When is digital going to get the soul of music?

D_Edwards, I heard a cd with Eric Clapton where the guitar sounded too fast. Would surround sound make more sense of this?

No,

You may have a transport problem. I use my Genesis digital lens to ferret out transports with clock problems.

I'm waiting for an affordable PC based tester so I can save results and take my laptop to test systems away from home.

Now if you're talking about the sustain of an electric guitar or decay of say the plucked strings (unplugged).

Surround can help here but I don't want drivel on about something unrelated. So you can describe "too fast" a little more succinctly based on what i've said above.

Which track of which recording, maybe I have it here.

Mak, are you experiencing the timing problem on every track of every CD, or on just one track of 1 CD? If the effect has a physical origin, you should be able to reproduce it no matter what track of which CD you are playing. The test is very simple: clock any track on a stopwatch. If the final reading is significantly shorter than what's reported on the CD jacket, you may have a transport problem, otherwise the problem is entirely psychosomatic.

I used to have a Clapton album in which the guitar always finished a second or so after the rest of the band...no matter what the track.

Then, I sobered up.

The system I heard the too-fast guitar was Alex's of APL Hi-Fi. It was 2 channel. The Eric Clapton cd was maybe made in 1988(or later). I think I only heard one other cd that had what I call digital artifacts(which may not be digital artifacts at all). It was still very listenable. The guitar seemed to suprise me more than anything. Maybe if I had listened to it more than once, my perception would change? Anyhow, I brought it up because in "Absolute Sound" a reviewer mentioned that things that bothered him on two-channel were not a problem on(what I call) surround sound. What about a slight delay making the guitar sound too fast on 2-channel, but making sense on surround?