When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Mapman - Puccini is an oversampling player. It uses Ring-DACs - same DACs DCS sold license to ARCAM (FMJ-23). Arcam stopped making it because of DAC manufacturing yield problems (and stopped making FMJ23). Ring DAC possesses additional 4 current sources generating randomly 16 different sub LSB levels - basically noise. Adding noise to signal increases its resolution (dithering). Just a little bit tech info.

Tomcy6, let me quote part of your last post - "Sophisticated musicians, not rock, hiphop, etc., must train their ears to be able to play proper pitch, tone, etc. To other people, this practice will interfere with your finding the soul of the music." I have a serious disagreement with the second sentence here. As I stated a couple of times earlier in this thread, ear training always increases people's involvement with and enjoyment of music. The more you can hear of the details, the more you can appreciate and enjoy them. I have helped laymen (for lack of a better term) as well as music students with ear training, and in every case they were and are still very appreciative, saying that it opened up new worlds for them in their listening. This is not just for classical music - understanding harmony enhances the enjoyment of all types of music. One can be much more appreciative, for instance, of a great jazz artist's live or recorded improvisations if you have more understanding of what he is doing. The more you understand of rhythm, the better you can appreciate a great drummer in a rock band. I helped one lady in particular who now cannot help harmonizing along with her favorite country singers when listening to the radio in her car. Music is the universal language, and the more you can speak it, the more it will communicate to you.

Kijanki, that end to the sound I was describing about cd's might be dither, and if it is, I'm not sure that digital will ever fully satisfy me. Although, if I like the song(like Paula Cole's, "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" on the 1998 Grammy Nominee's cd), I don't object-or even hear-the end to the sound. Alberporter, do they add this dither to the digital master tapes? Could that be why it takes more "plays" to understand the song on cd, compared to understanding the song on analog? Tvad, I've got a conspiracy theory and/or an excuse that leaves me totally blameless for not reading Albertporter's posts. The conspiracy theory(which might just be an error in processing by Audiogon) is that Audiogon has decided to review my posts before they are posted. The excuse is that I'm getting old, and missed a complete page of postings when I posted. If none of these work, how about the male tendency to not listen, in order to get what we want to say in? I could try Guidocorona's humor distracting me, if you like. That part about the high frequency cut off intrigues me, as I believe allowing the super-high frequencies in was why I got so high listening to cd's at APL. I also want to point out that the true experts on digital(at least here) are those that have heard those digital master tapes. So therefore, what about analog being more relaxing than digital(I think Albertporter said something about this.)? What about dither being what we hear in the deep backgroung? And does it take more "plays" to understand the whole song on digital versus on analog?

Albertporter, There is nothing soft sounding about my system. It can whack an attack, sear a violin, and bloom a sax. AN, or any other NOS player is the perfect mate to Class D, and I might add SET systems.

You should hear the convincing live volume Grand here.

Kijanki,

I've implemented oversampling and dithering algorithms in software for both commercial and federal imaging applications. Less familiar with application in audio, but I suspect it is analogous.

I suspect it can make digital sound smoother and more acceptable maybe to an analogue lover, but I know that it cannot add detail that was lost upstream, as you have correctly pointed out before.

That is one of the reasons I hesitate to spend a lot on a CD player, I believe a lot of it is valid trickery played to achieve a particular sound.

It's the best you can do if that is the sound you want, but I would agree with Albert that it will never completely equal or surpass the detail possible with analog source, at least technically on paper.

Despite the clear technical limitations, I still find that most well recorded CDs meet my listening needs on my system (which I have tuned considerably as well) just fine, even though I know some more bits of real information in that stream could certainly never hurt.

I am of the long time opinion that the value in many high end CD players is providing a certain sound that someone is looking for, but it is not required just to get the best sound possible off off a CD in terms of information content.

As a result, I still live happily with my oversampling Denon player/recorder, whose sound matches my Denon phono cartridge quite well.