Marantz SA-10 arriving Monday!

I believe the point of the settings is that the PCM format is not lossless, and Marantz provides the option to play with different settings because there is no agreed way to reconstruct the original acoustic signal. None of those settings work for DSD, which has "enough" resolution. In fact, I plan to try finding out which combination of settings on PCM comes as close as possible to DSD by using hybrid discs - but that’s a pretty substantial effort (for long winter evenings), and it will be recording-dependent most likely.

Elizabeth, if your unit is made for the US market then the XLR polarity follows the US standard: pin 2 is hot and pin 3 is cold. You should not reverse it. (BTW, phase and polarity are different things.) Also, except for dither, there is no "Off". You may keep Marantz default settings, but those do not provide the highest SNR, as they documented in the manual.

astru

... the point of the settings is that the PCM format is not lossless ... there is no agreed way to reconstruct the original acoustic signal.

You must be confused. PCM is very much a lossless format. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but it is most certainly lossless.

You are saying that a discrete encoding using 16-bit resolution at 44KHz sampling rate of continuous signals from 0 to 20KHz is not lossless? You get quantization errors + you are guaranteed not to be able to recover perfectly the high frequencies. Please "unconfuse" me.

astru

You are saying that a discrete encoding using 16-bit resolution at 44KHz sampling rate of continuous signals from 0 to 20KHz is not lossless?

No, not at all. As I said:

PCM is very much a lossless format.

That doesn't mean PCM is perfect. But all audio formats are subject to limited bandwidth and various distortions, to some extent. But no, 16/44 PCM is not a lossy format.

blueranger

Kind of in the same boat............I live rural, maybe two hours from decent audio salons in either Baltimore or DC, so  my experience is primarily based on my experience. No audiophile friends, music lovers yes, audiophiles no. Picked up a Marantz SA14s1 a few weeks ago..............love it, probably my last CD player. I'd read Elizabeth's experience with her SA-10, but that one is a bit out of my range, so the 14s1 is about as good as I'm gonna get in this lifetime, but hey, it's pretty damn good :).........As an aside, I'm still finding ways to make my "room/setup" better. Surprising just how much performance you can squeeze out of the room itself with a little patience.......and little or no money :)