Alex,
Thanks for your comments. I am not going to get into a long theoretical and technical disertation with you on the merits of oversampling vs. "resampling", nor am I going to debate who makes the best Analog DSP Chip, nor am I going to debate the superiority of who has the better transport.
But I will say this:
Oversampling or re-sampling is widely used by many consumer electronics companies involved in musical equipment manufacturing and musical reproduction. Keyboard companies like Yamaha, Korg and Roland use oversampling to produce better and more realistic piano, drum and orchestral sounds on their keyboards. Audio companies like Ayre, Cary, Esoteric, Arcam use oversampling to produce better sounding, higher fidelity equipment audio equipment.
True, whether this is better or not is subjective based based on the preferences of the listener. But to my ears and millions of other consumers who are buying these products, resampling offers major improvements that are audibly discernable and desirable. To my ears, oversampling (when done correctly) is a pleasant enhancement that brings about a sense of higher fidelity and a more realistic sound. I agree with you that it does not (using your words) "improve the sound of the cd" which I think is more aptly put as "improve the music recorded on the cd" but it DOES offer the potential of making what's already there much more pleasureable, richer in tonal texuture and increasing the detail presented. Oversampling doesn't always sound better but I find I prefer it much more than I don't prefer it.
It just makes sense that the more you take an original waveform and sample it "over and over again" you increase the resolution, detail and fullness of the original waveform. In the case of the high rez formats like SACD and DVD-A, they theoretically have the ability to actually reach these higher sampling rates/frequency. So audio mfg's have started incorporating DAC's that can interpolate a 16 bit word length to 24 bit and then re-sample it 192,000 times per second in an attempt to re-create these higher frequency rates that are an inherent part of these formats.
Anytime you re-sample a waveform this many times (and that fast) there will be errors in the reproduction of the 0's and 1's that represent the digital information. This is commonly known as jitter...or better yet timing jitter errors. And you are right, some of that information CAN BE LOST in the re-sample process.
However, the trick to resampling is in the post filtering process that attempts to re-create the lost information. On the really high end units this filtering process is quite sophisticated, occurs in mulitple stages, substantially reducing and virtually eliminating these errors to the point where they have little effect on the music we hear.
Regarding the Analog DSP, whether or not one chip is better (whatever that means) is really irrevelant. The selection of a particular chip by a manufacturer is usually determined by need, functionality and design criteria rather than what's the best out there. If a particular chip can do DSD conversion for SACD and offer the best bass management it may be construed as being the best chip. But if the mfg wants to convert the DSD stream to PCM (or better yet if the player doesn't offer SACD)or if the mfg decides not to offer extensive bass management features, then using the best most expensive chip is not important and does not add any improvements to the functionality of his unit.
At the price point of the DV 50 I'm sure the engineers could have "afforded" to incorporate the Analog Devices chip of the 2900. And I hope you're not trying to suggest that Denon uses better quality parts for their machine vs. the Esoteric because THAT IS CERTAINLY NOT TRUE. DENON IS A MARKETING COMPANY STRICTLY THINKING ABOUT MOVING LARGE NUMBERS OF WIDGETS, MAINTAINING OR INCREASING THEIR MARKET SHARE AND MAKING THE HIGHEST PROFIT POSSIBLE. IF THERE'S ANY COMPANY OUT THERE THAT DOES "REALLY GOOD MARKETING" AS YOU PUT IT IT IS DENON. My guess is that Esoteric did not use the chip because there was no performance advantage in using it.
Yes, I was referring to the top lens of the laser transport when I was talking about the thin wires. Thank you for your correction as I was writing very fast. However, you will find when you receive the DV 50 that it does not use the thin wire in the same configuration as 99% of the other units on the market. I stand by my original comments. And I am confused as to how you know this for a fact when you've never modded a DV 50 before? Mfg's routinely use Pioneer and Philips transports and modify them for their own use.
Anyway, I've enjoyed our dialogue on the issues above and I graciously "bow out"asI don't want to turn this thread into something other than what it was meant. I am anxious to see what you can do with the DV 50 in terms of modifications. When do you think you will have an idea of what improvements (if any) you can add? If I can make a suggestion, please look at the 5.1 channel analog outs as a start. The rca's are of average quality and the dac's are nowhere near the same quality of the 2 channel dac's.
The improvements alone would substantially increase the multi-channel performance of this unit.
AVGURU
