"Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vai..

Archived from groups: rec.audio.high-end (More info?)

I get my best laughs from all the specs for high-end CD players.
Goodness, you can pay up to $10K or so, and for this you get a heavy unit
with all kinds of ultimate suspensions for the drive, non-resonate metals,
etc., etc.

The problem with all this is that "everyone" seems to think that a CD
drive has the same "problems" as a turntable that plays vinyl. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The difference is BUFFERING and/or CACHE a
concept that has come down from the earliest days of computer
hardware/software technology. Let me explain.

Buffering via a cache simply means you have a holding area into which
flows the input signals from the read mechanism and from which data is drawn
at a fixed rate. This compensates for any delays in transmission for the
original source. Think of a bucket with water flowing in unevenly but
smoothly flowing out through a tube at the bottom at a fixed rate. The
difference here is we are talking speeds measured in microseconds.

The laser in the device's read head detects the off-on condition on the
surface of the CD and sends it to an intermediate circuits where any read
errors are corrected (or attempts are made) and this is forwarded into a
memory module acting as an last-in/last-out buffer. I have a fairly
inexpensive (well under $100) portable CD player that has such a large
buffer that you can knock it around and never hear a glitch in the output.

So much for massive CD read mechanisms mounted in ultra shock resistant
mountings in a ultra heavy chassis.

So, the sad fact is that if you hear any "distortion" from a CD player
it comes from the circuits that handle the output from the buffer and
translates that into the SPIF/DF format. And, that my friends, I think is a
function of the quality of the power supply.