[Review] CD lathe update

We also demo the unit on Philips and sony transports in players of the £500- £900 range, differenices can be detected in the same manner with these.

 

ex-psychologist - welllll ok Tones - you hurt me there. . ..... throw another log on the fire, this was in the days of wife number one and . . . . . oh never mind, I can hear a difference and guess what - Martha - our Old English Sheepdog can hear a difference too.

 

I'm only just married, does that mean i shouldn't hear the differences that i do hear?
What about the kittens, will they hear it?

 

Kittens never hear a difference - everyone knows that

 

I'm very sceptical about this device but might like to try it one day too..... given Tones's well documented boasts about being unable to hear any difference between cables or between CD and vinyl (apart from surface noise) then I think his input can be totally discounted!

 

How to save the effort of treating each CD

It would seem that if one of these Nova Physics Group Memory Players were used as source then the CD itself wouldn't need lathing or any other treatment.

This would seem to be revolutionary, on the face of it:

http://www.novaphysicsgroup.com/

Here's a rather enthusiastic trio of reviews from Stereo Times:

http://www.stereotimes.com/CD121406.shtml

It seems that a dozen players were sold as a result of the listening sessions for this review , including 5 to the review team - at $10,000 each!

 

What an awful web site ...imo

I suspect that if the lasers is reading a disc ...the lathe will still help ..but without any experience with the player that has to be pure speculation.

Alanbeeb...
if you want a disc cut or I can send you two disc one cut one not of some music discs donated by stellabagpus.....

I think thats what I was trying to say too ....

 

I have to agree, not a very nice site....design wise, however very interesting info in regards to how they exract the data from the disc, looks like the same system that Meridian use on their CDP's.
I still feel that exracting the data at high speed is the limiting factor, but of course you have to use this method in order to use a buffer stage.

 

Hardly a boast, ol' spud! A deficiency, if what others are hearing is actually physically there (which I don't think it is). I have never heard vinyl and CD to be different, which is not to say that there are players and TTs which I have not heard which are indeed different. Wire, of course, is just wire and there is precisely no difference, no matter what its composition, unless you want it to sound different, which, judging by your post, you do. If you want the lathe to make a difference, even subconsciously, just to put extra egg on the face of that nasty, sceptical Tones, it will.

 

My humblest apologies, ol' spud, it was meant as a joke, my way of saying "if you believe this guff, you should have your practice certificate cancelled!" Still, if you heard a difference and you're happy with that difference, that's all that matters, whether or not it is really there. I guess dogged persistence really paid off for the both of you.

 

I'm new here, so apologies if this should be common knowledge, but I'm curious as to what you are using for speakers and amplification and wondering if this could be a factor in your not hearing as subtle differences as you otherwise might.

I say this in full knowledge of the very strong factor expectations play in making such judgements, having been badly stung on occasion over the years in mixing and mastering my own recordings and those of others.

I learned a big lesson about 15 years ago when after spending about 6 hours very carefully finding an EQ that would improve a recording and finally having found one that really worked, i.e., that improved the sound no matter which part of the song it was applied to, I discovered that the EQ was not actually in the circuit and the little button I was pressing to "punch it" in and out was doing nothing. All the while I was convinced that I had made a major improvement.

Big lesson in the power of expectations and why I take many reports of subtle improvements with a grain of salt, depending on the circumstances under which the comparisons were made.

I have more recently come to the understanding that conclusions reached while scrutinizing sound (using the intellect) tend to be meaningless - the harder the scrutiny, the less validity - while innocent, accidental and general impressions do count. These would be impressions gathered from the next room, on walking into the room, while occupied with another mindless task like washing dishes or any time you find yourself forming an impression when you haven't really been paying attention, that is, when the intellect is not involved.

Like meditation, if you find yourself "trying", you are doing it wrong!

Russell

 

Good day,

I stumbled across this discussion while looking for information about the Audiodesk lathe. I still have many, many unanswered questions.

If this process works, any guesses about why CD manufactures wouldn't have the molds for their product machined with a bevel? It would give them a huge leg up in the comptition between CD manufactures since their CDs would sound better (assuming the results are as astounding as claimed) and it would eliminate the need to "seal" the edges to prevent oxidation of the aluminum.

Does anyone know what kind of engineering degree Wolfgang Schneider holds, if any? Their site claims that Dr. Erich Schrott is a biochemist (???), and I'd think that if W. Schneider had a degree that was at all relevant to the product, they'd be interested in showing it (maybe not? I don't know.)

I'm not here to cause trouble for the sake of causing trouble, but I'm very, very skeptical that this machine changes the sound of a CD in any way. I know that many people belive they hear it, but the science isn't there to back it up. In fact, it overwhelmingly works against it. Our ears are very easy to fool, and I believe that's what's happening here. Also, no legitimate mechanism of action has been proposed, but that's secondary to whether it even does anything besides bevel polycarbonate disks. I can't stress enough that I'm not here to screw up your forums. I'm only interested in civil debate and communication.

Thanks,
Chris

 

No. 2 system here:

https://www.audio-forums.com/as-rediect/showthread.php?t=4
(post No. 8)

I don't believe in subtle differences, for the reason you've so nicely stated here:

My criterion is that something must be radically different; I don't possess golden ears and subtle differences are all to easily imagined - I know, I've done it!

 

Tones, any news on the lathed cd through the Linn setup?

 

No, sorry, my time was devoured by more important matters (our younger daughter having to go to hospital to have an ovarian cyst removed - it went well and she's fine). I hope to give the Mimik a try sometime this week.

 

Sorry to hear about your daughter Tony, hope she is feeling better soon.

Tony.

 

Thanks, Tony, no, she's come through it very well (21 year-olds bounce back much better than we oldies!) and I suspect she'll be back at university in a few days. It was a keyhole operation, so minimally intrusive.

 

Now tried with ancient (10 years old) Linn Mimik Mk. I. Both discs sounded identical.

The reason why it works is, I suspect, that people want it to, perhaps subconsciously. No harm in that, of course. If what it does gives you pleasure, go to it. But personally I would never potentially jeopardise a valuable CD collection by using this device on them, even if I did hear a difference.

 

Tones, no need to respond with your findings on the cd lathe. I spent the day with Zanash listening to various cables and Cd's on my own system.

He pulled a switcheroo on me and handed me a lathed version of a disc we'd already heard without mentioning the fact it was lathed. My comments , " That's not the same disc we've just been listening to, that sounds totally different..."and was noticable within the first five seconds.

In my system at least and to my ears the difference is night and day. Increased soundstage width, clearer seperation of instruments and better portrayl of acoustic space.

Repeatable time after time and easily identifiable as to which disc was playing. It wasn't a small improvement by any stretch, though i concede that the chosen disc may have been the best case scenario.

To my ears it was as significant as my last component upgrade, and that was a new cd player. Admitedly not a huge cd player upgrade, but a worthwhile one none the less.

And would you believe his silver loudspeaker wire sounds different to my copper wire....imagine that..

 

Great News sq225917..... the amount of people that can hear the difference is far greater, than the people who can, at least on this forum.
I going to ask Zanash nicely if he will lathe some Black CD-R's for me, should be interesting as Larkrise claims they sound better than a lathed original CD ! Which dosen't really make sense, however the reason seems to be only due to the CD-R's being black in colour.
I will hopefully be reporting back on this soon! Should be interesting!