo was conducted off-glass, so to speak. The myth about the CDX not working on glass was put about by NANA some years ago. Red faces at NANA, I guess, when Naim's own Fraim appeared with glass shelving.

As I said recently Steven, generally speaking it's people who have a CD-only front end who are the most fervent believers in this player trashing that one.

Yes, there are small differences, but in the scheme of things, well...there are small differences.

 

I don't want to prolong what is a actually a "banned" topic (yes, I know I started it ) and irrelevant to this thread but I disagree substantially with some of what you've said. I'll probably reply via PM

Michael.

 

Michael, I appreciate the concern, but speaking as the esteemed OP ( :MILD: ), I'm happy to have Juboy contributing to the thread. I know him to be a decent guy whose opinion I respect, and as far as I'm aware he has no personal commercial interest in promoting Auralex, so I don't see any reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute.

Obviously, as ZeroGain is your baby the final say is yours, but I just thought I'd put in a good word for Julian.

Dunc

 

No I haven't heard it and I haven't read about it in a magazine either.

I was one of Quadapire's earliest Reference stand customers. I bought the stand based on two hands-on dems using Naim 5 series kit and Olive kit. The CD5 and CDX were respectively swapped around between Reference and non-reference supports.

The differences were not subtle. Better pitch accuracy, note separation, flow, and a reduction in time smearing of transients were clearly audible. This meant that I could follow musical threads much more easily and my brain didn't have to perform its own error correction, and thus the whole music listening experience became more involving and less fatiguing. Oh, and Olive Naim kit now had a soundstage! There was an urge to raise the volume a little because the overall sound was somewhat smoother.

This was perhaps a criticism of the earlier Reference stand - it seemed to sit on the dynamics a little.

I don't usually take a lot of notice of scientific theories but experiments into different support materials, their resonant amplitude (= how much they ring and introduce their own resonances into what sits upon them - a kind of mechanical microphony if you will) across different frequencies, and the effect on the reproduction capabilities notably of CD players was kind of interesting, but only if the effect turned out not to be just audible, but clearly so. It was, so the proof of the pudding was indeed in the eating.

Later I was asked to try the same stand but with big rectanular holes cut out of the shelves. Bollocks! The dynamics came to life and the soundstage got bigger. Rats!

"How much to swap to these holed shelves after only a couple of months of owning a stand without them?" I asked

As I was one of the first QS Ref customers, I was offered a straight swap of my unholed shelves for ones with holes. All I had to pay was the difference in retail price of ten pounds per shelf

I was later told the theory behind the holes, not that it really mattered. The smaller surface area reduced the resonant amplitudes even further and there was also a significant reduction in mass that was clearly noticeable on the day of the swap when I carried the new shelves to the car to take them home. This reduction in mass seemed to be lifting the dynamics. Well, something was lifting the dynamics...

Mass is easy to measure, btw, you can just plonk the shelves on the bathrooom scales if you so desire .

In the last few weeks, Dave Cattlin has been playing around with shelves yet again, although his Naim kit has since been replaced by Accuphase. He reckons that with the acrylic, you get even more of the same musical improvements that I've outlined above So, mindful of the fact that I could use another shelf anyway I've placed an order - for just one shelf. The acrylic shelves cost about 20 quid more each than the MDF ones I already have, so if I didn't happen to think that the acrylic effect was all that significant then I'd have lost a night's beer money. I'm sure I'd get over it.

James,

Thanks for the clarification. Fair enough.

 

Well, strictly speaking you're only measuring weight in that case... just cos it says "kg" doesn't make it so...

/me shuts up and gets his coat

Dunc

 

Hi Steven,

You seem to be saying that QS ref is the dogs' because the shelves don't resonate very much...so how does QS ref handle the internally-generated vibrations in a piece of kit? In other words, where does it go to, my lovely?

PS Did Stallers sell the 135s???

 

Sorry, I should have said overall mass to take into account the air that replaces the MDF in the holes as well as the remaining MDF around them.

 

To ground, bypassing other shelves beneath along the way thanks to these little aluminium rings decoupling each shelf from the one above.

I haven't a clue whether or not Marco has sold his 135s. Are you thinking of buying them or something?

 

Buying them? Not exactly!

Yes, but if the shelf or shelves won't resonate, then how do the vibes get into the vertical parts to start with?

 

By not resonating with the noise from, say, the speakers, they don't feed the energy back into the equipment. The energy within the CD player as it spins will be given off as heat as it passes through the surface of the shelf and down the rods to ground.

Ringing noises at certain critical (high) frequencies would seem to add their own colorations...

 

Ah, I see. How come QS isn't much cop then?

The only time that Mana stands 'ring' is when you tap them, btw. No ringing in normal use.

 

Depends what you call normal.

PS How's Marco's new amp bedding in?

 

I suppose it depends on what you want your stands to do regarding the reproduction of music.

The QS Ref does just that. The Mana would seem to have far more important things to reproduce in terms of overall sonics

I haven't spoken to Marco for a couple of weeks now so ask him yourself. I'm sure he lurks here and is even permited to post so why not send him a pm?

 

The Stealths are for me the best solid state amps I have heard, I settled for second or third best, but I know that Marco wouldn't.

 

He's not actually.

 

Hang on a minute I had the pleasure of setting up some QS racks and then winding the wick up and they vibrated like a beast.