Does anyone out there NOT hear a difference in CD

I hear slight differences, however, compared to the distortion and different presentation from speakers these differences are extremely small. I find speakers vary from absolutely terrible to almost "you are there". I find nowhere near this kind of large difference in CD players so I just don't lose much sleep over it. A small bit of coloration here or there but nothing earth shaking.

Nowhere is MrTennis so desperately needed as among a forumload of illogical audiophiles

as in MrSpock, Audio Trek, "to boldy go where no audiophile has gone before", episode "I, Mudd", as in "is that muddy sound or is it just me being illogical".

should sound considerably better than one from 1992 that cost $800.

You can't be that sure, however, CD players did indeed improve in general around the early 90's with delta sigma DAC's and oversampling becoming widespread. (Principally Higher speed circuits with higher sample rates are what you get with a modern player - you can approach 120 db+ dynamic range on the most recent delta sigma chips but remember your speakers are unlikely to have more than 60 db dynamic range above the noise floor - so do you need it?)

IMHO, the quality of ordinary players was very good by 1995. Your Pioneer uses an early Delta Sigma 1 bit DAC. These DAC designs are very linear as well as low cost because they are easy to make - the higher speed designs push the out of band noise way way high and allow for less brick wall filtering.

Any player before 1990 and I would be worried about Jitter - it was less understood in those days.

Now only a few Resistor ladder multi-bit DAC's have survived - this is because Delta Sigma's specifications have largely caught up with them in terms of the highest specs.

BTW, at 60dB thems spkrs is doin good. Most won't do 25 before kicking a few buckets...

Gregm,

Indeed, yet it is all too common to see extremely expensive CD players hooked up to the kind of speakers you mention. My ATC mid domes are respected for being around 0.1% THD (around 60 db) across most of the all important midrange with wide even dispersion and at loud live concert/realistic music levels (this is the very hard part - as any old headphone can achieve these low distortion figures at tiny output levels and so can many speakers at modest levels).

However, I have no illusions - almost any modest CD player should be able to perform better than these distortion levels.

I am not sure that many people fully grasp the implications of these performance specifications when building systems. At what point does a CD player become so good that it is enough and other things matter much more (like room acoustics and speakers).

but for the last decade and a half the price versus performance does not correlate most of the time. Now a days it is more about audio jewelry and it seems that some of the prices are derived arbitrarily and have no correlation to part costs or design sophistications. On the contrary, some of the highest cost components now a days are based on simple circuits from the 40's and 50's.

Now there is a straight shooter. I suspect that you and Stereophile founder J Gordon Holt would be in total agreement on the above.

During the 60's cars went all chrome and wings and hub caps too...

When performance reaches "good enough" for most customers then differentiation often migrates to other features such as aesthetics or nostalgia or exclusivity (high price - limited availability)

Any ordinary watch is good enough to tell the time these days - yet we have nostalgic old world designs such as Rolex that are still popular and aspired too. It is indeed just "jewelery". A Zenith mechanical chronometer movement is an impressive design wonder that achieves mechanically something that can be done for five bucks with electronics. To me that is part of the magic of vinyl. Digital kind of kills this magic dead. But I have no silly illusions that a Rolex in anyway outperforms the best digital watch (in terms of time keeping accuracy).

Shadorne, the watch illustration is fallacious; in timekeeping there is one universal unit of measurement. In audio what is the equivalent universally agreed unit of measurement by which one can easily assess the merit of a component?

That is just too easy. Although there are more than one universally accepted performance criteria the goal is accurate reproduction of the recorded material: Low distortion, high linearity, high Signal to Noise, large dynamic range, high SPL level capability, wide even dispersion.

It is all to obvious that some equipment is better than others in terms of pure performance.

What you are saying is akin to saying Rolex is a "Good Watch" - sure it is - but that is subjective and so is "Good Sound". Rolex is a poor performer as a time keeper (cost/performance) and so are many nostalgic methods of audio reproduction.

how do you compare the sound of the recording to what comes out of the speakers ?

You use a microphone at a nearfield position or in an anechoic chamber and compare the result to the input reference signal. You can measure all forms of distortion and noise this way.

of course, that one never really knows for sure *how* neutral one's system is, until an upgrade is made that reveals previous colorations.

How do you know that it is not the "upgrade" that is adding coloration? This can just as often be the case - a higher price does not guarentee that the upgrade is more "neutral"....the higher prices item may simply have a dose of pleasant sounding sugar coating and therefore easily "wins the pepsi taste challenge"!!